The Chinese words for “520” sound very like Wo Ai Ni, the Chinese words for “I love you.” And thus May 20 has become an unofficial “Internet Valentine's Day” in China. May 20 has a very different meaning in the tiny unincorporated town of Codell Kansas, where May 20 is “Cyclone day,” commemorating the day on which tornadoes struck the town in three consecutive years from 1916 - 1918. Clearly there are a variety of reasons that May 20 is a date in history that deserves to be remembered.
After the public announcement of the armistice ending hostilities between Italy and the Allied powers on September 8th, 1943, the Italian navy fled its ports in a desperate bid to reach the safety of Allied forces, even as German forces, carrying a terrifying new weapon, sought to capture or destroy them.
On August 26, 1980, some men wearing jumpsuits drove up in a white Dodge van and rolled a large box into a Casino in Stateline Nevada, saying that they were delivering a copy machine. It wasn’t a copy machine. Thus began what the Federal Bureau of Investigation described as “one of the most unusual cases” in the bureau’s history.
In 1943 the Yorktown, Virginia, Naval Mine Depot manufactured explosive ordnance and loaded it onto ships in the York River bound for the battlefields of WWII. On November 16th, a massive explosion rocked the Depot, leaving enormous craters and shattering glass for miles around.