May 21, 1349 – Dušan's Code, the constitution of the Serbian Empire, is enacted by Dušan the Mighty.5/21/2021 Dušan's Code (Serbian: Душанов законик, Dušanov zakonik, known historically as Закон благовјернаго цара Стефана – Law of the pious Emperor Stefan) is a compilation of several legal systems that was enacted by Stefan Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia in 1349. It was used in the Serbian Empire and the succeeding Serbian Despotate. It is considered an early constitution, or close to it; an advanced set of laws which regulated all aspects of life.
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The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is a text published in 1819 with the claim that it was the first declaration of independence made in the Thirteen Colonies during the American Revolution. It was supposedly signed on May 20, 1775, in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a committee of citizens of Mecklenburg County, who declared independence from Great Britain after hearing of the battle of Lexington. If the story is true, the Mecklenburg Declaration preceded the United States Declaration of Independence by more than a year. The authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration has been disputed since it was published, forty-four years after it was reputedly written. There is no verifiable evidence to confirm the original document's existence and no reference to it has been found in extant newspapers from 1775.
Professional historians have maintained that the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is an inaccurate rendering of an authentic document known as the Mecklenburg Resolves. The Resolves, a set of radical resolutions passed on May 31, 1775, fell short of an actual declaration of independence. Although published in newspapers in 1775, the text of the Mecklenburg Resolves was lost after the American Revolution and not rediscovered until 1838. The early government of North Carolina, convinced that the Mecklenburg Declaration was genuine, maintained that North Carolinians were the first Americans to declare independence from Great Britain. As a result, both the seal and the flag of North Carolina bear the date of the declaration. A holiday commemorating the Mecklenburg Declaration, "Meck Dec Day," is celebrated on May 20 in North Carolina, although it is no longer an official holiday and does not attract the attention that it once did. The Emergency Quota Act, also known as the Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, the Immigration Restriction Act of 1921, the Per Centum Law, and the Johnson Quota Act, was formulated mainly in response to the large influx of Southern and Eastern Europeans and successfully restricted their immigration as well as that of other "undesirables" to the United States. Although intended as temporary legislation, it proved, in the long run, the most important turning-point in American immigration policy because it added two new features to American immigration law: numerical limits on immigration and the use of a quota system for establishing those limits, which came to be known as the National Origins Formula. The use of the National Origins Formula continued until it was replaced by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which introduced a system of preferences, based on immigrants' skills and family relationships with US citizens or US residents.
and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city upon a hill" dominated New England colonial development, influencing the governments and religions of neighboring colonies. He is also generally identified as the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But was he?
When Winthrop arrived in the colony, another man, John Endecott, had already been appointed as Governor. But Endicott was not the sole Governor. Instead, he was the "Governor in the Colony," while another many, Matthew Craddock was the "Governor in the Company" in London. Due to a political crisis in England which caused King Charles I to dissolve Parliament, Craddock proposed that the split governorship be transferred to the Colony under a single office. Craddock did not want to emigrate, and Winthrop was chosen from among three candidates. Thus, Winthrop was the "first" Governor who did not share the office. Both Winthrop and Endecott served many additional terms as Governor. The development of the telegraph in the early 19th century changed the way people communicated on the local and international levels. Between 1849 and 1865, a series of bilateral and regional agreements among Western European states attempted to standardize international communications. By 1865 it was agreed that a comprehensive agreement was needed in order to create a framework that would standardize telegraphy equipment, set uniform operating instructions, and lay down common international tariff and accounting rules. Between 1 March and 17 May 1865, the French Government hosted delegations from 20 European states at the first International Telegraph Conference in Paris. This meeting culminated in the International Telegraph Convention which was signed on 17 May 1865. As a result of the 1865 Conference, the International Telegraph Union, the predecessor to the modern ITU, was founded as the first international standards organization. The Union was tasked with implementing basic principles for international telegraphy. This included: the use of the Morse code as the international telegraph alphabet, the protection of the secrecy of correspondence, and the right of everybody to use the international telegraphy. The ITU was subsequently amalgamated into the International Telecommunications Union, an agency of the United Nations.The impeachment of Andrew Johnson was initiated on February 24, 1868, when the United States House of Representatives resolved to impeach Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, for "high crimes and misdemeanors", which were detailed in 11 articles of impeachment. The primary charge against Johnson was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress in March 1867 over Johnson's veto. Specifically, he had removed from office Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war whom the act was largely designed to protect. Stanton often sided with the Radical Republican faction that passed the act, and Stanton did not have a good relationship with Johnson. Johnson attempted to replace Stanton with Brevet Major General Lorenzo Thomas. Earlier, while the Congress was not in session, Johnson had suspended Stanton and appointed General Ulysses S. Grant as secretary of war ad interim. Johnson became the first American president to be impeached on March 2–3, 1868, when the House formally adopted the articles of impeachment and forwarded them to the United States Senate for adjudication. The trial in the Senate began three days later, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. On May 16, the Senate did not convict Johnson on one of the articles, with the 35–19 vote in favor of conviction falling one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority. A 10-day recess was called before attempting to convict him on additional articles. On May 26, the Senate did not convict the president on two articles, both by the same margin, after which the trial was adjourned without considering the remaining eight articles of impeachment. The impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson had important political implications for the balance of federal legislative-executive power. It maintained the principle that Congress should not remove the president from office simply because its members disagreed with him over policy, style, and administration of the office. It also resulted in diminished presidential influence on public policy and overall governing power, fostering a system of governance which future-President Woodrow Wilson referred to in the 1880s as "Congressional Government".
On May 14, 1607, English colonists establish "James Fort," which would become Jamestown, Virginia, the earliest permanent English settlement in the Americas. Under the "Old Style" reckoning the date was recorded as May 4. Contrary to what most American's "know" however, Jamestown was not the first European settlement in the New World. That honor arguably goes to Isabella on the island of Hispaniola in 1493, though a better claim probably can be made for Santo Domingo, also on Hispaniola in 1496. Nor was Jamestown the first European settlement on the North American mainland, as that honor goes to Villa Rica de la Veracruz, founded by Hernán Cortés in 1519. Jamestown was not even the first European settlement in what is today the United States, as St. Augustine, Florida in 1565 (and even before that there were other attempts to establish colonies by the Spanish in what is now South Carolina). The French Huguenots had established settlements on Florida before 1600 and one in New France (modern Canada) in 1604. And while the ill-fated Roanoke colonies of 1585 and 1587 did result in a permanent settlement, we know now through DNA evidence that some of the colonists did survive and intermarried with indigenous people. so Jamestown, for all its fame, was more of a Johnny-come-lately. Gran Columbia ("Greater Columbia") was established in 1819 as part of the movement among Spanish colonies throughout the world seeking independence. It was roughly the same territory that comprised the Viceroyalty of New Grenada. Simón Bolívar, the great advocate for South American independence dreamed of uniting more of the Central and Southern American Spanish Colonies into a "United States of South America," but the ambitions of regional leaders constantly caused frication and revolt. The secession of Ecuador from Gran Colombia on May 13, 1830 was a bitter pill for Bolívar, who died just seven months later. Ecuador's early history was marked by periods of instability alternating with periods of dictatorial rule. Today, Ecuador is classified by the Global Freedom Index as "partly free" with a score of 67/100 and has shown slow but steady improvement in promotion democratic government under the Rule of Law.
It may at first seem odd to include in a topic dedicated to the history of the Rule of Law the arrest of an obscure Elizabethan playwright on a charge of libel. However, there is much more to the story than that. First, though obscure, Kyd is considered by scholars to be one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. An intimate of Christopher Marlow, Kyd is thought to be the author of the Ur-Hamlet, the term used to describe a play, now lost, that appeared several years before Shakespeare's Hamlet. Likewise, he is thought to have been the author of King Leir, which preceded Shakespeare's King Lear by almost a decade. Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy is considered to be on par with the other great works of the age.
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