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It’s been said that there’s no time like the present. But where we are now is often the result of where we’ve been in the past. With that in mind, Briefly Legal invites you to travel back in time to take a look at what happened during this week in legal history:

Tin  soldiers: Friday marks the 42^nd anniversary of the Kent State shootings, in which 28 members of the Ohio National Guard fired on university students who were protesting the Vietnam War. The shootings killed four students, wounded eight and paralyzed another. The university had banned protests after student riots on campus a couple of days earlier. On the day of the shootings some 2,000 students had gathered to protest, some of whom threw rocks at the Guardsmen. The eight Guardsman charged in the shootings were acquitted in the students’ deaths in federal court.

May I have this dance?: On May 7, 1789, President George Washington began what would become the presidential tradition of the inaugural ball. Washington was sworn in on April 30 and a celebration ball was held in his honor a week later. With Washington’s ball as a model, a similar inaugural event was held for James Madison a decade later, and the tradition began in earnest. Presidents Wilson and Harding cancelled their balls to save money, and Presidents Coolidge, Hoover and Roosevelt used theirs as an occasion to raise money for charity. President Clinton holds the record for the most inaugural balls in one night (15), followed by President Bush, who attended 11 inaugural parties in 1989.

Call to arms: Washington’s party never would have happened without a significant event on May 10, 1775. On that day, the Second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia to manage the war that had begun April 19 with the Battle of Lexington and Concord. The Congress crafted an army from an untrained, rag-tag group of militia in Boston, and placed Washington in charge of the Continental Army that eventually drove the British from Boston.

Thanks to History.com for this week’s legal tidbits.