May 20th is

Armed Forces Day *

Eliza Doolittle Day *

Morel Mushroom Day *

Weights & Measures Day *

Pick Strawberries Day

Learn to Swim Day

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MORE! Dolley Madison, Henri Rousseau and Marvin Gaye, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Cameroon – National Day

Canada – Toronto ON:
Lobster Clam Jam

East Timor –
Independence Restoration Day

Netherlands –
Amsterdam: 22 Fest at Thuishaven
Eindhoven: Lakedance Festival

United States –
Saratoga NY: 142^nd Preakness Horse Race

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On This Day in HISTORY

325 – The First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, ecumenical council of Christian bishops convened by Roman Emperor Constantine I, an effort to gain consensus among Christians; origin of the Nicene Creed

1293 – King Sancho IV of Castile founds the Estudio de Escuelas de Generales in Alcalá de Henares, now called Complutense University of Madrid, one of the oldest universities in the world.

1520 – The massacre at the festival of Tóxcatl takes place during the Fall of Tenochtitlan, turning the Aztecs against the Spanish

1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas

1609 – Shakespeare’s sonnets are first published in London, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe, who was probably responsible for the arrangement of the sonnets into categories; he may, or may not, have had Shakespeare’s permission

1759 – William Thornton born in the British Virgin Islands, American inventor, architect and painter; designed the U.S. Capitol building; appointed by President Thomas Jefferson as the first Superintendent of the U.S. Patent Office – he convinced the British not to burn the Patent Office in 1814 because of its importance to mankind.

1768 – Dolley Payne Madison born, American First Lady whose efforts saved the portrait of George Washington and other national treasures in 1814 when the British set fire to Washington DC, including the Executive Mansion, during the War of 1812 – only a sudden heavy storm saved the city from total destruction

1799 – Honore de Balzac born – French author; his vast number of works are collectively called La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy); early novelist

1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution

1806 – John Stuart Mill born, English philosopher, political economist and civil servant; proponent of utilitarianism, one of the world’s most influential liberal thinkers

1825 – Antoinette Brown Blackwell born, American orator, minister, and women’s rights advocate, first woman ordained as a minister in the United States

1844 – Henri Rousseau born, French painter

1856 – Helen Hopekirk born, Scottish concert pianist and composer

1862 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act of 1862 into law, opening millions of acres of public land in the West as individual grants, usually 160 acres or 0.65 km2, to any US citizen willing to settle on and farm the land minimum period. The law requires a three-step procedure: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title. Any citizen who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government (including freed slaves after the fourteenth amendment) and was at least 21 years old or the head of a household, could file an application to claim a federal land grant. The occupant had to reside on the land for five years, and show evidence of having made improvements.

1872 – Madeline Breckinridge born, American social reformer; advocate for child welfare, women’s rights and tuberculosis treatment; co-founder of the Women’s Emergency Committee in Kentucky, which successfully campaigned for playgrounds and kindergartens in poorer districts and legislation setting up a juvenile court system, regulating child labour, and compelling school attendance. Helped establish and served on the Kentucky Tuberculosis Commission, co-chair of fundraising for the Blue Grass Sanitorium; advocate for woman suffrage, helped win Kentucky women the right to vote in school elections; vice president of National American Woman Suffrage Association 1913-1915, and largely credited with ratification of the 19^th Amendment by the Kentucky legislature in 1920

1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis patent blue jeans with copper rivets

1875 – Weights & Measures Day * – A treaty, Convention du Mètre, is signed, establishing the International Bureau of Weights and Measures; in French, Bureau international des poids et measures, so its initials are BIPM

1894 – Adela Rogers St. Johns born, American author, journalist and screenwriter

1895 – R. J. Mitchell born, English aircraft designer; developed the Spitfire fighter plane

1911 – Annie M. G. Schmidt born, Dutch children’s author, poet, songwriter and screenwriter; included in the Canon of Dutch History as a national icon

1927 – At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island NY, on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean; he touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the following day

1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day

1939 – Pan American Airways begins regular trans-Atlantic service

1940 – The first prisoners arrive at the new concentration camp at Auschwitz

1941 – Maria Liberia Peters born, Netherlands Antilles Prime Minister (1984-86 and 1988-94); education advocate; Council of Women World Leaders member

1941 – Harry James and his orchestra record “You Made Me Love You”

1944 – Joe Cocker born, British singer-songwriter

1949 – Armed Forces Day * – The U.S. Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, is established

1954 – Bill Haley and his Comets release “Rock Around the Clock”

1956 – Operation Redwing: first U.S. airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean

1956 – Eliza Dolittle Day * is first revealed when My Fair Lady opens on Broadway on March 15

1960 – Morel Mushroom Day * is part of the Morel Mushroom Festival.in Boyne City, Michigan, always on the weekend after Mother’s Day

1961 – A white mob attacks a busload of “Freedom Riders” in Montgomery AL.; the federal government sends in U.S. marshals to restore order

1964 – Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias discover cosmic microwave background radiation

1971 – Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On is released

1980 – Voters in Quebec reject, by a 60% margin, a referendum on moving toward independence from Canada

1995 – U.S. President Clinton announces the two-blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House will be permanently closed to traffic as a security measure

1996 – The U.S Supreme Court 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

2006 – A series of massive strikes begin involving nearly 1.8 million garment workers in Bangladesh

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