Today in history

On May 20, 1506,

Christopher Columbus died at 54 in Valladolid, Spain.

In 1768

Dolley Madison, wife of President James Madison, was born Dolley Payne in Guilford County, N.C.

In 1799

French author Honore de Balzac was born in Tours, France.

In 1806

philosopher and political economist John Stuart Mill was born in London.

In 1861

the capital of the Confederacy was moved from Montgomery, Ala., to Richmond, Va. Also in 1861 North Carolina voted to secede from the Union.

In 1881

Polish soldier and statesman Wladyslaw Sikorski was burn in Tuszow Narodowy in present-day Poland.

In 1886

John Jacob Astor, English journalist and proprietor of The Times of London for 44 years, was born in New York.

In 1902

the United States ended a three-year military presence in Cuba as the Republic of Cuba was established under its first elected president, Tomas Estrada Palma.

In 1908

actor James Stewart was born in Indiana, Pa.

In 1915

Israeli soldier and statesman Moshe Dayan was born in Deganya, Palestine.

In 1925

Aleksei Tupolev, the Russian aircraft designer behind many of the Soviet Union’s most successful jet airplanes, was born in Moscow.

In 1927

Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on his historic solo flight to France.

In 1932

Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland for Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic.

In 1939

regular trans-Atlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for Europe.

In 1942

Glenn Miller and His Orchestra recorded “(I’ve Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo” at Victor Studios in Hollywood.

In 1961

a white mob attacked a busload of Freedom Riders in Montgomery, Ala., prompting the federal government to send in U.S. marshals to restore order.

In 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.