Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that the UDHR had the potential to be "the international Magna Carta for all men everywhere." That's a pretty ambitious goal.

The Magna Carta is one of the world's all-time most famous documents, right up there with the Rosetta Stone, the U.S. Constitution, and the transcript of Kanye's VMA Vanguard speech.

What makes something written by a bunch of crusty English elites in 1215 so important? The Magna Carta was the first time that a group of people in Europe had imposed limitations on the power of their own government. It was the first real constitution.

King John, the ruler of England at the time, faced a possible civil war when a bunch of English aristocrats, called barons, got annoyed with his policies, especially the taxes he imposed. In order to calm the waters, the king got together with the barons and signed a lengthy document (written entirely in Latin, by the way) that listed a bunch of rules about what he, the king, could and could not do. The document was revised several times in the years subsequent, and over time it became the basis of British law. Among its most enduring provisions are the right to a fair trial and prohibitions on excessive punishments.

Since Britain would go on to conquer and colonize a good portion of the world, the idea behind the Magna Carta would spread everywhere—including to America, where the Founding Fathers were inspired by the document to start their own revolution.

The Magna Carta differed from later documents like the UDHR in some significant ways. Most importantly, the 1215 document only gave rights to elites—that is, the barons who put it together. The idea of equal rights for women or people of lower status wasn't even on the radar, if they'd had radar in the 13th century.

It also differs in structure. While the UDHR breaks down rights into specific categories studied by the drafting committee, the Magna Carta reads like a rambling list of everything the barons could think of off the tops of their heads. It has everything in it from protection against excessive fines to a stipulation that towns can't be forced to build bridges over rivers.

Still, as strange as it might read today, the Magna Carta was downright revolutionary for medieval times. It was a major development in the (very early) history of human rights. Eleanor Roosevelt knew that, in comparing the UDHR to this document, she was putting some serious weight into her words.