• Today is Mother's Day. Don't forget to see or call Mom. It's also the beginning of National Family Month.

     • Today is Eat What You Want Day, a day to ignore all those warnings (wellcat.com).

     • Today is Minnesota Day. It became the 38th U.S. state on this date in 1858.

     • Today is Blow Bubbles For Your Cat Day. Cats need a change of pace just like humans.

     • Today is Ladies Who Don't Swear Appreciation Day.

     • Police Week, National Transportation Week, National Nursing Home Week, and Kiwanis Prayer Week all begin today.

On this date in . . .

1858: Minnesota became the 32nd state in the U.S.

1888: The Women's’ Missionary Union, an auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention, was formed in Richmond, Virginia. The WMU is still active today.

1957: Buddy Holly and the Crickets auditioned for "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts." They were rejected.

1965: The Byrds made their TV debut with "Mr. Tambourine Man" on NBC's "Hullabaloo."

1972: John Lennon claimed to TV's Dick Cavett the FBI had tapped the singer's phone.

1974: Pat Gahan, a student at Trinity University in San Antonio, woke up to find he had been sleeping with a 6-foot alligator. It was someone's idea of a joke.

1981: Reggae artist Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital. He was 36.

1990: Singer Ritchie Valens received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, almost 33 years after his death.

1990: Cooks at the Royal Society Show in Dublin, Ireland, made history’s largest lasagna. It was 5 feet by 50 feet and weighed 3,610 pounds.

1993: Police in Sao Paulo, Brazil, arrested Rodrigo Almeida outside the bank he’d just robbed. He was waiting in line to phone for a getaway taxi.

1997: A 32-year-old Brazilian burglar in Jaguapita tried to blow the safe at the town bank by filling it with gas and lighting it. It worked. It also blew the roof off the building. The bandit suffered only minor injuries.

1997: World chess champ Garry Kasparov lost his first-ever multi-game match to IBM's chess computer Deep Blue, the first time a computer had defeated a world-champion player.

1999: A peeping Tom was hiding in the ceiling crawl space of a Mountain Home, Arkansas, tanning salon watching three women tan when the ceiling collapsed. He was so embarrassed he locked himself in the bathroom until police arrived. No one was injured.

2003: A Virginia man who began a chain of chewing gum wrappers as an 11-year-old Canadian in 1965 passed the million mark. Gary Duschl's chain of wrappers stretched over eight miles and weighed 600 pounds when he collected his one-millionth wrapper.

2003: Canada beat Sweden 3-2 in Finland to win its first hockey world championship in six years.

2007: In Madison, Wisconsin, a delivery truck ran over a cyclist's head, leaving him only with a concussion and a mangled helmet. Twenty-six-year-old Ryan Lipscomb was shaken up, especially after he saw the condition of his helmet, flattened with tread marks. Lipscomb was rushed to a hospital and released about three hour later.