TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: MAY 20
1303 A peace treaty is signed between England and France
1310 Shoes were made for both right & left feet
1347 Cola di Rienzo takes the title of tribune in Rome.
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.
1690 England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II
1704 Elias Neau forms school for slaves in New York
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.
1861 Kentucky proclaims its neutrality in Civil War
1862 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, providing 250 million acres of free land to settlers in the West.
1864 Spotsylvania campaign in US Civil War ends after 10,920 killed or injured
1873 Blue jeans are patented
1899 Jacob German of New York City became the first driver to be arrested for speeding. The posted speed limit was 12 miles per hour.
1902 The U.S. military occupation of Cuba ends.
1927 Saudi Arabia becomes independent of Great Britain in the Treaty of Jeddah
1940 The first prisoners arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp
1951 During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Captain James Jabara becomes the first jet air ace in history.
1961 A mob attacked a busload of “freedom riders” in Montgomery, Ala., setting the bus on fire.
1970 100,000 people march in New York, supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam.
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
1995 CBS News fires co-anchor Connie Chung
1996 In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court rejected a Colorado measure banning laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination.
1999 At Heritage High School in Conyers, GA, a 15-year-old student shot and injured six students. He then surrendered to an assistant principal at the school.
2006 The Three Gorges Dam is officially opened
2010 Scientists announced that they had created a functional synthetic genome
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
