#TodayInHistory – May 20

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May 20 – Some important events on this day

1293 👉🏼 Earthquake strikes Kamakura Japan, 30,000 killed
1310 👉🏼 Shoes were made for both right & left feet 👞
1498 👉🏼 Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Calicut, India becoming the first European to reach India by sea
1506 👉🏼 Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain
1609 👉🏼 Shakespeare’s Sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by publisher Thomas Thorpe
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)
1864 👉🏼 Spotsylvania campaign in US Civil War ends after 10,920 killed or injured
1873 👉🏼 Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patent the first blue jeans with copper rivets 👖
1882 👉🏼 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy sign the Triple Alliance
1882 👉🏼 Gotthard rail tunnel between Switzerland & Italy opens
1896 👉🏼 The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris falls on the crowd resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others

1910 👉🏼 Funeral for Britain’s King Edward VII held in Westminster Abbey, has one of the largest assemblages of European royalty.
Edward VII died on 6 May 1910 after a short reign of nine years. His funeral was notable for the enormous assemblage of foreign royalty. In a mere four years, the picture would be antiquated for another reason: it would be the last great gathering of royals before the outbreak of World War I, where many of the nations represented would be at war with each other.

On this photo – standing, from left to right: King Haakon VII of Norway, Tsar Ferdinand of the Bulgarians, King Manuel II of Portugal and the Algarves, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and King of Prussia, King George I of the Hellenes and King Albert I of the Belgians. Seated, from left to right: King Alfonso XIII of Spain, King George V of the United Kingdom and King Frederick VIII of Denmark.

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)
1927 👉🏼 Saudi Arabia becomes independent of Great Britain in the Treaty of Jeddah

1932 👉🏼 Amelia Earhart leaves Newfoundland on her journey to become the 1st woman to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic.
She is a household name in aviation for the many records that she set and, perhaps most famously, the enduring mystery of her disappearance in 1937.
But five years before she vanished, Earhart landed in a small Northern Irish pasture and broke another aviation record – she was the first woman to fly solo and non-stop across the Atlantic. She had set off from Newfoundland in Canada and when she arrived in Ireland a farmhand asked her if she had flown far – she replied “from America.”
She had originally intended to land in Paris but mechanical problems forced her to undertake an Irish detour. This record netted her several awards, including one from President Herbert Hoover, and contributed to her lasting fame which continues to this day.