October 14th, 2008

Today in History

1969:
A race riot occurs in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1949:
Eleven leaders of the U.S. Communist Party are convicted, after a nine-month trial, of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Ten defendants are sentenced to 5 years in prison each, and the eleventh to 3 years. The Supreme Court upheld the convictions on June 4, 1951.

1944:
World War II: Given the choice between a public treason trial and a certain death by firing squad or suicide with honor, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel chooses the latter.

1865:
The Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes signed a treaty with the U.S. at a camp on the Little Arkansas River in Kansas. However, none of the parties to the treaty abided by it.

1656:
Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the ritual-free Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.