May 20
526 An
earthquake kills about 250,000 people in what is now Syria and
Antiochia.
1498 Portuguese explorer
Vasco da Gama discovers the
sea route to India when he arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.
1570 Cartographer
Abraham Ortelius issues
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.
1609 Shakespeare's sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher
Thomas Thorpe.
1631 The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and
most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the
Thirty Years' War.
1861 American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state.
The State of North Carolina secedes from the Union.
1873
Levi Strauss and
Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
1883
Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.
1891 History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype
kinetoscope.
1899 The first traffic ticket in the US: New York City taxi driver Jacob German was arrested for speeding while driving 12 miles per hour on Lexington Street.
1916 The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (
Boy with Baby Carriage).
1920 Montreal radio station
XWA broadcasts the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.
1927 Treaty of Jeddah: The United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of
King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of
Hejaz and
Nejd, which later merge to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 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
The Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at
Auschwitz.
1969 The
Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ends.
1983 First publications of the discovery of the
HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by
Luc Montagnier.
1989 The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the
Tiananmen Square massacre.
2013 An
EF5 tornado strikes the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and injuring 377 others.
Births
1768 Dolley Madison; 1799 Honorι de Balzac; 1818 William Fargo (co-founded
Wells Fargo &
AmEx); 1908 James Stewart; 1913 William Redington Hewlett (co-founded Hewlett-Packard); 1915 Moshe Dayan; 1919 George Gobel; 1925 Alexei Tupolev (designed the Tu-144); 1936 Anthony Zerbe; 1942
Carlos Hathcock; 1944 Joe Cocker; 1946 Cher; 1946 Dave Despain; 1958 Ron Reagan, Jane Wiedlin; 1959 Bronson Pinchot; 1960 Tony Goldwyn; 1966 Mindy Cohn ('Natalie' on "The Facts of Life", voice of 'Velma' on "Scooby Doo"); 1968 Timothy Olyphant (Sheriff Bullock in "Deadwood"); 1971 Tony Stewart; 1972 Busta Rhymes
Deaths
1506 Christopher Columbus; 1989 Gilda Radner; 1996 Jon Pertwee (Dr. Who); 2009 Lucy Gordon; 2011 Randy Savage; 2012 Robin Gibb, Ken Lyons, Eugene Polley (invented the TV remote control); 2013 Ray Manzarek