19th Amendment adopted

On August 26, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was adopted, granting women full suffrage. The Amendment states that “[t]he right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

Learn more about the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment from the National Archives.

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.