TODAY IN HISTORYToday<$> is Thursday, May 9, the 129th day of 2002. There are 236 days left in the year.

On this date:

<*In 1502, Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere.

In 1945, US officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately.

In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved a pill as safe for birth control use. (The pill, Enovid, was made by G.D. Searle and Co of Chicago.)

In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee opened hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon.

In 1978, the bullet-riddled body of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, who’d been abducted by the Red Brigades, was found in an automobile in the centre of Rome.

In 1980, 35 motorists were killed when a Liberian freighter rammed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida, causing a 1,400-foot section to collapse.

In 1994, South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.

Thought for Today

<*“There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, and not as many separate ones.” — Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt (1918-1981).