📜 This Day in History

May 8

• 1373Julian of Norwich experienced religious visions, later recorded in Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving English-language work attributed to a woman.
• 1842A train derailed and caught fire near Versailles, France, killing at least 52 people.
• 1945A parade in Sétif, French Algeria, celebrating the end of World War II in Europe became a riot and was followed by reprisals, carried out by colonial authorities over the following weeks, that killed thousands.
• 1963In Huế, South Vietnam, soldiers opened fire into a crowd of Buddhists protesting against a government ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Phật Đản, killing nine and sparking the Buddhist crisis.
• 1976Great American Revolution opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain, California.
• 2025Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected as Pope Leo XIV, making him the first pope born in the United States, the first to hold either U.S. or Peruvian citizenship, the first from the Order of Saint Augustine, and the second from the Americas after his immediate predecessor, Pope Francis.

Born on this day

• 1737Edward Gibbon, English historian and politician (died 1794)
• 1828Henry Dunant, Swiss businessman and activist, co-founded the Red Cross, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1910)
• 1884Harry S. Truman, American colonel and politician, 33rd President of the United States (died 1972)
• 1899Friedrich Hayek, Austrian economist and philosopher, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1992)