Poland's Constitution of May 3rd, 1791 was instituted by the Government Act adopted on that date by the Sejm (parliament) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was Europe's first modern codified national constitution, and the world's second, after the Constitution of the United States of America, written in 1787, which began to function in 1789. It was designed to redress long-standing political defects of the federative Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Constitution instituted political equality between townspeople and nobility and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. The adoption of the May 3rd Constitution provoked the active hostility of the Polish Commonwealth's neighbors. In the War in Defense of the Constitution, Poland was betrayed by its Prussian ally and defeated by Catherine the Great's Tsarist Russia. Though overthrown in 1792 by that alliance of foreign invaders and internal traitors, the May 3rd Constitution influenced later democratic movements througout the world and remained, after the demise of the Polish Republic in 1795, for the following 123 years of its political total eclipse, a beacon in the struggle to restore Polish sovereignty.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Constitution_of_May_3%2C_1791

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1808: Finnish War: The Swedish fortress of Sveaborg was lost to Russia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomenlinna)

1937: Gone With the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gone_With_the_Wind)

1945: World War II: Sinking of the Cap Arcona by the RAF in the Lübeck Bay. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_Arcona)

1947: A new post-World War II Japanese constitution went into effect. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Japan)

1991: The last episode of the television soap opera Dallas was broadcast. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_%28television_series%29)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." -- Niccolò Machiavelli (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Niccolo_Machiavelli)