On This Day, May 20: U.S. troops seize Hamburger Hill

On this date in history:

In 526, up to 300,000 people were killed in an earthquake in Syria and Antioch.

In 1506, Christopher Columbus died in Spain.

In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis were granted a patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

In 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from New York in his single-engine monoplane, "The Spirit of St. Louis," bound for Paris. While he winged his way across the Atlantic, his mother taught her chemistry class at Cass Technical High School as usual.

In 1969, in one of the more infamous and bloody battles of the Vietnam War, U.S. troops seized Dong Ap Bia mountain, commonly known as Hamburger Hill.

In 1974, Judge John Sirica ordered U.S. President Richard Nixon to turn over tapes and other records of 64 White House conversations on the Watergate affair.

UPI File Photo

In 1989, Chinese Premier Li Peng declared martial law in Beijing in response to heightened student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton permanently closed Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after more than 200 years of mostly unimpeded traffic.

File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI

In 1999, a high school student in Georgia opened fire on his classmates, injuring six of them before surrendering to school authorities. The same day, President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton met in Littleton, Colo., with students, teachers and families of the victims of the previous month's deadly shootings at Columbine High School.

In 2002, East Timor, a small Pacific Coast nation, gained independence from Indonesia. It is called Timor Leste.

In 2008, U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., 76, a champion of liberal causes in the Senate for more than four decades, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Kennedy died Aug. 25, 2009.

In 2013, a tornado struck the Moore, Okla., area near Oklahoma City, killing 24 people, injuring more than 300 and destroying many buildings, including two elementary schools.

In 2018, King Mswati III announced he was changing the name of his country, Swaziland, to eSwatini, which means "land of the Swazis."