May 20: 325: Constantine inaugurates the
Council of Nicaea.
1303: The
Treaty of Paris (1303) was signed between Edward I of England and Philip IV of France ending the Anglo-French War. Gascony was restored to England after the French had occupied it during the war, setting the stage for the
Hundred Years' War.
1498: Portuguese explorer
Vasco de Gamaarrived in India.
1506: Death of
Christopher Columbus. Although other Europeans were beginning to understand the significance of his 4 journeys to the New World, he died without realizing that he had discovered a new continent instead of reaching the East Indies as he had planned.
1520:
Hernando Cortes defeated Spanish troops sent against him in Mexico.
1674:
Jan Sobieski became Poland's first king.
1690: England passed the Act of Grace, forgiving the followers of James II.
1768: Birthday of Dolley Madison, first lady of Pres. James Madison
1774: Parliament passed several of the Coercive Acts to punish Boston for the Tea Party. They had already closed the port of Boston (March 31) and now unilaterally and arbitrarily changed the government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and authorized colonists accused of crimes to be tried in another colony or in England. The colonists, who called them the "Intolerable Acts", were united in opposition.[url=applewebdata://4FCE8093-773C-4B92-930F-38980A6F870F#_ftn1][1][/url]
1784: The Peace of Versailles ending the
Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. This was in connection with the more famous Treaty of Paris a year earlier that ended America's War for Indpendence.
1799:
Napoleon Bonaparte accepted defeat in the failed siege of Ottoman-held Acre and retreated back to Egypt.
1799: Birthday of Honore de Balzac, French novelist
1806: Birthday of
John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist
1818: Birthday of William George Fargo, one of the founders of Wells, Fargo & Co.
1859: Austrian forces fought Piedmontese cavalry at Montebello in northern Italy.
1861: North Carolina was the last state to secede from the Union.
1862: Pres. Lincoln signed the
Homestead Act into law.
1873: Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received the patent for blue jeans.
1902: The U.S. military occupation of Cuba ended.
1908: Birthday of Jimmy Stewart, actor, star of
It's a Wonderful Life, Shenandoah,
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo,and
The Glenn Miller Story 1927:
Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York in the
Spirit of St. Louis, the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
1930: For the first time an airplane was catapulted from a dirigible.
1932:
Amelia Earhart landed near Londonderry, Ireland, to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
1939:
Pan American Airways began the first regular transatlantic passenger service.
1940: The German army reached the English Channel at Abbeville, France.
1946: English poet A. H. Auden became a U.S. citizen.
1951: During the Korean War, U.S. Air Focre
Captain James Jabara became the first jet air ace in history.
1956: The U.S. conducted the first successful test of a hydrogen bomb at
Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. The explosive power was apx. 15 megatons, meaning it was
more than a thousand timesmore destructive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
1961: A white mob attacked civil right activists in Montgomery, Alabama.
1969: Bloody end to the
Battle for "Hamburger Hill" in Vietnam. American & South Vietnamese forces finally captured the hill but with heavy casualties. It had been taken mainly as a diversionary tactic and was later abandoned and refortified by the North Vietnamese.
1970:
Pro-war demonstration: 100,000 people marched in New York supporting American policies in Vietnam.
“Incline my heart to your testimonies, and not to selfish gain!”
Psalm 119:36