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Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few more of them:

May 9 is the 129th day of the year (130th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 236 days remain until the end of the year.

EVENTS

1386 – England and Portugal formally ratify their alliance with the signing of the Treaty of Windsor, making it the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world which is still in force.

1662 – The figure who later became Mr. Punch makes his first recorded appearance in England.

1671 – Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

1865 – American Civil War: Nathan Bedford Forrest surrenders his forces at Gainesville, Alabama.

1865 – American Civil War: President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation ending belligerent rights of the rebels and enjoining foreign nations to intern or expel Confederate ships.

1901 – Australia opens its first national parliament in Melbourne.

1926 – Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claim to have flown over the North Pole (later discovery of Byrd's diary appears to cast some doubt on the claim.)

1941 – World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages.

1960 – The Food and Drug Administration announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill.

1974 – Watergate scandal: The United States House Committee on the Judiciary opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.

1980 – In Florida, United States, Liberian freighter MV Summit Venture collides with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, making a 430-meter (1,400 ft) section of the southbound span collapse. Thirty-five people in six cars and a Greyhound bus fall 46 metres (150 ft) into the water and die.

1980 – In Norco, California, United States, five masked gunmen hold up a Security Pacific bank, leading to a violent shoot-out and one of the largest pursuits in California history. Two of the gunmen and one police officer are killed and thirty-three police and civilian vehicles are destroyed in the chase.

2001 – In Ghana, 129 football fans die in what became known as the Accra Sports Stadium disaster. The deaths are caused by a stampede (caused by the firing of tear gas by police personnel at the stadium) that followed a controversial decision by the referee.

2020 – The COVID-19 recession causes the U.S. unemployment rate to hit 14.9 percent, its worst rate since the Great Depression.

2022 – Russo-Ukrainian War: United States President Joe Biden signs the 2022 Lend-Lease Act into law, a rebooted World War II-era policy expediting American equipment to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.

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