1938: Anschluss approved in Austria.
In a controlled plebiscite in Austria this day in 1938, soon after Adolf Hitler's invasion of the country, 99.7 percent of Austrians approved the Anschluss (German: “Union”)—the political unification of Austria and Germany.
| 2003: | | Haiti officially recognized Vodou as a religion. |
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| 2001: | | The Netherlands passed a bill permitting euthanasia, the first such national law in the world. |
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| 1988: | | | After taking a decade to build, the Seto Great Bridge, spanning the Inland Sea in Japan, was opened to traffic. |
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| 1973: | | | Pakistan adopted its third constitution, shifting the role of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from president to prime minister. |
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| 1972: | | The development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons were outlawed by the Biological Weapons Convention, signed by more than 150 countries. |
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| 1925: | | | The first government led by French premier Édouard Herriot, a Radical Party leader who had been put into office by the left-wing coalition Cartel des Gauches, fell. |
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| 1583: | | | Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist and scholar whose legal masterpiece, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625; On the Law of War and Peace), was one of the first great contributions to modern international law, was born. |
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