On May 9, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issues a presidential proclamation that officially establishes the first national Mother’s Day holiday to celebrate America’s mothers.

The idea for a “Mother’s Day” is credited by some to Julia Ward Howe (1872) and by others to Anna Jarvis (1907), who both suggested a holiday dedicated to a day of peace. Many individual states celebrated Mother’s Day by 1911, but it was not until Wilson lobbied Congress in 1914 that Mother’s Day was officially set on the second Sunday of every May. In his first Mother’s Day proclamation, Wilson stated that the holiday offered a chance to “[publicly express] our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.”

Citation Information

Article Title Woodrow Wilson proclaims the first Mother’s Day holiday Author History.com Editors Website Name HISTORY URL https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/woodrow-wilson-proclaims-the-first-mothers-day-holiday

Date Accessed May 7, 2023 PublisherA&E Television Networks Last Updated May 6, 2021

Original Published Date November 16, 2009

0330 – Constantinople, previously the town of Byzantium, was founded.

1573 – Henry of Anjou became the first elected king of Poland.

1647 – Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to become governor.

1689 – French and English naval battle takes place at Bantry Bay.

1745 – French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.

1792 – The Columbia River was discovered by Captain Robert Gray.

1812 – British prime Minster Spencer Perceval was shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons.

1816 – The American Bible Society was formed in New York City.

1857 – Indian mutineers seized Delhi from the British.

1858 – Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.

1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi landed at Marsala, Sicily.

1889 – Major Joseph Washington Wham takes charge of $28,000 in gold and silver to pay troops at various points in the Arizona Territory. The money was stolen in a train robbery.

1894 – Workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Illinois went on strike.

1910 – Glacier National Park in Montana was established.

1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.

1934 – A severe two-day dust storm stripped the topsoil from the great plains of the U.S. and created a “Dust Bowl.” The storm was one of many.

1944 – A major offensive was launched by the allied forces in central Italy.

1947 – The creation of the tubeless tire was announced by the B.F. Goodrich Company.

1949 – Siam changed its name to Thailand.

1960 – Israeli soldiers captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires.

1967 – The siege of Khe Sanh ended.

1985 – More than 50 people died when a flash fire swept a soccer stadium in Bradford, England.

1995 – The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely. The treaty limited the spread of nuclear material for military purposes.

1996 – An Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades. All 110 people on board were killed.

1997 – Garry Kasparov, world chess champion, lost his first ever multi-game match. He lost to IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue. It was the first time a computer had beaten a world-champion player.

1998 – India conducted its first underground nuclear tests, three of them, in 24 years. The tests were in violation of a global ban on nuclear testing.

1998 – A French mint produced the first coins of Europe’s single currency. The coin is known as the euro.

2001 – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his decision to approve a 30-day delay of the execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh had been scheduled to be executed on May 16, 2001. The delay was because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had failed to disclose thousands of documents to McVeigh’s defense team. (Oklahoma)

1503 – Christopher Columbus discovered the Cayman Islands.

1676 – Bacon’s Rebellion, which pits frontiersmen against the government, began.

1768 – The imprisonment of the journalist John Wilkes as an outlaw provoked violence in London. Wilkes was returned to parliament as a member for Middlesex.

1773 – The English Parliament passed the Tea Act, which taxed all tea in the U.S. colonies.

1774 – Louis XVI ascended the throne of France.

1775 – Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold led an attack on the British Fort Ticonderoga and captured it from the British.

1796 – Napoleon Bonaparte won a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.

1840 – Mormon leader Joseph Smith moved his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they had experienced in Missouri.

1857 – The Seepoys of India revolted against the British Army.

1865 – Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union troops near Irvinville, GA.

1869 – Central Pacific and Union Pacific Rail Roads meet in Promontory, UT. A golden spike was driven in at the celebration of the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S.

1872 – Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for the U.S. presidency.

1876 – Richard Wagner’s “Centennial Inaugural March” was heard for the first time at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, PA.

1898 – A vending machine law was enacted in Omaha, NE. It cost $5,000 for a permit.

1908 – The first Mother’s Day observance took place during a church service in Grafton, West Virginia.

1924 – J. Edgar Hoover was appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

1927 – The Hotel Statler in Boston, MA. became the first hotel to install radio headsets in each of its 1,300 rooms.

1928 – WGY-TV in Schenectady, NY, began regular television programming.

1930 – The Adler Planetarium opened to the public in Chicago, IL.

1933 – The Nazis staged massive public book burnings in Germany.

1940 – Germany invaded Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.

1941 – England’s House of Commons was destroyed by a German air raid.

1941 – Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s deputy, parachuted into Scotland on what he claimed was a peace mission.

1942 – U.S. forces in the Philippines began to surrender to the Japanese.

1943 – U.S. troops invaded Attu in the Aleutian Islands to expel the Japanese.

1960 – The U.S.S. Triton completed the first circumnavigation of the globe under water. The trip started on February 16.

1962 – Marvel Comics published the first issue of “The Incredible Hulk.”

1968 – Preliminary Vietnam peace talks began in Paris.

1969 – The National and American Football Leagues announced their plans to merge for the 1970-71 season.

1978 – Britain’s Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon announced they were divorcing after 18 years of marriage.

1982 – Elliott Gould made his dramatic television debut after 30 movies in 17 years. He starred in “The Rules of Marriage” on CBS-TV.

1986 – Navy Lt. Commander Donnie Cochran became the first black pilot to fly with the Blue Angels team.

1994 – Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa’s first black president.

1997 – An earthquake in northeastern Iran killed at least 2,400 people.

1999 – China broke off talks on human rights with the U.S. in response to NATO’s accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.

1999 – The Cezanne painting “Still Life With Curtain, Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit” sold for 60.5 million.

2000 – 11,000 residents were evacuated in Los Alamos, NM, due to a fire that was blown into a canyon. The fire had been deliberately set to clear brush.

2001 – Boeing Co. announced that it would be moving its headquarters to Chicago, IL.

2001 – In Ghana, 121 people were killed in a stampede at a soccer game.

2002 – Robert Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole. Hanssen, an FBI agent, had sold U.S. secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.

2002 – Taiwan test fired a locally made Sky Bow II surface-to-air missile for the first time. They also fired three U.S.-made Hawk missiles.

2002 – Dr. Pepper announced that it would be introducing a new flavor, Red Fusion, for the first time in 117 years.

2011 – It was announced that Microsoft had closed a deal to purchase the internet phone service Skype for $8.5 billion.

2013 – In New York, NY, crane operators hoisted the final pieces of the spire atop One World Trade Center (formerly called the Freedom Tower).

Last Updated: January 31, 2025

On May 8, 1792, Congress passed the second portion of the Militia Act, requiring that every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years, be enrolled in the militia.

Six days before, Congress had established the president’s right to call out the militia. The outbreak of Shay’s Rebellion, a protest against taxation and debt prosecution in western Massachusetts in 1786-87, had first convinced many Americans that the federal government should be given the power to put down rebellions within the states. The inability of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation to respond to the crisis was a major motivation for the peaceful overthrow of the government and the drafting of a new federal Constitution.

The Militia Act was tested shortly after its passage, when farmers in western Pennsylvania, angered by a federal excise tax on whiskey, attacked the home of a tax collector and then, with their ranks swollen to 6,000 camped outside Pittsburgh, threatened to march on the town. In response, President Washington, under the auspices of the Militia Act, assembled 15,000 men

Source: history.com

On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, some 200 Sioux Native Americans, led by members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupy Wounded Knee, the site of the infamous 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. The AIM members, some of them armed, took 11 residents of the historic Oglala Sioux settlement hostage as local authorities and federal agents descended on the reservation.

AIM was founded in 1968 by Russell Means, Dennis Banks, and other Native leaders as a militant political and civil rights organization. From November 1969 to June 1971, AIM members occupied Alcatraz Island off San Francisco, saying they had the right to it under a treaty provision granting them unused federal land. In November 1972, AIM members briefly occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., to protest programs controlling reservation development. Then, in early 1973, AIM prepared for its dramatic occupation of Wounded Knee. In addition to its historical significance, Wounded Knee was one of the poorest communities in the United States and shared with the other Pine Ridge settlements some of the country’s lowest rates of life expectancy.

Source: history.com