July 6 serves better as a “Today in Tyranny” marker than anything positive, at least when you consider these events:
- 1415 – Jan Hus was burned at the stake.
- 1535 – Sir Thomas More was executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.
- 1887 – David Kalakaua, monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, was forced at gunpoint by Americans to sign the Bayonet Constitution giving Americans more power in Hawaii while stripping Hawaiian citizens of their rights.
- 1939 – The Nazi German government closed the last remaining Jewish enterprises in Germany.