TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: MAY 20
0325 The Ecumenical council is inaugurated by Emperor Constantine in Nicea.
1303 A peace treaty is signed between England and France.
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
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 Citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina declare independence of Britain
1861 North Carolina becomes the last state to secede from the Union.
1862 US President Abraham Lincoln signs into law the Homestead Act to provide cheap land for the settlement of the American West (80 million acres by 1900)
1874 Levi Strauss markets blue jeans with copper rivets, price $13.50 doz
1902 US military occupation of Cuba (since Jan 1, 1899) ends
1927 Saudi Arabia becomes independent of Great Britain in the Treaty of Jeddah
1927 At 7:40 AM, Charles Lindbergh takes off from New York to cross the Atlantic for Paris, aboard Spirit of St Louis (1st non-stop flight)
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.
1959 Ford wins battle with Chrysler to call its new car “Falcon”
1961 A white mob attacks civil rights activists in Montgomery, Alabama.
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 Israel exchanges 1150 Lebanese/Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers
1985 The FBI arrested U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer John Walker. Walker had begun spying for the Soviet Union in 1968.
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.
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. The hydroelectric dam is the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity.
2010 Scientists announced that they had created a functional synthetic genome.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
