On November 10, 1821, the First Cry of Independence in the small, interior town of Villa de los Santos, occurred in Panama. The November 10 date has since become Panama’s “Cry of Independence Day” in the country. November is a month of independence celebrations in Panama, but the November 10 celebration marks the first signs of the struggle for separation from Spain.
On November 9, 1998, the death penalty was abolished on all crimes other than murder in the United Kingdom. Murder had already been disallowed from a capital punishment since 1965, and no executions in Great Britain had occurred since that time. But the new law formalized the anti-capital punishment stance.
The idea of reinstating capital punishment has been tried numerous times in England since then, but revelations of false convictions for murder since 1965 have helped put the kibosh on such plans.
On July 24, 1823, Chile abolished slavery.
On this day in 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court told President Richard Nixon that he lacked constitutional authority to withhold the infamous “Nixon Tapes” from Congress.
July 24 is Pioneer Day in Utah, and Simón Bolívar Day in Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.
On July 19, 1848, a two-day Women’s Rights Convention opened in Seneca Falls, New York.
On June 29, 1914, the day after the shooting of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Austrian interrogations confirmed that the Serbian government was behind the assassination. Serbia denied involvement.
Thus continued the series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”
This year marks the centennial-plus-one of that most horrific and destructive of wars.
On June 28, 1992, the Constitution of Estonia was signed into law.
June 28 birthdays include that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, in 1712.
On this date in 1914, 19-year-old Gavril Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, and the Archduke’s wife Sophie. The Archduke had earlier missed a bomb thrown at his car, which necessitated a change in the motorcade route, which the driver forgot, which is why the car paused at the precise intersection in which Princip fired his fatal shots.
The shooting began a series of events that led to “The Great War,” now known as “World War I.”
This year marks the centennial of that most horrific and destructive of wars.
On June 21, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens. In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court found “grandfather clauses” in effect in several formerly slave states to be little more than sneaky ways of allowing illiterate white folks to vote while disallowing illiterate black folks.
On this date in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, it was moved and debated to confine legislative powers to two distinct branches, and to strike the word “national” from the document.
The final wording eventually became “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.” And the word “national” does not occur anywhere in the Constitution.
In 1941, Václav Klaus was born; other June 19 births include Salman Rushdie in 1947, Kathleen Turner in 1954, and Laura Ingraham in 1964.
On June 18, 1838, Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert was born.
Auberon Herbert was a Liberal Member of Parliament who, after reading the writings of Herbert Spencer, became a radical individualist and author of essays such as “The Ethics of Dynamite,” “A Politician in Trouble About His Soul,” and “The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State.”