About May 20

May 20, 2021 is the 140th day of the year 2021 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 225 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Thursday.

You can browse the full year calendar in case you need it.

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Taurus is the sun sign of a person born on this day. Emerald is the modern birthstone for this month. Sapphire is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.

According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 257 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.

What Happened On May 20

  • 1570 –
    Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues the first modern atlas.
  • 1631 –
    The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War.
  • 1840 –
    York Minster is badly damaged by fire
  • 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.
  • 1862 –
    U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law.
  • 1864 –
    American Civil War: Battle of Ware Bottom Church – in the Virginia Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 10,000 troops fight in this Confederate victory.
  • 1884 –
    Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo becomes the king of the Zulu Nation.
  • 1896 –
    The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier falls on the crowd below resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others.
  • 1902 –
    Cuba gains independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the country’s first President.
  • 1916 –
    The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (Boy with Baby Carriage).
  • 1920 –
    Montreal, Quebec radio station XWA broadcasts the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.
  • 1940 –
    Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.
  • 1949 –
    In the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, is established.
  • 1956 –
    In Operation Redwing (shot Cherokee), the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean;
  • 1969 –
    The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ends.
  • 1980 –
    In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejects by a 60% vote the proposal from its government to move towards independence from Canada.
  • 1983 –
    First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.
  • 1985 –
    Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, begins broadcasting to Cuba.
  • 1990 –
    The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania.
  • 2002 –
    The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and 3 years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).

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