Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese.

Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.

THIS DAY @ LAW

US signed peace treaty with Germany ending World War I

On August 25, 1921, the United States, which never ratified the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, finally signed its own peace treaties with Germany, Austria and Hungary.

Former East Germany leader convicted of manslaughter for Berlin Wall policy

On August 25, 1997, Egon Krenz, the former of East Germany was convicted of manslaughter for promulgating a policy of shooting any East Germans who attempted to cross the Berlin Wall. Krenz was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison, of which he served four before being released into retirement from political life.