What happened on 20 May?

14 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1498 Vasco da Gama reaches India Portuguese fleet arrives at Calicut; opens direct European sea route to Asian spices.
2. 1799 Born: Honoré de Balzac Realist novelist; creator of the Comédie humaine cycle.
3. 1806 Born: John Stuart Mill English philosopher, political economist, and Liberal MP; classic statements of liberalism, utilitarianism, and women's suffrage; author of On Liberty, Utilitarianism, The Subjecti
4. 1862 Homestead Act Lincoln signs the act granting 160 acres of public land to any settler who would farm it, accelerating the settlement of the American West.
5. 1631 Sack of Magdeburg Catholic Imperial army sacks Magdeburg; up to 20,000 civilians killed and the city burned to the ground.
6. 1882 Triple Alliance formed Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy form a defensive alliance.
7. 2006 Three Gorges Dam completed World's largest power station by installed capacity; displaces over a million people.
8. 1802 Napoleon restores slavery in the French colonies Eight years after the Republic abolished slavery, Napoleon brings it back where France still holds power — Guadeloupe and Martinique return to the plantation regime. In Saint-Domin
9. 1941 Battle of Crete First mainly airborne invasion in history; Germans took Crete at heavy paratrooper losses.
10. 1217 Battle of Lincoln (1217) The seventy-year-old William Marshal — 'the greatest knight' — leads the charge through Lincoln's streets and shatters the Franco-rebel army; a sea-fight off Sandwich in August fin
11. 1506 Death of Columbus Columbus dies at Valladolid at about 54, comfortably off but embittered over his lost titles — and still insisting, against the mounting evidence and his own third-voyage letters,
12. 1927 Lindbergh's transatlantic flight Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic, a sensation that launched the air age.
13. 1902 Cuban independence Cuba becomes a republic after US occupation, though the Platt Amendment keeps it under American influence.
14. 1980 Quebec referendum of 1980 Quebec votes 60–40 against sovereignty-association; Trudeau's renewal promise leads straight to the constitutional wars of the decade.