This Day in History : May 20th

·         1506 – Christopher Columbus dies, Italian explorer, discovered the Americas (b. 1451)

·         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 explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.

·         1899 – The first traffic ticket in the US: New York City taxi driver Jacob German was arrested for speeding while driving 12 miles per hour on Lexington Street.

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

·         1940 – Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz

·         1956 – In Operation Redwing (shot Cherokee), the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

·         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.

 

Facts from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_20