May 9 in Pop Culture History

1662 – Famous puppet Mr. Punch made his first recorded appearance in England.

1865 – The patent (#47,631) was issued to Richard Jordan Gatling for the Gatling gun, which was the first to successfully combine reliability, high firing rate, and ease of loading into a single device.

1882 – William F. Ford was issued a patent (#257,487) for his stethoscope.

1887 – Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show opened in London, England.

1893 – The first motion picture exhibition was presented by Thomas Edison in Brooklyn, New York to an audience of 400 people at the Dept of Physics, Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, NY, using his Kinetograph.

1914 – Although referred to since the late 1800s, US President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first Mother’s Day holiday on this date.

1926 – Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett made the first flight over the North Pole.

1950 – L. Ron Hubbard (Lafayette Ronald Hubbard) published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.

1955 – Harpo Marx appeared in a very special I Love Lucy Episode.

1955 – West Germany joined NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

1958 – Vertigo,  directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, premiered in San Francisco.

1960 – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the world’s first commercially produced birth-control bill-Enovid-10.

1961 – Newton Minow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, referred to television as the “vast wasteland.”

#1 Hit May 9, 1970 – May 29, 1970: The Guess Who – American Woman / No Sugar Tonight

1978 – Ain’t Misbehavin’ (Broadway Review) Opened on May 9, 1978, and closed on February 21, 1982

1992 – The Golden Girls aired their series finale.

#1 Hit May 9, 2020 – May 15, 2020: The Scotts – The Scotts, Travis Scott, and Kid Cudi