On April 8, 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the US Constitution, providing for the election of senators by popular vote rather than selection by state legislatures, was ratified. Learn more about the Seventeenth Amendment.
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On April 8, 1985, the government of India filed a lawsuit against the Union Carbide Corporation for the Bhopal industrial disaster in which forty-two tons of methyl isocyanate gas was released from the pesticide plant of a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. The disaster initially killed 2,000 Indians and injured another 200,000. [...]
On April 7, 1969, the US Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that laws prohibiting private possession of obscene materials were unconstitutional.
On April 7, 529 Byzantine Emperor Justinian I issued the first draft of Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law). The Justinian Code represented a revival of Roman Law and a compilation of laws for the Byzantine Empire. It became the foundation of Canon Law in the Catholic Church and Civil Law in modern Europe. [...]
On April 6, 1931, the nine “Scottsboro boys” were put on trial in Alabama on false charges of raping two white women during a freight train trip from Tennessee. Learn more about the trial of the Scottsboro boys.
On April 6, 1793, the Committee of Public Safety took power as the executive agency of France during the French Revolution, starting the Reign of Terror. During this period, the Committee sought to eliminate “enemies of the Revolution” by summary trials of noblemen, clergy, merchants, and peasants alike. The Reign of Terror ended with the [...]
On April 5, 1999, the government of Libya turned over to British authorities two of its citizens who were accused of blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. The subsequent trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah began on May 3, 2000. When the court reached [...]
On April 5, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death after a treason trial in which they were convicted of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Learn more about the Rosenberg trial.
On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created when twelve countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty. The organization was created as a common alliance against communist encroachment into Europe. Today, NATO has 28 member nations, including former European communist states.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Pay a virtual visit to The King Center in Atlanta.
