14th Amendment Ratified: Equal Protection for All
Southern states forced to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 regained their congressional representation while surrendering the legal right to deny citizenship to formerly enslaved people. This single clause dismantled the Dred Scott ruling and now anchors landmark rulings from Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v. Wade, fundamentally changing how federal courts review state laws on equality and due process.
July 28, 1868
158 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on July 28
Florentine forces crushed the Pisan army at the Battle of Cascina, ending Pisa’s territorial ambitions in Tuscany. By securing this victory, Florence consolidat…
Timur's cavalry shatters Bayezid I's army at Ankara, capturing the Ottoman Sultan and plunging his realm into a decade-long civil war known as the Interregnum. …
The king was forty-nine, obese, and nursing a suppurating leg ulcer. Catherine Howard was nineteen. Henry married her just sixteen days after his disastrous fou…
The executioner was new to the job. He botched Thomas Cromwell's beheading on Tower Hill—multiple blows, witnesses said, before England's most powerful minister…
The Spanish crown granted Juan de Salcedo control of La Laguna's villages just months after conquering Manila—making it one of the first encomiendas carved from…
Stranded by a hurricane, the crew and passengers of the English ship Sea Venture wrecked their vessel on the reefs of Bermuda. Their accidental survival transfo…
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