Famous Documents

Question: Which of these documents was the last to be ratified?

Answer: The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was ratified in 1791. The other documents preceded it.

Question: Which document governed the first Puritan colony in Massachusetts?

Answer: The Pilgrims drew up the Mayflower Compact before building their first log cabin in 1620. This was a set of rules for governing their colony.

Question: What document did Thomas Jefferson write?

Answer: Thomas Jefferson of Virginia wrote the Declaration of Independence, by which the United States broke from its English colonial master.

Question: What is the earliest known system of laws?

Answer: Hammurabi was a ruler of ancient Babylon in about 1775 BCE. His code of laws was carved in 3,600 lines of cuneiform on stone.

Question: Who was the main author of The Communist Manifesto?

Answer: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels composed The Communist Manifesto in 1848. It is considered a founding document of the communist ideology.

Question: What document did Abraham Lincoln write?

Answer: Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address to commemorate the fallen at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.

Question: When was the Treaty of Versailles signed?

Answer: Signed in 1919, the Treaty of Versailles formally ended World War I. The treaty was signed in the French city of Versailles, near Paris.