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Events on May 20

• 1498 The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama reaches India and lands in Calicut. Portugal's search for a sea route to India is thereby successfully completed.
• 1631 Imperial troops under the commanders Johann T’Serclaes von Tilly and Gottfried Heinrich zu Pappenheim capture the Protestant city of Magdeburg after a siege lasting several months during the Thirty Years' War and commit grave wartime atrocities. In the so-called “Magdeburg Wedding”, around 20,000 people lose their lives.
• 1873 The cloth merchant Levi Strauss and the tailor Jacob Davis jointly patent denim trousers, the so-called jeans.
• 1927 Charles Lindbergh takes off in his aircraft Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field in New York for the first solo transatlantic crossing.
• 1940 The first prisoners arrive at the newly built Auschwitz concentration camp. The transport consists of Reich German convicts who are to serve as functionaries, taking on supervisory and control duties.
• 1949 Following a night session, the Bavarian State Parliament rejects approval of the Basic Law drafted by the Parliamentary Council as the only state parliament to do so. If, however, two thirds of all federal states consent – which happens –, it at the same time declares the Basic Law to be valid in the Free State of Bavaria as well.
• 1970 The musical film Let It Be with the British band The Beatles has its world premiere in Great Britain.
• 1992 FC Barcelona wins 1:0 after extra time at Wembley Stadium to win the European Cup Winners' Cup for the first time.
• 2006 The hard rock band Lordi wins the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens as the first Finnish band to do so.
• 2010 A total of five paintings by Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse and Fernand Léger, worth at least 50 million euros combined, are stolen from the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris by an unidentified burglar. Their whereabouts remain unclear.
• 2015 The Islamist terrorist organization Islamic State captures the ancient ruined city of Palmyra and begins large-scale destruction and looting.
• 2022 Russian officials report the complete capture of the major Ukrainian city of Mariupol, which was almost completely destroyed in the preceding fighting.

Born on May 20

• 1860 Eduard Buchner, German chemist and Nobel laureate
• 1882 Sigrid Undset, Norwegian writer and Nobel laureate
• 1901 Max Euwe, Dutch chess player
• 1921 Wolfgang Borchert, German writer and playwright
• 1952 Christian Klar, German terrorist
• 1952 Roger Milla, Cameroonian football player
• 1972 Ralph Ruthe, German author, musician and cartoonist
• 1972 Busta Rhymes, American hip-hop artist
• 1981 Iker Casillas, Spanish football goalkeeper
• 1990 Pius Paschke, German ski jumper

Is your birthday on May 20?

Then there is a newspaper that tells only the story of your day: what was going on in the world on May 20 of your birth year, which song was at the top, what the weather was like at your birthplace, plus birthday twins and a personal greeting.

• For every birth year from 1946
• 4 to 10 pages, always €14.90, as a PDF to print
• With a greeting page for voice and video messages

Create the paper for May 20 · €14.90

Day and month are already filled in, you only choose the birth year.

Source of events and birthdays: German Wikipedia article „20. Mai“, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, selected, shortened and translated by Birthday Paper.

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