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)
1303 – A peace treaty was signed between England and France over the town of Gascony.
1310 – Shoes were made for both right & left feet
1347 – Cola di Rienzo took 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
1506 – In Spain, Christopher Columbus died in poverty.
1520 – Hernando Cortez defeated Spanish troops that had been sent to punish him in Mexico.
1631 – Magdeburg in Germany seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire under earl Johann Tilly, most inhabitants massacred, one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War
1639 – Dorchester Massachusetts forms 1st school funded by local taxes
1690 – England passed the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.
1674 – John Sobieski became Poland’s first King.
1774 – The British pass the second of the Intolerable Acts: the Massachusetts Government Act, giving British-appointed governor wide-ranging powers
1861 – North Carolina became the eleventh state to secede from the Union.
1861 – During the American Civil War, the capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, AL, to Richmond, VA.
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)
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.
1910 – Funeral for Britain’s King Edward VII held in Westminster Abbey, has one of the largest assemblages of European royalty
1920 – Mexican President Venustiano Carranza, under attack by American petroleum companies, faces an armed rebellion by right-wing Sonoro triumvirate after nationalizing subsoil rights
1926 – The U.S. Congress passed the Air Commerce Act. The act gave the Department of Commerce the right to license pilots and planes.
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) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/spirit-of-st-louis-departs#:~:text=At%207%3A52%
1927 – Saudi Arabia becomes independent of Great Britain in the Treaty of Jeddah
1954 – Chiang Kai-shek becomes president of Nationalist China
1959 – Japanese-Americans regain their citizenship
1961 – A white mob attacked the Freedom Riders in Montgomery, AL. The event prompted the federal government to send U.S. marshals.
1969 – U.S. and South Vietnamese forces captured Apbia Mountain, which was referred to as Hamburger Hill.
1970 – 100,000 march in NY supporting US policies in Vietnam
1978 – US launches Pioneer Venus 1; produces 1st global radar map of Venus
1980 – Drummer Peter Criss quits rock band Kiss
1983 – In South Africa, a car bomb planted by anti-Apartheid activists kills 19 – The Church Street Bombing was carried out by the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC). It was one of the bloodiest chapters in the ANC’s long and difficult struggle against racial segregation and oppression in South Africa.
1985 – The FBI arrested U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer John Walker. Walker had begun spying for the Soviet Union in 1968.
1996 – UN and Iraq agree to Resolution 986, which provides Iraq with the opportunity to sell $1 billion of oil for 90 days for a 180-day trial period; proceeds from the sale would be used for humanitarian purposes
1996 – The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Colorado measure banning laws that would protect homosexuals from discrimination.
1997 – US President Clinton signs an executive order barring new US investment in Burma (also known as Myanmar), effective May 21 and renewable annually
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.
2002 – East Timor became the what was then the world’s newest nation.
2006 – The Three Gorges Dam is officially opened – The hydroelectric dam is the world’s largest power station in terms of installed capacity. Despite its benefits, the project remains controversial because it flooded archeological and cultural sites and displaced some 1.3 million people.
2010 – Scientists announced that they had created a functional synthetic genome.
2013 – The Church of Scotland votes to allow openly gay men and women to be ministers
2015 – 5 major world banks (JPMorgan, Barclays, Citigroup, RBS and UBS) fined US$5.7bn for manipulating currency markets – some of the largest ever fines
2018 – President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela wins a second term in an election marked by boycotts and accusations of vote rigging
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
