TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MAY 20
1310 Shoes were made for both right & left feet
1498 Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Calicut, India becoming the first European to reach India by sea
1520 Hernando Cortes defeats Spanish troops sent against him in Mexico.
1674 John Sobieski becomes Poland’s first king.
1690 England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.
1774 Parliament passes the Coercive Acts to punish the colonists for their increasingly anti-British behavior. The acts close the port of Boston.
1775 North Carolina becomes the first colony to declare its independence.
1861 North Carolina becomes the last state to secede from the Union.
1862 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, providing 250 million acres of free land to settlers in the West.
1892 George Sampson patents clothes dryer
1927 Saudi Arabia becomes independent of Great Britain in the Treaty of Jeddah
1940 Igor Sikorsky unveils his helicopter invention
1961 A mob attacked a busload of “freedom riders” in Montgomery, Ala., setting the bus on fire.
1969 US troop capture Hill 937/Hamburger Hill Vietnam
1970 100,000 people march in New York, supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam.
1978 US launches Pioneer Venus 1; produces 1st global radar map of Venus
1980 Drummer Peter Criss quits Kiss
1983 In South Africa, a car bomb planted by anti-Apartheid activists kills 19
1985 FBI arrests John A Walker Jr, convicted of spying for USSR
1985 Israel exchanges 1150 Lebanese/Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers
1990 Hubble Space Telescope sends its 1st photographs from space
1996 In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court rejected a Colorado measure banning laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination.
2005 An Ebola virus outbreak in the village of Etoumbi in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed nine people forcing the government to quarantine the town
2006 The Three Gorges Dam is officially opened
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
