Sunday, May 21, 2017

THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 20

May 20 is the 140th day of the year (141st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 225 days remaining until the end of the year. 

NATIONAL PICK STRAWBERRIES DAY 



325 – The First Council of Nicaea, convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I, is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church. This first ecumenical council was the first effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom, although previous councils, including the first Church council, the Council of Jerusalem, had met before to settle matters of dispute.

526 – An earthquake kills about 250,000 people in what is now Syria and Antiochia.



794 – King Æthelberht II of East Anglia visits the royal Mercian court at Sutton Walls, with a view to marrying princess Ælfthryth. He is taken captive and beheaded.


1498 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovers the sea route to India when he arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.


1520 – The massacre at the festival of Tóxcatl takes place during the Fall of Tenochtitlan, resulting in turning the Aztecs against the Spanish. While Hernán Cortés was in Tenochtitlan, he heard about other Spaniards arriving on the coast –Pánfilo de Narváez had come from Cuba with orders to arrest him – and Cortés was forced to leave the city to fight them. During his absence, Moctezuma asked deputy governor Pedro de Alvarado for permission to celebrate Toxcatl (an Aztec festivity in honor of Tezcatlipoca, one of their main gods). But after the festivities had started, Alvarado interrupted the celebration, killing almost everyone present at the festival, men, women, and children alike. The few who managed to escape the massacre climbing over the walls proceeded to inform the community of the treacherous Spaniards' atrocity.

1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.


1645 – Yangzhou massacre: the 10-day massacre of 800,000 residents of the city of Yangzhou, part of the Transition from Ming to Qing. The massacre lasted ten days after the city fell on May 20, 1645. Traditionally, the number of victims was reported as close to 800,000, although some modern scholars consider it an exaggeration.[1] The defending commander, Shi Kefa, was also executed by Qing forces after he refused to submit to their authority.

1775 – Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is signed in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was supposedly signed on May 20, 1775, at Charlotte, North Carolina, by a committee of citizens of Mecklenburg County, who declared independence from Great Britain after hearing of the battle of Lexington.

1813 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia. The battle ends the next day with a French victory.

1861 – American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state. Meanwhile, the State of North Carolina secedes from the Union.


1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.


1883 – Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.

1891 – History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.


1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the country's first President.



1927 – At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.


1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.


1940 – The Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at
1948 – Chiang Kai-shek is elected as the first President of the Republic of China. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek was socially conservative, promoting traditional Chinese culture in the New Life Movementand rejecting western democracy and the nationalist democratic socialism that Sun embraced in favour of an authoritarian government.


1964 – Discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias. The CMB is a cosmic background radiationthat is fundamental to observational cosmologybecause it is the oldest light in the universe, dating to the epoch of recombination.

1969 – The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ends.


1983 – First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.



1989 – The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

1996 – Civil rights: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.


2006 – A series of massive strikes begin involving nearly 1.8 million garment workers in Bangladesh.


2010 – A social media event is celebrated in response to the Muslim extremists' reaction to images of Mohammed (Draw Mohammed Day).


2012 – At least 27 people are killed and 50 others injured when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake strikes northern Italy.



2013 – An EF5 tornado strikes the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and injuring 377 others.

2014 – More than 118 people are killed in two bombings in Jos, Nigeria.



BORN TODAY 

1799Honoré de Balzac, French novelist and playwright (d. 1850)

1806John Stuart Mill, English economist, civil servant, and philosopher (d. 1873)

1818William Fargo, American businessman and politician, co-founded Wells Fargo and American Express (d. 1881)

1899John Marshall Harlan II, American lawyer and jurist (d. 1971)

1913William Redington Hewlett, American engineer, co-founded Hewlett-Packard (d. 2001)

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.   

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