About May 20
May 20, 2024 is the 141st day of the year 2024 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 225 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Monday.
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 254 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.
What Happened On May 20
- 526 –An earthquake kills about 300,000 people in Syria and Antiochia.
- 1217 –The Second Battle of Lincoln is fought near Lincoln, England, resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.
- 1497 –John Cabot sets sail from Bristol, England, on his ship Ship looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date).
- 1498 –Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.
- 1609 –Shakespeare’s sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.
- 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.
- 1775 –Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence signed in Charlotte, North Carolina
- 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.
- 1862 –U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law.
- 1873 –Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
- 1883 –Krakatoa begins to erupt. The volcano’s final and most notable explosion occurs on August 26.
- 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.
- 1908 –Budi Utomo organization is founded in Dutch East Indies, beginning the Indonesian National Awakening.
- 1920 –Montreal, Quebec radio station XWA broadcasts the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.
- 1948 –Chiang Kai-shek elected to be the first President of the Republic of China.
- 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;
- 1996 –Gay 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.
- 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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