What happened This day in History on May 20th

20th May 1862 : President Abraham Lincoln signs into law the original Homestead Act. The Homestead Act gave an applicant freehold title to up to 160 acres (1/4 section, 65 hectares) of undeveloped federal land outside the original 13 colonies.

20th May 1927 : Charles Lindbergh who many called the "flying fool" has set off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, NY, today flying the "Spirit of St. Louis" on an epic flight from New York to Paris and is a milestone in flying aviation history, he is expected to arrive in Paris sometime late tomorrow. His plane A Ryan is expected to travel up to 125 MPH as the fuel load decreases.
He completed the 33-hour, 30-minute flight and landed at Le Bourget Airport, Paris on the evening of 21 May.

20th May 1936 : The US Treasury has announced the largest bond issue in history for June 15th of 1 Billion Dollars , this is in addition treasury floating $100,000,000 of treasury bills issued each week. The bonds will help pay for the large scale public works putting millions of Americans back to work

20th May 1944 : A group of officers from the German Army attempt an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler by exploding a bomb in his headquarters during a staffing meeting

20th May 1952 : With many workers wanting to keep pace with the increases in the cost of living pay increases of up to 15% are being requested with many employers already settling on wage increases ranging from 8% to 11% this year.

20th May 1956 : The first hydrogen bomb dropped from an aircraft is exploded by America over Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific.

20th May 1961 : An angry mob consisting of all white's attacked a busload of "Freedom Riders" ( Freedom Riders were testing the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia, that gave them a legal right to disregard local segregation ordinances regarding interstate transportation facilities. ) in Montgomery, Ala., prompting the federal government to send in United States marshals to restore order. 

20th May 1965 : A Pakistan Airways Boeing 707 crashes upon landing Cairo Airport, Egypt, killing 124 people.

20th May 1970 : 100,000 demonstrate in New York's Wall Street district in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam and Cambodia.

20th May 1983 : A massive car bomb in South Africa's capital city, Pretoria kills 16 people and injures more than 130. The anti-apartheid group the African National Congress ( ANC ) is believed to be behind the attack.

20th May 1994 : North Korea is still insisting it will not allow full international inspections of it's nuclear facilities and many fear they could be developing a nuclear weapons programme . 

20th May 1994 : After a 20 year struggle East Timor gains Independence From Philippines.

20th May 2005 : The Ex teacher and convicted pedophile Mary Kay Letourneau, 43, marries her former victim and the father of two of her children, Vili Fualaau, 22. She had served a 7 1/2 year sentence for raping Fualaau when he was her sixth grade student, then aged 12

20th May, 2005 : An ebola virus outbreak in the village of Etoumbi in the Democratic Republic of Congo killed nine people forcing the government to quarantine the town. The are had been prone to ebola outbreaks, having at least three in recent history. The outbreak occurred after hunters came back with a dead chimpanzee to eat and the infections broke out soon after that. The World Health Organization promised to deliver food into the village and hoped that the infection would not spread any further. 

20th May, 2010 : Five masterpiece paintings were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France. The paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Leger, and Modigilani were estimated to be worth over $100 million and were all from the early 20th century. The theft was believed to be the biggest since a theft of several masterpieces in 1990 at the Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. 

20th May, 2011 : An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 hit north-west Turkey leaving at least two dead and injuring seventy-nine people. The earthquake hit the town of Simav in the middle of the night and many residents fled into the streets and were told to stay in their cars for the evening because their homes may not be safe.  

20th May, 2012 : Adelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted Lockerbie bomber, died in Libya at the age of sixty. Megrahi had been convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that happened above Scotland in which 270 people were killed. Megrahi had been freed from Scotland in 2009 on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with cancer. 

20th May, 2013 : A massive tornado ripped through the suburbs of Oklahoma City in the US state of Oklahoma on a second day of severe weather in the region. The tornado killed at least two people and left several more injured and homeless.