May 20

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

Events

325 - First Council of Nicaea - first "Ecumenical Council" of the Christian Church.
526 - Earthquake kills ~300,000 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 Calcutta, India.
1521 - Battle of Pampeluna
1570 - Abraham Ortelius issues the first modern atlas (cartography).
1690 - England passes Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.
1845 - The HMS Erebus and Terror with 134 men under John Franklin sail from the River Thames beginning a disastrous expedition to find the Northwest Passage.
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 - Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.
1891 - Film history: 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).
1895 - In the case Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. 157 US 429 and 158 US 601 1895, the Supreme Court of the United States rules against the establishment of the first Federal income tax, and thereby strikes down part of the Wilson-Gorman Tariff.
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 first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.
1927 - Treaty of Jedda: Saudi Arabia becomes independent of 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 on the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot.
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 - The AFSA (predecessor of the NSA) is established.
1954 - Chiang Kai-shek is reelected President of the Republic of China on Taiwan.
1965 - A Pakistani Airlines Boeing 720-B crashes on landing at Cairo, Egypt, airport killing 121
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.
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.