Todayâs Highlight in History: On May 7, 1945, Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, ending its role in World War II. On this date: In 1840, composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, Russia. In 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, out of the nearly 2,000 on board. In 1928, the minimum voting age for British women was lowered from 30 to 21 â the same age as men. In 1939, Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. In 1946, Sony Corp. had its beginnings as the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corp. was founded in the Japanese capital by Akio Morita and Masaru Ibuka.