History at A GLANCE

TODAY is Wednesday, May 20, the 141st day of 2020. There are 225 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1927 At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world’s first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

1941 World War II: Battle of Crete: German paratroops invade Crete.

1948 Chiang Kai-shek is elected as the first President of the Republic of China. 1956 In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1983 First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.

1989 The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of prodemocracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

1990 The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania.

2002 The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).

2012 At least 27 people are killed and 50 others injured when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake strikes northern Italy.