May 20

From TheBestLinks.com

May 20 is the 140th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (141st in leap years). There are 225 days remaining.

Table of contents

1 Events

2 Births

3 Deaths

4 Holidays and observances

5 Misc

Events

325 - The First Council of Nicaea is held; the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church.
526 - An Earthquake kills about 300,000 people in Syria and Antiochia.
1293 - King Sancho IV of Castile creates the Study of General Schools of Alcala.
1497 - John Cabot sets sail from Bristol on his ship The Mathew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date).
1498 - Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.
1521 - Battle of Pampeluna.
1570 - Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues the first modern atlas.
1690 - England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of Catholic James II.
1845 - HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with 134 men under John Franklin sail from the River Thames beginning a disastrous expedition to find the Northwest Passage. All hands are lost.
1861 - American Civil War: Kentucky proclaims its neutrality which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state.
1862 - President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law.
1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Bermuda Hundred - In Virginia, 3,000 Confederates and l,200 Union troops are killed in this Union victory.
1874 - Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a US patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
1882 - The Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy is formed.
1891 - History of cinema: First public display of Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope (shown at Edison's Laboratory for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs).
1902 - Cuba gains independence from the United States.
1916 - The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting ("Boy with Baby Carriage").
1920 - Montreal Quebec station XWA broadcasts the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.
1927 - Treaty of Jedda: Saudi Arabia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1927 - At 7:52 A.M Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York on the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean (he will touch down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 10:22 P.M. the next day).
1932 - Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.
1940 - Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.
1941 - World War II: Battle of Crete - German troops invade Crete.
1949 - In America the AFSA (predecessor of the NSA) is established.
1954 - Chiang Kai-shek is selected for another term as President of the Republic of China by the National Assembly
1965 - A Pakistani Airlines Boeing 720-B crashes on landing at Cairo, Egypt, airport killing 121 people.
1985 - Propaganda: Radio Marti begins broadcasting to Cuba.
1990 - The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania.
1992 - Amy Fisher, the so-called "Long Island Lolita," is arrested for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco on the front porch of her Massapequa, New York home.
1993 - The television sitcom, Cheers ends an 11-year run on NBC (the show debuted on September 30, 1982).
1996 - Gay rights: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals.
2002 - Restoration of East Timor independence.