October 10: First Amendment to the United States Constitution

  The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of 
  the Bill of Rights. It was conceived to prevent Congress and the 
  federal government from infringing on five rights. These guarantees 
  were that the government would not endorse any religion or establish 
  a state religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, infringe 
  upon freedom of speech, infringe the freedom of the press, limit the 
  right to assemble peaceably, or limit the right to petition the 
  government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment, along 
  with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was proposed by Congress in 
  1789, to be ratified by the requisite number of states in 1791. It 
  was passed in order to answer protestations that the newly created 
  Constitution did not include sufficient guarantees of civil 
  liberties. The First Amendment only explicitly disallows any of the 
  rights from being abridged by Congress. Over time, however, the 
  courts held that this extends to the executive and judicial branches. 
  The Fourteenth Amendment went further, making abridging First 
  Amendment rights unconstitutional for state, county, and local 
  governments.

Read the rest of this article:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Today's selected anniversaries:

 680      Battle of Karbala: Imam Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of the 
          Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated by forces under Caliph
          Yazid I. This is commemorated by Shi'a Muslims as
          'Aashurah'.
          (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Karbala)

 732      Battle of Tours: Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a 
          large army of Moors near Poitiers, France, stopping the
          northward spread of Islam from Spain to the rest of Western
          Europe.
          (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours)

 1911     The Xinhai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising, 
          marking the beginning of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty
          in China.
          (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuchang_Uprising)

Wikiquote of the day:

  "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
  diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." ~
  Groucho Marx
  (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx)