After decades of protest, American women win the right to vote
After a hard-fought series of votes in the U.S. Congress and in state legislatures, the Nineteenth Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution on August 26, 1920.
Democracy & voting
African American men gain the right to vote in Washington, D.C.
On January 8, 1867, African American men gained the right to vote in the District of Columbia despite the veto of its most powerful resident, President Andrew Johnson.
France becomes world’s first country to adopt universal suffrage for all men
Universal suffrage (or franchise) ensures the right to vote for as many people who are bound by a government’s laws as possible, as supported by the “one person, one vote” principle.
U.S. Bill of Rights ratified, become first 10 amendments of the U.S. Constitution
The Bill of Rights amendments add specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government’s power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states or the people.
The United States Constitution is ratified
Today the U.S. Constitution is the oldest written constitution in operation in the world.
Saint Marinus founds San Marino, the world’s oldest republic still in existence
San Marino lays claim to being the oldest extant sovereign state in the world, as well as the oldest constitutional republic.
Lucius Sextius Lateranus becomes the first plebeian consul of Rome
The Lex Licinia Sextia, also known as the Licinian Rogations, was a series of laws proposed by the tribunes of the plebs, Lucius Sextius Lateranus and Gaius Licinius Stolo. These laws provided for a limit on the interest rate of loans and a restriction on private ownership of land. A third law, which provided for one of the two consuls to be a plebeian.
The Agora thrives as public commons space in ancient Athens
From the 6th and until the 1st century B.C.E. the Agora as the heart of the government and the judiciary, as a public place of debate, as a place of worship, and as marketplace.