Author: Redactor

On August 30, 1918, Fanny Yefimovna Kaplan shot and seriously injured Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. Though certainly justifiable on some primary level — evil killers with power probably deserve to be killed in turn — this assassination attempt, like most such, had disastrous consequences, prompting the mass arrests and executions known as the Red Terror.

August 30, 1999, saw East Timor’s referendum vote for independence from Indonesia succeed.

August 29 marks the 1632 birthday of British philosopher John Locke, author of Two Treatises of Government, and one of the strongest intellectual influences on America’s 18th century secessionist movement and subsequent constitutional thinking. Locke died on October 28, 1704.

On August 29, 1786, Shays’ Rebellion began. The rebellion was an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers reacting very negatively against the high debt and tax burdens enacted to pay off the Revolutionary War. This rebellion scared American leaders into revising the Articles of Confederation, a process that led not to a mere few changes, but to the writing of a whole new Constitution.

On August 28, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act received Royal Assent, formally abolishing slavery throughout most the British Empire.

On August 27, 1991, the European Community recognized the independence of the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and Moldova after they had declared their independence from the USSR.