It's Coke's birthday.
Image: File
“To be happy you must first eliminate two things: The fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past.” | Seneca
There is a species of jellyfish that is biologically immortal (it can revert to an earlier life stage).
1879 George Selden files the first patent for a petrol-driven car.
1886 Invented by John Pemberton, a carbonated beverage named Coca-Cola is sold as a patent medicine in Jacob’s Pharmacy, Atlanta. Its two key ingredients were cocaine and caffeine.
1945 A second German surrender ceremony is held in Berlin. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin refuses to recognise the German surrender document signed a day earlier. At the second ceremony, German Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel signs the surrender document, which declares hostilities will end at 12.01am on May 9.
1947 Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki, who had volunteered to be imprisoned in The Holocaust to gather information about the Holocaust, is arrested by the communist police.
1978 The first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen is completed by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.
1980 The World Health Organization confirms the eradication of Smallpox.
2006 The most publicised court case since apartheid ends when Johannesburg Supreme Court judge, Justice Willem van der Merwe, pronounces Jacob Zuma not guilty of rape.
2013 Alex Ferguson announces his retirement as manager of Manchester United F.C..
2023 171 trillion pieces of plastic litter the world’s oceans, up from 16 trillion in 2005.
2024 Carmaker Toyota posts a record profit of 4.94 trillion yen ($31.9 billion) and record sales, selling 10.3 million cars, including 3.7 million hybrids.
2024 New York City has more millionaires than any other city in the world, one in 24, with 744 centi-millionaires worth more than $100 million and 60 billionaires, according to a new ranking. South Africa, the richest country in Africa, has about 34% of all millionaires on the continent. They number 41,100 millionaires (people with investable wealth of more than US$1 million), 112 centi-millionaires (wealth above US$100 million), and eight billionaires. Johannesburg and Cape Town have the highest concentration of wealthy individuals.
2025 Augustinian Cardinal Robert Prevost (69) is elected the 267th pope of the Catholic Church. He is the first North American to hold the office and takes the name Pope Leo XIV.
DAILY NEWS