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
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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)
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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)