On March 29, 1867, the British Parliament passed the British North America Act, a constitutional document creating a united Dominion of Canada. It went into effect on July 1 that year.
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On March 29, 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of passing US atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The couple was sentenced to death on April 3 under the Espionage Act of 1917, 18 U.S.C 794. They were then executed two years later on June 19, 1953 in New York State’s Sing Sing Prison. [...]
On March 28, 1808, English jurist Thomas Hare was born in the United Kingdom. After being admitted to the Bar in 1833, Hare became a campaigner for electoral reform. He created the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system of proportional representation used in many democratic countries today. He was also an early law reporter, recording important [...]
On March 28, 1898, the US Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the US to Chinese immigrants was a US citizen and could not be deported under the terms of the Chinese Exclusion Act. Read US v. Wong Kim Ark and learn more about the Chinese Exclusion Act.
On March 27, 1866, President Andrew Johnson vetoed a civil rights bill that would later become the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, conferring full US citizenship on all slaves. Read President Johnson’s veto letter, transmitted to the US Senate.
On March 27, 1958, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev became the new Premier of the USSR, replacing Joseph Stalin as the Soviet leader. During his rise to power, Khruschev denounced crimes of the Stalinist regime and the “cult of personality” surrounding his predecessor. While in office as Soviet Premier, Khruschev oversaw some of the most famous and [...]
US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was born in El Paso, Texas on March 26, 1930.
On March 26, 1975, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction went into force. Today, 162 countries have signed the Convention, pledging never “to develop, produce, stockpile or otherwise acquire or retain” biological weapons. Some signatory nations, however, have reserved the [...]
On March 25, 1931, nine black teenagers were arrested in Paint Rock, Alabama for allegedly raping two white women. Twelve days later, the young men were put on trial in the nearby town of Scottsboro. After numerous the proceedings culminated in two landmark decisions by the US Supreme Court, Powell v. Alabama and Norris v. [...]
A British bill abolishing the slave trade became law on March 25, 1807. Learn more about slavery and the slave trade in Britain.
