Friday, May 20

This Day In History

• 1506   Christopher Columbus died in poverty in Spain.
• 1861   North Carolina voted to secede from the Union.
• 1861   The capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, Va.
• 1902   The United States ended its occupation of Cuba.
• 1927   Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York on the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1932   Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.
• 1939   Regular trans-Atlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for Europe.
• 1969   U.S. and South Vietnamese forces captured Apbia Mountain, referred to as Hamburger Hill by the Americans, following one of the bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War.
• 1970   Some 100,000 people demonstrated in New York's Wall Street district in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
• 1971   The album ''What's Going On'' by Marvin Gaye was released.
• 1989   Comedian Gilda Radner died of cancer at age 42.
• 1993   An estimated 93 million people tuned in for the final first-run episode of ''Cheers'' on NBC-TV.
• 1995   President Clinton announced that the two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House would be permanently closed to traffic as a security measure.
• 1996   The Supreme Court struck down a Colorado measure banning laws that protect homosexuals from discrimination.
• 2002   East Timor became an independent nation.
• 2002   Paleontologist and author Stephen Jay Gould died at age 60.
• 2003   The United States banned beef imports from Canada after a case of mad cow disease was discovered in Canada's cattle country .

Happy Birthday To

• 1768   Dolley Madison (Payne) (U.S. First Lady, wife of 4th U.S. President James Madison; died July 12, 1849)
• 1919   ‘Lonesome’ George Gobel
• 1946   Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre) (singer: group: Sonny [Bono] & Cher)
• 1958   Ronald Prescott Reagan (dancer; talk show host; son of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan)