Britain's Queen Elizabeth led celebrations on Monday to mark 800 years since the sealing of the Magna Carta, one of the world's most significant historical documents and credited with paving the way for modern freedoms and human rights. On June 15, 1215, in fields by the banks of the River Thames at Runnymede to the west of London, England's King John agreed to the demands of his rebelling barons and accepted the Magna Carta, Latin for "Great Charter", which for the first time placed the monarch under the rule of law.
In the centuries since, it has taken on huge global significance, becoming the basis for the US Bill of Rights, the US Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Three of its 63 clauses still remain on Britain's statute book. "What happened in these meadows eight centuries ago is as relevant today as it was then. And that relevance extends far beyond Britain," British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
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