King Alaric II of the Visigoths put the Breviary of Alaric, a collection of Roman laws, into effect on February 2, 506. The breviary contains constitutions and laws of the newly fallen Roman Empire, including the Theodosian code, and parts of the Gregorian and Hermogenian Codes. The Breviary of Alaric predated the Byzantine Empire’s Code [...]
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Gunpowder Plot participant Guy Fawkes was hanged, drawn, and quartered on January 31, 1606 for attempting to blow up the British House of Lords with kegs of gunpowder during the State Opening of Parliament. Fawkes and a group of co-conspirators sought to kill King James I over the persecution of Roman Catholics in England. The [...]
250 Northern Shoshone men, women, and children were killed on January 29, 1863 by the US Army in what is now the state of Idaho. The army attacked a Shoshone camp after meeting resistance to westward expansion, and the army fired indiscriminately during the attack. Learn more about the Bear River Massacre.
King Charles I of England and Scotland was put on trial for treason by the specially established High Court of Justice on January 20, 1649 amid the English Civil War between supporters of Parliament and the Crown. While the Roundheads (Parliament supporters) accused Charles of being a tyrant, the king questioned the authority of the [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded on January 19, 1920 by a group of civil rights activists and lawyers. The group’s founders included Helen Keller, labor activist Elizabeth Gurley-Flynn and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. The organization would be involved in the Scopes Monkey Trial and the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. [...]
The New York State Assembly, the state’s lower house, expelled five duly elected assemblymen from the Socialist Party over their political affiliation on January 7, 1920. The US was in the midst of the first Red Scare, a panic resulting from the ascendancy of the Bolsheviks in Russia, which resulted in the repression of socialists [...]
New Jersey ratified the Bill of Rights, a set of 10 fundamental amendments to the US Constitution, on November 20, 1789, becoming the first state to do so. The state also ratified an amendment on federal representation which ultimately failed. Additionally, New Jersey rejected an amendment on congressional salaries, which would eventually become the 27th [...]
