Author: Redactor

On Apr 2, 1917, Jeannette Rankin took her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as the first woman ever elected to Congress, representing Montana. Four days later, she would be one of only 50 representatives to vote against U.S. entry into the First World War. In 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Rankin would cast the only dissenting vote against the country’s entry into World War II.

On April 1, 1787, James Madison, father of the Constitution, removed the General Welfare clause from his draft of the U.S. Constitution, telling friends that, “I fear future big-government-loving politicians will undoubtedly abuse the clause’s vague concept to drown the people in federal overreach.”

On April 1, 1918, Woodrow Wilson became the first and only President of the United States to be impeached and removed from office for lying about munitions being aboard the Lusitania in an effort to whip up war fever against Germany and push the nation into World War I.

On April 1, 2002, the U.S. Congress refused to grant President George W. Bush’s request for a declaration of war against Iraq.

On March 31, 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with Japan, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.

On March 31, 1959, the Dalai Lama fled the Chinese military suppression of the revolt in Tibet, crossing the border into India, where he was granted political asylum. Thirty years later, in 1989, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his nonviolent campaign to end the Chinese domination of Tibet.

On March 31, 1990, an anti-poll tax rally in London led to the city’s worst riots in a century, with 113 people injured, including 45 policemen, and 340 people arrested. The violence erupted after 70,000 people took to the streets in protest of the new government levy.