Facts of the Day!

Sack of Rome
The Renaissance ended with the Sack of Rome by the armies of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V, in May 1527. In eight days, his Spanish troops and German mercenaries killed around 4,000 Romans and looted works of art and literature. Even the Pope, Clement VII, was imprisoned. Though the Renaissance was effectively ended, Rome bounced back and by 1600, it was once again a prosperous city.

Inauguration
The first U.S. inauguration was held in 1789 - for George Washington - at Federal Hall in New York City. Washington's second inauguration (and that of his successor, John Adams) was held in Philadelphia because the capital had been moved there. Thomas Jefferson was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C. Any Presidents who assume office upon the death of their predecessor take the oath wherever they are and do not have inaugurations: Chester Arthur took the oath in New York City; Theodore Roosevelt in Buffalo, New York; Calvin Coolidge in Plymouth, Vermont; and Lyndon Johnson in Dallas, Texas. The word inaugurate is from Latin and it meant "to take omens from the flight of birds and to install or consecrate after takes such omens (or auguries)."

Mother's Day
The second Sunday in May is set aside in the United States to celebrate mothers. There is also a Mother's Day celebration in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, and Belgium. England's "Mothering Sunday", similar to Mother's Day, is also called Mid-Lent Sunday and it is observed on the fourth Sunday in Lent, though it has largely been replaced by Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. Anna Jarvis, born in Grafton, West Virginia in 1864, started the movement to have a Mother's Day. She wrote letters to politicians, newspaper editors, and church leaders and organized a committee called Mother's Day International Association to promote the new holiday. She wanted Mother's Day to be close to Memorial Day so people would recognize mothers for the sacrifices they made for their families in the same way that service people had for their country. The first official Mother's Day observance was in May 1907. President Woodrow Wilson gave the day national recognition in 1914. Jarvis spent the last years of her life trying to abolish the holiday she had brought into being, because she protested its commercialization.

V-E Day
V-E Day stands for Victory in Europe Day, commemorating the unconditional surrender of Germany to Allied forces on May 8, 1945. Adolf Hitler declared that Germany had proved unworthy of him and committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945. Hitler's successor, Admiral Karl Dönitz, started negotiations with the Western powers, hoping to save as many troops and refugees as possible from Soviet reprisals. But the U.S.S.R. refused to recognize the surrender ceremony at U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower's headquarters on May 7 (the hostilities set to end at one minute past midnight May 9, 1945 - or 9:01pm Eastern on May 8 in the U.S.). A separate German surrender to the USSR was signed and a separate Soviet V-E Day held, in Berlin on May 8 to end the war once and for all.

Railroad
The Union Pacific Railroad Company extended the American railroad system to the Pacific coast - built westward from Omaha, Nebraska, for 1006 miles to meet the Central Pacific Railroad's line, which was built from Sacramento, California, at Promontory Point, Utah. On that day, a golden spike was driven by Leland Stanford, present of the Central Pacific, to celebrate the linkage in 1869. This was a very important part (1800 miles' worth) of the first American transcontinental railway line.