With all the monkey business constantly flooding all lanes of media, it would be easy to overlook significant milestones from the past.
The trial of Tennessee science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution was wrapping up a century ago this weekend. Tomorrow will be one hundred years since defense attorney Clarence Darrow called, as his only witness, prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, and choreographed a self-destruction of possibly the most prominent religious fundamentalist of that age.
Though the trial is viewed by history as a victory of science over the teaching of folklore as literal reality, the defendant was actually found guilty, and the law was not overturned until decades later. Stranger yet, there are still many in this country that would, given the chance, reinstate such laws.
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