May 20 in History
526 — An earthquake kills 250 000 in Antioch, Byzantine Empire (capital of Syria 300-64BC, the ruins now inside the Turkish border).
1498 — Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives on Kappad beach near Calicut (Kozhikode) in Malabar Coast (Kerala) — the first European to reach the lucrative trade centres of India by sea. 1506 — Christopher Columbus, 54, Italian-born explorer under the auspices of the monarchs of Spain, dies in poverty in Valladolid, Spain.
1537 — Hieronymus Fabricius, “The Father of Embryology”, is born in Acquapendente, Italy.
1743 — Toussaint L’Ouverture, Haiti revolution leader and first president, is born in Santo Domingo. 1886 — Ali Sami Yen, Albanian-Turkish founder of Galatasaray Sports Club, is born in Istanbul.
1890 — Beniamino Gigli, tenor, is born in Recanati, Italy. 1908 — James Stewart, actor, is born in Indiana, Pennsylvania.
1915 — Moshe Dayan, Israeli military leader and politician, is born in Kibbutz Degania Alef, near the Sea of Galilee in the then Ottoman Syria. His parents, Shmuel and Devorah, are Ukrainian Jewish immigrants from Zhashkiv.
1942 — Frew McMillan, South African tennis player (winner of five men’s and five mixed doubles Grand Slam titles) is born in Springs.
1973 — Renzo Pasolini, 34, of Italy, and Jarno Saarinen, 27, of Finland, die on the first lap of the 250cc motorcycle race at the Nations Grand Prix at Imola, Italy. Pasolini’s bike lurches sideways, crashes into the guardrail and kills him instantly. The bike then bounces back onto the circuit and strikes Saarinen on his head.
1982 — Petr Cech, Czech footballer (goalkeeper, 124 caps), is born in Plzen, Czechoslovakia.
1983 — At 4.30pm, a car bomb planted by Umkhonto we Sizwe explodes outside the Nedbank Square Building in Church Street, Pretoria, killing 19 people (including the two perpetrators) and wounding 217.
1985 — Chris Froome, four-time Tour de France winner, is born in Nairobi, Kenya.
1986 — A freak wind lifts up 13 children in the oasis of Hami, western China, and deposits them unharmed on sand dunes and scrubs 20km away. 1990 — The Hubble Space Telescope sends back its first photograph.
1990 — Romania’s National Salvation Front wins the country’s first free elections since 1937, after four dictatorships (the last one 44 years under Communist rule).