Pope John Paul, Joan Collins, and parking garages

•On May 18, 1920, Karol Jozef Wojtyla is born in the Polish town of Wadowice, 35 miles southwest of Krakow. Wojtyla went on to become Pope John Paul II, history’s most well-traveled pope and the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century.

•On May 19, 1715, the colony of New York passes a law making it illegal to “gather, rake, take up or bring to the market, any oysters whatsoever” between the months of May and September. This regulation was only one of many that were passed in the early days of America to help preserve certain species.

•On May 20, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, which opens government-owned land to small family farmers (“homesteaders”). The act gave “any person” who was the head of a family 160 acres to try his hand at farming for five years.

•On May 21, 2000, the bones of President James Garfield’s spine, with a bullet hole, are put on display as part of an exhibit at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. The museum also owns some of Lincoln’s skull fragments and President Eisenhower’s gallstones.

•On May 22, 1967, a fire at the L’Innovation department store in Brussels, Belgium, kills 322 people on the first day of a heavily promoted American fashion exhibition. Despite speculation that the fire was a deliberate anti-U.S. action, most of the available evidence pointed to an electrical fire.

•On May 23, 1933, TV actress Joan Collins is born. In 1990, Random House offered Collins $4 million in a two-book deal, paying a $1.2 million advance, with the rest due on delivery of the manuscripts. When Collins turned in the first book, the publishing house claimed the manuscript was “unreadable” and sued for the return of the advance.

•On May 24, 1899, the first public parking garage in the United States is established in Boston by W.T. McCullough as the Back Bay Cycle and Motor Company. McCullough advertised the garage’s opening as a “stable for renting, sale, storage and repair of motor vehicles.”