FROM WIKIPEDIA COMMONS
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor. Slavery typically involves compulsory work with the slave’s location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery.
Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as a result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex. Slaves may be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom. Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay a debt or earn money due to poverty. In the course of human history, slavery was a typical feature of civilization, and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime.
In chattel slavery, the slave is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes the conditions of unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure.
The Islamic Republic of Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially ban slavery. In 2007, “under international pressure”, its government passed a law allowing slaveholders to be prosecuted. However, in 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26% were children, were still enslaved throughout the world despite slavery being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50% of slaves provide forced labour, usually in the factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country’s economy. In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised countries, enslavement by debt bondage is a common form of enslaving a person, such as captive domestic servants, forced marriage, and child soldiers.
TODAY’S ALMANAC
Question of the Day
Advice of the Day
Home Hint of the Day
Word of the Day
Botanophobia
Fear of plants
Puzzle of the Day
Born
- Blaise Pascal (mathematician and physicist) – 1623
- Guy Lombardo (band leader) – 1902
- Lou Gehrig (baseball player) – 1903
- Salman Rushdie (author) – 1947
- Phylicia Rashad (actress) – 1948
- Kathleen Turner (actress) – 1954
- Paula Abdul (singer & television personality) – 1962
- Blake Woodruff (actor) – 1995
Died
- J. M. Barrie (author) – 1937
- Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (convicted spies) – 1953
- Ed Wynn (actor) – 1966
- James Gandolfini (actor) – 2013
Events
- First real baseball game with set rules was played in Hoboken, New Jersey– 1846
- Slavery abolished in U.S. territories– 1862
- The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington – 1910
- The U.S. government adopted an 8-hour day for all its employees– 1912
- Mine disaster occurred in Hillcrest, Alberta– 1914
- Establishment of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States, regulating interstate and foreign communications by radio, telegraph and cable– 1934
- Wham-O filed to register Hula Hoop trademark– 1958
- Garfield the Cat made his comic strip debut– 1978
- A 5.0-magnitude earthquake hit off the northern California coast– 2005
Weather
- New Brunswick, New Jersey, was hit by a tornado– 1835
- Cloudburst near Custer Creek, Montana, dumped an estimated 4 to 7 inches of rain– 1938
- Hurricane struck fishing fleet from Escuminac, New Brunswick– 1959
- 100 degrees F, Billings, Montana– 1989
- Close to 6 inches of rain fell within 75 minutes, Houston, Texas– 2006
