A Brief History On July 20, 1906, Finland ratified a law guaranteeing equal rights to women to vote in political elections, the first European country to do so. Digging Deeper During the 19th Century, women in many countries mounted campaigns to gain the right to vote, a movement called “Women’s Suffrage.” This movement gained its first success in New Zealand, which became the first self-governing colony to grant universal women’s suffrage in 1893, although women could not run for office. Other colonies, territories, and states had some sort of women’s suffrage, although usually not universal, with restrictions based on race,…
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A Brief History On June 30, 1882, the assassin of President Garfield, Charles J. Guiteau, was executed by hanging in Washington, D.C. Guiteau had surrendered at the scene of the crime. Today, we look at what happened to the assassins that killed four US Presidents. Digging Deeper John Wilkes Booth, Confederate sympathizer and assassin of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was hunted down 12 days later and killed by a US Army soldier when Booth refused to surrender. Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist opposed to William Mckinley’s interventionist policies, shot McKinley in 1901. Czolgosz was swarmed and beaten by bystanders after the…
A Brief History On June 27, 1981, the Chinese Communist Party issued its report on the “Cultural Revolution” that took place in China from 1966 until the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. A program designed to “purge” China from political dissidents and traces of capitalism, the Cultural Revolution cost between 400,000 and 7.7 million Chinese lives, depending on the source. Digging Deeper Mao had fought the National Chinese under Chiang Kai Shek since before World War II until he took control in 1949, establishing Communist China and assuming the mantel of a dictator. Mao followed the usual dictator script,…
A Brief History On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed Germans in Berlin and made his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. What he meant was “I am a Berliner,” but an alleged mistranslation perpetuated in popular culture made many believe his stirring statement meant “I am a jelly donut!” Digging Deeper JFK is not the only US President alleged to misspeak, with GW Bush, DJ Trump, and JR Biden infamous to their critics for their suspected misspeaking. Here are two other examples: In 1977, an interpreter’s mistranslation claimed that President Carter told the people of Poland that he…
A Brief History On June 21, 1734, a 29 year old African woman was executed for setting her slave master’s house on fire which spread through Montreal in New France, what is now Canada. Digging Deeper Born a slave in Madeira around 1705 and named Marie-Joseph Angélique by a Flemish man that bought her and sold her to a Frenchman in Montreal around 1725, Marie was not submissive and tried to escape with a White indentured servant she had taken as a lover in 1733. The White servant was jailed, and Marie was returned to domestic duties, although her sale…
