On this day in ...... 1660, in North America, the British colony of Massachusetts hanged Mary Dyer because she was a Quaker. Dyer and her husband William had immigrated there, from England, around 1635. The couple were supporters of religious dissident Anne Hutchinson, and Mary accompanied Anne out of church when the latter was excommunicated in 1638; the Dyers then moved with Hutchinson to Rhode Island. In her final return to Massachusetts, Dyer "deliberately challenged the legal right ... to carry out the death penalty."
... 2000, the Patent Law Treaty was adopted at Geneva, Switzerland. "Its aim is to harmonise the formal requirements set by patent offices for granting patents, and to streamline the procedures for obtaining and maintaining a patent." Today the treaty has 53
contracting parties; the United States is not among them. It is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
