On May 8, 1874, Massachusetts became the first US state to mandate a ten-hour-a-day work limit for women. Learn more about the Ten Hour Movement.
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On May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization (WHO) passed Resolution WHA33.3, declaring the smallpox virus eradicated. Learn more about the smallpox virus and its eradication from the World Health Organization.
On May 7, 1992, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified, barring Congress from granting its members pay raises in the middle of terms. The Amendment had initially been proposed in 1789 by James Madison, but only became law after a grass-roots campaign in the 1980s against “excessive” Congressional privileges. Learn more about [...]
On May 7, 1945, General Gustav Jodl, on behalf of Germany, signed an unconditional surrender, effectively ending World War II in Europe. The surrender was formally accepted by the Allied Powers the next day, May 8, which came to be known as Victory in Europe (VE) Day. Read World War II legal documents, treaties, and [...]
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 [...]
On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary [...]
On May 5, 1925, high school science teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in the Tennessee public schools. Learn more about the Scopes Monkey Trial.
On May 5, 1955, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) became a fully sovereign nation. Four days later on May 9, West Germany joined NATO. West Germany then became a founding member of the European Economic Community in 1958. Read the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz), which served as the constitution of West Germany and [...]
On May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen at Kent State University opened fire on students protesting the US invasion of Cambodia, killing four. Review a legal chronology of the Kent State shootings, from May 5, 1970 (the day the FBI investigation started) to January 4, 1979 (the day the state of Ohio reached an out-of-court settlement [...]
On May 4, 1493, Pope Alexander VI promulgated the Line of Demarcation, dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal in response the return of Christopher Columbus from his discovery of the American continents. However, neither country was entirely satisfied with the placement of the Line. A year later on June 7, 1494, the two [...]
