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This Day In History

Education

2018 The Boy Scouts of America announced that the group’s flagship program would undergo a name change; after being known simply as the Boy Scouts for 108 years, the program would now be called Scouts BSA, as a result of girls joining the program.

Law

1927 The U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, upheld 8-1 a Virginia law allowing the forced sterilization of people such as the intellectually disabled to promote the “health of the patient and the welfare of society.” The plaintiff, Carrie Bell, had been sterilized against her will as a teenager, and the Court accepted the argument that it was justified because she was "feeble-minded" and "promiscuous" (she had given birth to a child as a result of being raped). The Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell.

Politics

1250 Shajar al-Durr became the sultana of Egypt, marking the end of the Ayyubid reign and the start of the Mamluk era.

1536 Anne Boleyn, second of King Henry VIII's six wives, was arrested and charged with adultery; she was beheaded 17 days later. Henry's desire to set aside his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne led to the formation of the Church of England. None of his six wives produced a surviving male heir (Jane Seymour's son, Edward VI, was crowned at age 9 upon his father's death, but died at 15), leading to the coronation and subsequent execution of the teenage Lady Jane Grey and the reign of Catherine of Aragon's daughter, Mary I. Mary was succeeded by Anne's daughter Elizabeth I.