USSR sentences US pilot to 10 years for espionage

On August 19, 1960, US spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Soviet Union after being convicted of espionage. Powers was captured and tried by the USSR after his U-2 was shot down while flying a mission over Soviet airspace. In 1962, Powers was returned to the US as part of a prisoner exchange agreement.

Learn more about the spy plane incident from the US Department of State.

THIS DAY @ LAW

First US life insurance company incorporated

On January 11, 1759, America's first life insurance company was incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers was established by Presbyterians to support the families of their ministers. In 1988, the company's name was changed to the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund. The company later became Covenant Life Insurance Company before being acquired by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in 2002. Read a history of the Presbyterian Ministers' Fund from the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

Treaty ended Anglo-American claims, courts in China

On January 11, 1943, the United States and Great Britain relinquished by treaty their extraterritorial claims in China. This abandonment effectively ended the jurisdiction of the extraterritorial United States Court for China (established 1906) and the British Supreme Court in China. Read more about the United States Court for China, which one scholar has called "probably the strangest federal tribunal ever constituted by Congress," in a short online history of the US Ninth Circuit.