On August 18, ...

... 1997 (10 years ago today), Beth Ann Hogan became the 1st woman to enroll at the Virginia Military Institute, a 158-year-old institution of higher learning. Her enrollment followed nearly a decade of legal wrangling: resolving a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, the Supreme Court required the publicly funded academy to admit women. In her opinion for the Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the Equal Protection Clause requires that gender-based classifications be supported by an "exceedingly persuasive" justification. As for the 17-year-old from Junction City, Oregon, Hogan left after her 1st semester of study; nonetheless, as indicated by the photo at right, VMI's website now prominently features its female cadets.
... 1977 (30 years ago today), authorities of South Africa's apartheid government arrested Steve Biko, leader of the Black Consciousness movement, and detained him pursuant to the country's Terrorism Act. Weeks later Biko died while in custody. A book chronicled the abuses that Biko suffered during interrogation, but the 1st official report to find government agents responsible was that of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

On August 4, ...

... 1947 (60 years ago today), during the period of Allied occupation that followed World War II, a Chief Justice and 14 associate Justices were sworn in to mark the birth of the Supreme Court of Japan. Among the current Justices is 1 woman. Kazuko Yokoo (left) was appointed in 2001, culminating a long career in civil service. Most recently she was Japan's Ambassador to Ireland. Profiling the Court were several articles in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (April 2007).
... 1944, having been betrayed, a group of Jewish persons who'd been living for 2 years in a Secret Annex, among them 15-year-old Anne Frank, was arrested in Amsterdam. Within half a year Anne (right) and her sister, Margot, would die in the Nazis' Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. In 1947, Anne's father published the diary she kept while in hiding. It's "been translated into 67 languages and is one of the most widely read books in the world."