May 20: Facts & Historical Events On This Day

The US Air Force Space Command launched the Boeing X-37B spaceplane for a classified mission.

Mission USA-261 was the second launch of the second Boeing X-37B, a reusable robotic spacecraft that launched vertically atop a rocket and returned to earth horizontally as a spaceplane. In addition to flying a classified mission, the spacecraft carried a NASA payload of materials to test their exposure to space.

The Church of Scotland voted in favor of allowing openly gay men and women to be ministers.

Quebec held a referendum on whether to begin negotiations with Canada to become independent.

Elton John and his entourage flew into Moscow, making him the first western pop star to tour the USSR.

Hard Job Being God, a Broadway musical, closed at the Edison Theater NYC after six performances.

Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland.

When she left, she took a copy of the Telegraph-Journal as proof of the date of the flight. After a flight lasting 14 hours and 56 minutes, she landed in Northern Ireland. This made her the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across the Atlantic.

The chandelier of the Palais Garnier Opera House broke, and its debris fell on a crowd.

One of the chandelier's counterweights broke and fell into the auditorium, killing one person and injuring a few others. This event became a famous scene in the popular 1910 novel "Phantom of the Opera."

The first public display of Thomas Edison’s prototype kinetoscope was shown to members of the National Federation of Women’s Club.

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patented the first blue jeans with copper rivets.

President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Acts into law.

These Acts were to provide cheap land in the West to settlers. Applicants could gain ownership of government land or the public domain. Over 160 million acres of public land were given away for free to 1.6 million people.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first published in London.

The publisher, Thomas Thorpe, entered the book in the Stationers' Register. However, how he acquired the manuscripts is unconfirmed, and it may have been an illegal copy.

After decades of failed attempts to reach the Indies, Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut, India.

He was the first European to reach India by sea.

The Pictish armies of King Bridei Mac Bili won a decisive victory over the armies of Northumbria at the Battle of Dun Nechtain.

The first Christian ecumenical council opens at Nicaea, Asia Minor. It was the first attempt to achieve agreement in the church.