On April 3, 1936, Bruno Hauptmann was executed by electric chair for the kidnapping and murder of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby. Read more about the trial of Bruno Hauptmann.
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On April 2, 1895, the libel trial of the Marquess of Queensberry began on allegations that he called Oscar Wilde a “posing somdomite ”. The trial led to the disclosure of details of Wilde’s personal life that eventually resulted in his imprisonment for homosexuality. Read about the trials of Oscar Wilde.
On April 2, 1970, the Governor of Massachusetts signed into law an anti-Vietnam War bill providing that no inhabitant of Massachusetts inducted into or serving in the armed forces “shall be required to serve” abroad in an armed hostility that had not been declared a war by Congress under Article I, Section 8, clause 11 [...]
On April 2, 1998, Maurice Papon was convicted of war crimes for his role in deporting French Jews to concentration camps during the Nazi occupation of France. Under German occupation, Papon served as the supervisor of the Service for Jewish Questions in Bordeaux from which he collaborated with the Nazi SS and oversaw the deportation [...]
On April 1, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, the first wartime conscription law passed in the United States went into effect. It included a clause allowing a person to pay $300 to avoid military service, a controversial “rich man’s” exception that precipitated the July 1863 New York City Draft Riots. The riots, [...]
On April 1, 2001, the Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. The nation then became the first country to legalize euthanasia on April 1, 2002.
On March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand of Spain signed a decree expelling Jews from his kingdom. Read a contemporary account of the expulsion, originally written in Hebrew by an Italian Jew in 1495.
On March 31, 1854, US Commodore Matthew Perry and representatives of the Japanese government signed the Convention of Kanagawa. The terms of the treaty marked the end of Japan’s 500 years of self-imposed isolation by opening the Ports of Shimoda and Hakodate. Four years later, Japanese-American relations were further expanded by the Treaty of Amity [...]
On March 30, 1856, representatives of Great Britain, France, Sardinia, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Paris of 1856, ending the Crimean War. The treaty confirmed Russia’s loss of power and territory a result of the war. The Black Sea region and some Russian islands were demilitarized, and Russia lost its influence [...]
On March 30, 1867, the US and Russia signed a treaty ceding Alaska to the United States for a payment of $7,200,000 in gold. Review the terms of a Treaty concerning the Cession of the Russian Possessions in North America by his Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias to the United States of America, [...]
