legislation that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. President
Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Act into law (pictured) during the height
of the Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later
amended it five times. The Act allowed for a mass enfranchisement of
racial minorities across the country, especially in the South. Section 2
of the Act prohibits state and local governments from imposing any
voting law that has a discriminatory effect on racial or language
minorities, and other provisions specifically ban literacy tests and
similar discriminatory devices. Some provisions apply only to
jurisdictions covered by the Act's "coverage formula", which was
designed to encompass jurisdictions that engaged in egregious voting
discrimination. Chiefly, Section 5 prohibits these jurisdictions from
changing their election practices without first receiving approval from
the federal government that the change is not discriminatory. In Shelby
County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court struck down the coverage
formula as unconstitutional, reasoning that it no longer responded to
current conditions.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1806:
The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by its last emperor,
Francis II (pictured), during the aftermath of the War of the Third
Coalition.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_II,_Holy_Roman_Emperor>
1890:
At Auburn Prison in Auburn, New York, US, William Kemmler
became the first person to be executed in an electric chair.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_chair>
1964:
American researcher Donald Currey had a bristlecone pine tree
known as Prometheus cut down, only to find that it was the oldest known
non-clonal organism ever discovered, at least 4,862 years old at the
time.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(tree)>
1991:
British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee first posted files
describing his ideas for a system of interlinked, hypertext documents
accessible via the Internet, to be called a "World Wide Web".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee>
2010:
A cloudburst and heavy overnight rains triggered flash floods,
mudslides, and debris flows across a large part of Ladakh, a region of
the northernmost Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, leaving at least 255
people dead.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ladakh_floods>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
Olympiad:
1. (historical) A period of four years, by which the ancient Greeks
reckoned time, being the interval from one celebration of the Olympic
games to another, beginning with the victory of Corbus in the foot race,
which took place in the year 776 b.c.; as, the era of the olympiads.
2. An occurrence of the Olympic games.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Olympiad>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The Holy Thing is here again Among us, brother, fast thou
too and pray, And tell thy brother knights to fast and pray, That so
perchance the vision may be seen By thee and those, and all the world be
healed.
--Idylls of the King
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Idylls_of_the_King>
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