Portal:United States/On this day/May 20
On this day for the United States
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Events
- 1861 – American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state.
- 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.
- 1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.
- 1891 – History of cinema: First public display of Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope (shown at Edison's Laboratory for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs).
- 1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the first President of Cuba.
- 1916 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting ("Boy with Baby Carriage").
- 1916 – The small town of Codell, Kansas is struck by a tornado. Incredibly, the same town was also hit in 1917 and 1918 on the exact same date
- 1927 – At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, touching 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.
- 1949 – In the United States of America, the Armed Forces Security Agency (predecessor to the National Security Agency) is established.
- 1969 – The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ends.
- 1983 – First publications of the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo individually.
- 1984 – The first line of the Miami Metrorail in Miami, Florida opens.
- 1985 – Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, begins broadcasting to Cuba.
- 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.