On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public [...]
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On August 31, 1980, the communist government of Poland and labor leaders settled the Gdansk Agreement. The accord settled a summer of labor strikes at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland. With the Agreement, Poland became the first communist country to allow the creation of an independent labor union, which was called Solidarity. Solidarity then [...]
On August 30, 1965, civil rights attorney Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice by the US Senate, becoming the first African-American to be approved for the nation’s highest tribunal. Learn more about Thurgood Marshall.
On August 30, 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) informed former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic that he would be charged with genocide in addition to other war crimes. The charges stemmed from Milosevic’s role in the Balkan civil wars of the 1990’s in which Milosevic, as President of Serbia and Yugoslavia, [...]
On August 29, 1632, the political philosopher John Locke was born in Wrington, England. His political philosophy and social contract theory would heavily influence the American and French Revolutions as well as the democratic governments set up following those revolutions. Read works by John Locke from Project Gutenberg.
On August 29, 1957, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first federal civil rights legislation since 1875. The legislation set up the US Commission on Civil Rights and the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice.
On August 28, 2003, the Supreme Court of Alabama removed a monument of the Biblical Ten Commandments from its courthouse rotunda. The monument had been installed on the orders of Chief Justice Roy Moore, triggering a federal lawsuit. In Glassroth v. Moore, the federal District Court for the Middle District of Alabama ordered Moore to [...]
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech to 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington. Listen to King’s speech, courtesy of the History Channel. The March was later credited with helping to achieve passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act [...]
On August 28, 1913, the Peace Palace was opened in the Hague by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. The Palace was conceived of as a forum to host the international Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). In addition to the PCA, the Palace today hosts the International Court of Justice, the Hague Academy of International Law, [...]
On August 27, 1928, representatives of thirty-two nations gathered in Paris signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and agreeing to the peaceful settlement of disputes between them. Review the text of the Kellogg-Briand pact. Frank B. Kellogg, the US Secretary of State who proposed the treaty, was awarded the [...]
