1) opened minecraft launcher

2) pressed play in minecraft launcher to play MC 1.8

3) minecraft launcher could not download "realms-1.5.9.jar" and said the following every time:
[16:35:23 ERROR]: Gave up trying to download https://libraries.minecraft.net/com/mojang/realms/1.5.9/realms-1.5.9.jar for job 'Version & Libraries'
[16:35:23 ERROR]: Job 'Version & Libraries' finished with 1 failure(s)! (took 0:00:11.178)

4) re-opened minecraft launcher (version 1.5.3), tried switching profiles, and nothing worked (excepted for minecraft versions below 1.8)

NOTE: I was online during this entire process!
Please help! Thank you for your time.