Late May – Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
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- May 17, 1794 – Anna Brownell Jameson born in Dublin; British author, early feminist; considered the first British art historian; The Diary of an Ennuyée, The Loves of the Poets, Characteristics of Women
- May 17, 1836 – Virginie Loveling born, Belgian poet, novelist, and children’s author under the pen name W. E. C. Walter
- May 17, 1838 – Mary Edwards Bryan born, American journalist, editor, and prolific novelist; editor for several different publications; one of the best paid editors in New York in 1891
- May 17, 1860 – Charlotte Barnum born, American mathematician and social activist; after being turned down for graduate studies at Johns Hopkins University because they did not accept women, she persisted, and became the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale University (1895); from 1901 to 1913, she worked in Washington DC, for U.S. Naval Observatory, U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and U.S. Department of Agriculture; one of the first women members of the American Mathematical Society
- May 17, 1863 – Rosalía de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos, the first book in the Galician language – celebrated as a national holiday in Galicia since 1963 as Día del las Letras Galegas
- May 17, 1873 – Dorothy Richardson born, British feminist writer and journalist; author of a series of 13 novels collectively called Pilgrimage, one of the first modernist novelists to use stream of consciousness as a narrative technique
- May 17, 1899 – Carmen de Icaza born, later Baroness of Claret; Spanish journalist and novelist; (1925-1930) worked for newspaper El Sol; noted for her novel, Cristina Guzmán
- May 17, 1903 – Lena Levine born, psychiatrist and gynecologist, director of Margaret Sanger Research Bureau of New York; pioneer in marriage counseling and birth control development
- May 17, 1912 – Mary B. Davidson Kenner born, African American inventor most noted for developing the sanitary belt with a moisture-proof napkin pocket, but the company that first showed interest in her invention rejected it after discovering that she was a black woman, so it wasn’t used until 30 years after she invented it; she earned her living as a professional floral arranger, eventually owning her own business
- May 17, 1956 – Annise Parker born, American Democratic politician and LGBT activist; second woman Mayor of Houston (2010-2016); Houston City Controller (2004-2010); Houston City Council member (1998-2004)
- May 17, 1962 – Lisa Lyng Falkenberg born, Danish writer of fantasy fiction, rock musician biographies, literary studies; freelance journalist
- May 17, 1962 – Rosalind Picard born, American computer scientist and engineer, pioneer of affective computing, which recognizes the importance of emotion in human communication; her work expanded into the fields of autism and developing devices to help humans recognize emotional nuances; Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT; co-founder of Affectiva; since 2005, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
- May 17, 2004 – First legal same-sex marriages in U.S. are performed in Massachusetts
- May 17, 2012 – A report on American Roman Catholic nuns from the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog, the Congress for the Doctrine of the Faith, which, without precedent, was publicly released by the United States Conference of Bishops, causes controversy. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents over 80% of Roman Catholic nuns in the U.S., who have been vocal about social justice issues, were praised for their work with the needy, but taken to task for being unacceptably silent on issues like opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion. The Vatican ordered American nuns to focus more on promoting church orthodoxy
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- May 18, 1852 — Gertrude Käsebier born, American photographer, known for portraits of mothers and Native Americans, promoted photography as an occupation for women
- May 18, 1867 – Elisabeth L. Cary born, American author, literary critic, and translator; wrote and published a small art monthly called the Scrip (1905-1907); notable art critic for the New York Times for 28 years
- May 18, 1886 – Jeanie MacPherson born, American woman who wrote, directed and starred in her own silent film, The Tarantula, then focused on screenwriting; she wrote the scripts for thirty of Cecil B. DeMille’s silent films; a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
- May 18, 1907 – Irene Hunt born, American author, historical novels written for children; won the 1965 Newbery Medal for Across Five Aprils, and the 1967 Newbery Medal winner for Up a Road Slowly
- May 18, 1910 – Ester Boserup born, Danish economist who worked for international organizations, including the United Nations; author of seminal books on agrarian change and the importance of women’s work; Women’s Role in Economic Development was one of the inspirations for the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985)
- May 18, 1919 – Dame Margot Fonteyn born, British ballerina, appointed Prima Ballerina Assoluta of The Royal Ballet; she was in her 40s when she danced with Rudolf Nureyev — her first appearance in Swan Lake was the year Nureyev was born
- May 18, 1922 – Gerda Boyesen born, Norwegian psychologist, founder of Biodynamic Psychology
- May 18, 1925 – Lillian Hoban, American author, illustrator, and dancer with the Martha Graham troupe; children’s picture book series, Arthur the Chimpanzee and Frances the Badger
- May 18, 1938 – Janet Fish born, American realist artist, primarily of still life paintings, often incorporating light reflecting off water or plastic wrap
- May 18, 1952 – Diane Duane born, American sci-fi and fantasy author; Young Wizards series
- May 18, 1952 – Jeana Yeager born, American aviator, co-pilot with Dick Rutan on first non-stop, non-fueled flight around the world in Rutan Voyager
- May 18, 1953 – Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman pilot to break the sound barrier
- May 18, 1956 – Catherine Corsini born, French film director and screenwriter; known for Replay and Three Worlds
- May 18, 1957 – Dame Henrietta Moore born, British social anthropologist and author; director of the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College, London; William Wyse Director of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (2009-2014); Still Life: Hopes Desires and Satisfactions
- May 18, 1967 – Nina Björk born, Swedish left-wing equity feminist, author and columnist; noted for the feminist book Under det rosa täcket (Under the Pink Duvet)
- May 18, 1967 – Nancy Juvonen born, American film producer; co-founder of the Flower Films production company
- May 18, 1970 – Tina Fey born, American comedian, writer, and producer; first female head writer for Saturday Night Live (1999); creator of the comedy series 30 Rock (2006-2013); winner of 9 Primetime Emmy Awards, 3 Golden Globe Awards, 5 Screen Actors Guild Awards, and 7 Writers Guild of America Awards; and youngest winner of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (2010)
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- May 19, 1861 – Dame Nellie Melba born, Australian soprano, first internationally recognized Australian operatic soprano
- May 19,1879 – Nancy Astor born in America, English politician; first woman MP in the British House of Commons
- May 19, 1903 – Ruth Ella Moore born, American bacteriologist, first African-American woman to earn a PhD in a natural science; head of the Department of Bacteriology at Howard University (1955-1973); worked on tuberculosis, immunology, dental caries and African-American blood types
- May 19, 1920 – Tina Strobos born, Dutch physician-psychiatrist who, with her mother and grandmother, rescued over 100 Jewish refugees as part of the Dutch resistance during the WWII Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, hiding them in a secret compartment in her attic, and forging passports to help them get out of the country; she was arrested and interrogated nine times by the Gestapo, but never betrayed anyone involved; after the war, she emigrated to the U.S.; in 1989, she was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, and in 1998, received the Elizabeth Blackwell Medal for her medical work
- May 19, 1930 – Lorraine Hansberry born, first African-American woman playwright to get a play produced on Broadway, A Raisin in the Sun, named Best Play of 1959 by the N.Y. Drama Critics Circle, nominated for four Tony awards, and had a run of 530 performances
- May 19, 1930 – White women win voting rights in South Africa, after a campaign first started by women reformers campaigning against alcohol
- May 19, 1932 – Elena Poniatowska born in France, Mexican author and journalist; first woman to win Mexico’s Premio Nacional de Periodismo (National Journalism Prize), and numerous other awards, including the 2006 International Women’s Media Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award
- May 19, 1941 – Nora Ephron born, American author, journalist, director, producer, and screenwriter; Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle
- May 19, 1946 – Nederlandse Vereniging voor Seksuele Hervorming (NVSH), the Dutch Society for Sexual Reform, is founded, a birth control organization which becomes the only source of condoms in the Netherlands. It will gain 220, 000 members and run over 60 birth control clinics at its height. Contraceptives become legal in the Netherlands in 1970, causing membership to drop to only a few hundred by 2008
- May 19, 1952 – Lillian Hellman states in letter to U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities she refuses to testify against friends and associates: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”
- May 19, 1953 – Victoria Wood born, English comedian, singer-songwriter, TV sketch writer, producer and director, one of Britain’s most popular stand-up comics; winner of four BAFTA TV awards
- May 19, 1966 – Jodi Picoult born, American author and feminist; advocate for literary gender parity and advisory board member of Vida: Women in the Literary Arts; has spoken out against the death penalty; co-founder of the Trumbull Hall Troupe (theatre for kids); My Sister’s Keeper, The Tenth Circle, Change of Heart
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- May 20, 1768 – Dolley Payne Madison born, American First Lady whose efforts saved the portrait of George Washington and other national treasures in 1814 when the British set fire to Washington DC, including the Executive Mansion, during the War of 1812 – only a sudden heavy storm saved the city from total destruction
- May 20, 1825 – Antoinette Brown Blackwell born, American women’s rights activist, writer and orator; first U.S. woman ordained as a mainstream Protestant minister; wrote for Frederick Douglass' abolitionist paper, The North Star. She spoke at the first National Women’s Rights Convention (1850). Her speech was well received and marked the beginning of a speaking tour addressing abolition, temperance, and women's rights.
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May 20,1872 – Madeline McDowell Breckinridge born, American social reformer; advocate for child welfare, women’s rights and tuberculosis treatment; co-founder of the Women’s Emergency Committee in Kentucky, which successfully campaigned for playgrounds and kindergartens in poorer districts and legislation setting up a juvenile court system, regulating child labour, and compelling school attendance. Helped establish and served on the Kentucky Tuberculosis Commission, co-chair of fundraising for the Blue Grass Sanitorium; advocate for woman suffrage, helped win Kentucky women the right to vote in school elections; vice president of National American Woman Suffrage Association 1913-1915, and largely credited with ratification of the 19th Amendment by the Kentucky legislature in 1920
- May 20, 1875 – Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of Abraham Lincoln, after being forcibly taken to the Chicago courthouse the day before, is put on trial to determine her sanity. This is arranged without her knowledge by her only surviving son, attorney Robert Todd Lincoln. The “defense attorney” arranged by Robert, a friend of the family, doesn’t contest the case, allowing 17 witnesses to testify against his “client” and calls no witnesses of his own. Robert Lincoln testifies, “I have no doubt that my mother is insane. She has long been a source of great anxiety to me.” Mary Lincoln is declared incompetent to testify on her own behalf. She did have a long history of migraine headaches, and the primary drug for pain relief at that time was laudanum, an opiate, but most of her questionable behavior was better described as “eccentric.” The verdict of insanity puts Robert Lincoln is control of his mother’s finances, and requires that she be committed to the State Hospital for the Insane, but she is allowed to stay in a private hospital if finances allow. Robert commits her to Bellevue Place, where patients are routinely given drugs or physically restrained, but as a former First Lady she’s allowed to do what she was convicted of failing to do: live the normal life of an upper class woman of the 19th century. She visits the wife of the superintendent, “takes the air” in their carriage, spends time with their retarded daughter Blanche, and writes letters. Robert visits his mother often, but she hides her plans to get out behind a subdued demeanor. With the help of lawyers James and Myra Bradwell, Mary Lincoln gains a release from her indefinite confinement. Myra Bradwell tells a Chicago newspaper reporter, "Mary Lincoln is no more insane than I am." Mrs. Lincoln leaves Bellevue Place on September 11, 1875, released into the custody of her sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth and Ninian Edwards. And on June 15, 1876, she is officially declared sane in a Chicago court.
- May 20, 1882 – Sigrid Undset born, Norwegian novelist; 1928 Nobel Prize for Literature winner; known for her trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter
- May 20, 1894 – Adela Rogers St. John born, journalist, author and screen writer, dubbed "The World's Greatest Girl Reporter" in the 1920s, covered the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, the abdication of Edward VIII, and Dempsey-Tunney boxing match; also wrote many ‘sob sister’ celebrity interviews as well as short stories for Cosmopolitan and The Saturday Evening Post
- May 20, 1899 or 1900 – Lydia Cabrera born, Cuban artist and writer, pioneer in preserving Afro-Cuban culture, beliefs, rituals, songs, stories, and language
- May 20, 1901 – Doris Fleeson born, American journalist and columnist; co-author with her then-husband of “Capital Stuff” for the New York Daily News (1933-1942); she was a WWII war correspondent in France and Italy (1943-1945); after the war, wrote a political column for The Boston Globe and Washington Evening Star, becoming the first U.S. woman to have a nationally syndicated column when the Bell syndicate picked it up, and it ran in 100 newspapers by 1960; Member of the Women’s National Press Club
- May 20, 1904 – Margery Allingham born, English author of detective fiction; noted for her Albert Campion mysteries
- May 20, 1911 – Annie M. G. Schmidt born, Dutch children’s author, poet, songwriter and screenwriter; included in the Canon of Dutch History as a national icon
- May 20, 1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day
- May 20, 1941 – Maria Liberia Peters born, Netherlands Antilles Prime Minister (1984-86 and 1988-94); education advocate; Council of Women World Leaders member
- May 20, 1946 – Cher born as Cherilyn Sarkisian, American singer-songwriter, actress and producer; one of the best-selling music artists in history, she is also the winner of a Grammy, an Emmy, three Golden Globes, and an Oscar for Best Actress in Moonstruck; her charitable foundation supports health research, anti-poverty initiatives, veterans rights, and protection of vulnerable children, humanitarian efforts in Armenia, and Habitat for Humanity; she serves as an honorary chair of Habitat’s “Raise the Roof” campaign
- May 20, 1949 – Michèle Roberts born, British-French essayist, novelist and poet; a socialist and feminist, she was the poetry editor (1975-1977) at the feminist magazine, Spare Rib; her novel Daughters of the House was shortlisted for the Booker Prize
- May 20, 1996 – The U.S Supreme Court rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians
- May 20, 2014 – Hominin fossils of very early human ancestors have been found in the Turkana Basin in Northern Kenya; on this day, Dr. Sonia Harmand and Dr. Jason Lewis of Stony Brook University’s West Turkana Archaeological Project announce discovery of tools found near Lake Turkana dated to 3.3 million years ago, making them the oldest tools yet discovered
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- May 21, 1780 – Elizabeth Fry born, English philanthropist, Quaker and prison reformer, called “angel of prisons” for tirelessly campaigning for more sanitary and humane conditions, especially for women and children, gaining support of such national figures as Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria; funded a school for children living in prisons where their mothers are imprisoned; founded the ‘Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate’ which provided materials for women inmates to learn sewing and knitting in order to earn money after their release. In 1835, she testified before the House of Commons Parliamentary committee, established to investigate "The State of Gaols in England and Wales"
- May 21, 1799 – Mary Anning born, British fossil collector and paleontologist, made a number of important finds, and although her discoveries were widely known, she was not permitted to join Geological Society of London because she was a woman; did she always receive credit for her work, and sometimes it was misattributed
- May 21, 1832 – Elizabeth Storrs Mead born, American academic, Mount Holyoke College President (1890-1900)
- May 21, 1856 – Grace Hoadley Dodge born, American philanthropist and organizer, founder of the first working girls society in New York City, the Association of Working Girls’ Societies; she was the main source of funds for the NY College for the Training of Teachers; the founder of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA)
- May 21, 1864 – Princess Stéphanie of Belgium born, Crown Princess of Austria, and inventor;
- she took out patents on a combination chafing dish and spirit lamp
- May 21, 1881 – Clara Barton establishes American Red Cross in Washington, D.C.
- May 21, 1901 – Baroness Suzanne Lilar born, Belgian journalist, author and playwright, member of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature; Le Divertissement portugais
- May 21, 1918 – US House of Representatives passes amendment allowing women to vote by 274 to 136. Jeannette Rankin (R-Montana, where women got the vote in 1914), the first woman to serve in Congress, spoke: “How shall we answer their challenge, gentlemen: how shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?” The amendment fails to pass in the Senate, and has to be introduced all over again in 1919
- May 21, 1923 – Dorothy Hewitt born, Australian poet, novelist, playwright and feminist; while working under pen names for the Communist paper, The Tribune, she also working in a clothing factory, so her first novel, Bobbin Up, is semi-autographical; she became disillusioned with the Communist Party in the 1960s, and renounced her membership after the Soviet Army’s brutal suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968; her collection of poems, Rapunzel in Suburbia, was published in 1975, and Virago Press published her autobiography Wild Card
- May 21, 1934 – Jocasta Innes born, Chinese-English journalist and author, Pauper’s Cookbook, Pauper’s Homemaking Book and the Country Kitchen
- May 21, 1944 – Mary Robinson born, first woman President of Ireland (1990-1997), graduate of Harvard Law School, advocate for gender equality, and women’s participation in peace-building and human rights expansion; UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002)
- May 21, 1944 – Haleh Afshar born in Iran, Baroness Afshar, British academic and life peer in the House of Lords; prominent Shi’a Muslim feminist; educated in England, earning a PhD from New Hall, Cambridge; in Iran, she worked as a civil servant in land reform, and as a journalist, one of the first cohort of Iranian women to vote, but left during the Iranian Revolution; professor of women’s studies at the University of York; appointed to the board of the Women’s National Commission in 2008, and a founding member of the Muslim Women’s Network
- May 21, 1947 – Linda Laubenstein born, American physician, specialist in hematology and oncology, and early HIV/AIDS researcher and activist, one of the first U.S. doctors to recognize the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s; co-author of the first article linking AIDS with Kaposi’s sarcoma; a childhood bout of polio left her paraplegic, and in a wheelchair for the remainder of her life; she died suddenly at age 45 of a heart attack
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May 21, 1958 – Muffy Thomas Calder born in Canada, Scottish computer scientist and academic; since 2005, Vice-Principal and Head of College of Science and Engineering, as well as Professor of Formal Methods at the University of Glasgow; Chief Scientific Advisor to the Scottish Government (2012-2015)
- May 21, 1973 – Eleven months after Title IX becomes effective, Swimmer Lynn Genesko receives first athletic scholarship awarded to a woman (University of Miami)
- May 21, 2001 – France's Taubira law, named for French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, officially recognizes the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity
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- May 22, 1814 – Amalia Lindegren born, Swedish painter, one of only four women given a dispensation to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts (1849-1850), and the first woman to be given a scholarship by the academy to study art in Paris (1850-1853)
- May 22, 1844 – Mary Cassatt born, American expat painter and printmaker, one of the one of “les trois grandes dames” of the French Impressionist movement. The Paris Salon accepted her paintings for exhibitions in 1872, 1873 and 1874
- May 22, 1846 – Rita Cetina Gutiérrez born, Mexican teacher, poet and pioneering Mexican feminist who promoted secular education; opened La Siempreviva (‘everlasting’), Mexico’s first secular school for poor girls, and an art college for young women; established simultaneously a scientific and literary society and a newspaper of the same name, specifically written for young women
- May 22, 1907 – Edith Margaret Faulstich born, American philatelist and philatelic journalist and editor, a specialist in postal history and postal covers; a founding member of the Postal History Society of the Americas, and its first woman president
- May 22, 1909 – Margaret Brown Mee born, British botanical artist, environmentalist and trade unionist, specialist in plants of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, after moving to Brazil in 1952, worked as a botanical artist for São Paulo's Instituto de Botanica (1958-1964), creating 400 folios of gouache illustrations, 40 sketchbooks and 15 diaries of her explorations; one of the first people protest the impact of large-scale mining and deforestation on the Amazon Basin; Flowers of the Brazilian Forests and The Diaries of Margaret Mee
- May 22, 1930 – Marisol Escobar born in Paris, French sculptor of Venezuelan heritage who worked in New York City; feminist who used exaggerated, stylized feminine poses and behaviors in several satirical works
- May 22, 1943 – Betty Williams born, Northern Irish peace activist, co-founder with Mairead Corrigan of the Community of Peace People; co-recipient of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize; co-founder of the Nobel Women’s Initiative in 2006 with Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Jody Williams and Rigoberta Menchú Tum, to support women’s rights campaigns around the world
- May 22, 1946 – Lyudmila Zhuravleva born, Ukrainian astronomer; at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, she discovered 213 minor planets and asteroids
- May 22, 1950 – Irène Frain born, French novelist, journalist and historian; founding member of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society; Le Nabab (The Nabob); advocate and activist for the Tibetan cause and Aid to Tibetan Children
- May 22, 1956 – Lucie Brock-Boido born, American poet who published four collections of poetry; winner of the Witter-Bynner Prize for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim fellowship
- May 22, 1959 – Mehbooba Mufti born, Indian politician, the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir since 2016, and the second Muslim woman chef minister in India; president of the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party, and a member of the Indian Parliament (2004-2009)
- May 22, 1976 – Cheyenne Carron born, French film director, screenwriter and producer; noted for her film Jeunesse aux coeurs ardents (Youth with Burning Hearts)
- May 22, 2009 – In Washington state, Linda Fleming, a 66-year-old woman with pancreatic cancer, becomes the first assisted suicide under the state’s “Death With Dignity” law
- May 22, 2012 – British Naval Commander Sarah West becomes the first woman appointed to take command of major British warship, the HMS Portland
- May 22, 2015 – The Republic of Ireland becomes the first nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in a public referendum
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- May 23, 1430 – Joan d’Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to raise the Siege of Compiègne; they sell her to the English
- May 23, 1810 – Margaret Fuller born, journalist, editor, author, women’s rights advocate, wrote Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the first major U.S. feminist work. She was the first editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial (1840). By her 30s, Fuller was considered the best-read person in New England, male or female, and was the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College. She joined the New York Tribune staff under Horace Greeley (1844), became one of the first American literary critics, then both the first American female foreign correspondent and first American woman war correspondent while traveling in England, France. and Italy, reporting on the Italian States Revolution of 1848, sending back eye-witness accounts of the uprising in Rome. She met Giovanni Angelo, the Marchese d'Ossoli, a liberal revolutionary who was ten years younger. They became lovers, had a son (1848), and married the next year. After the Roman uprising was put down, they fled to Florence (1849). When the family sailed for the U.S., their ship ran aground in a storm off Fire Island, NY, in July 1850. Their bodies were never found
- May 23, 1827 – The first U.S. nursery school is established in New York by Joanna Bethune and Hannah L. Murray, “to relieve parents of the laboring classes from the care of their children while engaged in the vocations by which they lived, and provide for the children, a protection from the weather, from idleness and the contamination of evil example besides affording them the means of early and efficient education.” Almost 500 children of mothers working to support their families were cared for in the first two years
- May 23, 1842 – Maria Konopnicka born, Polish poet, novelist, translator, journalist and women’s rights activist
- May 23, 1846 – Arabella Mansfield born Belle Aurelia Babb, the first U.S. woman to pass the bar exam; though she never used her law degree, but taught English and History at Simpson College and Iowa Wesleyan; later served as a dean in both the music and art schools at DePauw University; helped organize the Iowa Suffrage Society
- May 23, 1855 – Isabella Ford born, English author, lecturer, suffragist and social reformer, worked with female mill workers and trade unionists; the first woman to speak at a Labour Representation Committee conference (now the British Labour Party)
- May 23, 1879 – Elizabeth Gunn born, New Zealand pediatrician and children’s health pioneer; served in WWI as a captain in the New Zealand Medical Corps; after the war, she was employed by the school medical service, and set up “health camps” for malnourished children to spend 3 weeks eating nourishing food, and getting fresh air and sunshine, eventually organized as the National Federation of Health Camps
- May 23, 1908 – Hélène Boucher born, notable French aviator and aerobatics pilot, who set several women’s world speed records, and held the international (male or female) record for speed over 621 mph (1,000 km) in 1934; after she was killed in a plane crash, she was the first woman to lie in state at Les Invalides
- May 23, 1910 – Margaret Wise Brown born, children’s book author, Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny
- May 23, 1914 – Barbara Ward born, English economist, journalist, lecturer, advocate of sustainable development
- May 23, 1914 – Celestine Sibley born, American journalist for the Atlanta Constitution (1941-1999), covering the Georgia General Assembly, and author of Children, My Children, which won the 1982 Townsend Prize for Fiction
- May 23, 1919 – Ruth Fernández born, Puerto Rican contralto, known as "La Negra de Ponce" who wrote racial barriers as the first Afro-Puerto Rican female singer to gain popularity and success at home and on tour in Latin American and the U.S.; as a member of the Puerto Rican Senate (1973-1981), she campaigned for many reforms, including better working conditions
- May 23, 1923 – Alicia de Larrocha born, Spanish pianist, “greatest Spanish pianist in history”
- May 23, 1926 – Aileen Clarke Hernandez born, union organizer, civil rights activist, 2nd NOW national president, co-founder Black Women Organized for Action, San Francisco
- May 23, 1940 – Cora Sadosky born, Argentinian mathematician and academic, left Argentina because of political unrest, Professor of Mathematics at Howard University in the 1980s; Appointed to a visiting professorship for women from the National Science Foundation for 1983-1984 and again in 1995-1996; elected president of the Association for Women in Mathematics (1993-1995)
- May 23, 1956 – Ursula Plassnik born, Austrian diplomat and People’s Party politician; Austrian ambassador to Switzerland since 2016; Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2004-2008); Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel’s cabinet chief (1997-2004); member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
- May 21, 1961– Norrie May-Welby born in Scotland, Australian transsexual person who pursuedlegal status as being neither a man or a woman from 2010 to 2014, when the HighCourt of Australia ruled in NSW Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages vNorrie that it is in the power of the New South Wales Registry of Births toregister May-Welby as ‘non-specific’; in 2017, began protesting the Australianmarriage law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, which prevents May-Welby and partner from obtaining a marriage license
- May 23, 1963 – Viviane Baladi born in Switzerland, French mathematician researching dynamical systems; a director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris since 1990, with a leave of absence to teach at the University of Geneva (1993-1999); author of Positive Transfer Operators and Decay of Correlation (2000)
- May 23, 1964 – Ruth Metzler born, Swiss politician and corporate executive; Vice President of Switzerland (2003); Minister of Justice and Police (1999-2003); Member of the Swiss Federal Council (1999-2003); working for the pharmaceutical company Novartis since 2005
- May 23, 2015 – Myanmar President Thein Sein implements controversial population control law requiring women to wait 3 years between births.
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- May 24, 1819 – Queen Victoria born, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and from 1876 on, also Empress of India; opposed to women's rights for all women, except herself
- May 24, 1830 – “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is published as a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale
- May 24, 1870 – Ynes Mexia born, Mexican-American botanist and explorer, discoverer of over 132,000 plant species, mostly in the Andes, providing research institution with vast collections of specimens with accurate and extensive annotations
- May 24, 1878 – Lillian Moller Gilbreth born, American psychologist, industrial engineer, efficiency expert and author; time-and-motion study pioneer; Cheaper by the Dozen
- May 24,1885 – Susan Sutherland Isaacs born, CBE, British educational psychologist and psychoanalyst, nursery school advocate
- May 24,1898 – Kathleen Hale born, British author, artist and illustrator; children’s book series Orlando the Marmalade Cat
- May 24, 1898 – Helen Taussig born, pioneer of pediatric cardiology; first woman full professor at Johns Hopkins (1959); co-creator of the Blalock-Taussig shunt, a surgical technique which corrected “blue baby” syndrome; contributed to the thalidomide ban; first female president of American Heart Association (1965); awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
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May 24, 1902 – Sylvia Daoust born, French Canadian sculptor, one of the first women sculptors in Québec; noted for portrait busts; lived to age 104
- May 24, 1930 – Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia when she lands in Darwin, Northern Territory
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May 24, 1933 – Jane Byrne born, American politician, first woman elected Mayor of Chicago (1979-1983); Chicago’s Consumer Affairs commissioner (1968-1977)
- May 24, 1935 – Joan Micklin Silver born, American director and screenwriter; Hester Street
- May 24, 1941 – Patricia Hollis born, Baroness of Heigham; British Labour politician, historian, and member of the House of Lords since 1990; Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and author of several books on women’s history and labour history, including Jennie Lee: a life, which won the Orwell Prize for political biography
- May 24, 1946 – Tansu Çiller born, Turkish economist and politician, first female Prime Minister of Turkey (1993-1996); leader of the True Path Party, served concurrently as Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister and as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1996-1997)
- May 24, 1961 – Lorella Cedroni born, Italian political philosopher and theorist; author of books, articles and papers on political representation, gender studies, party systems in European countries, political language, electoral communication, and human rights
- May 24, 1963 – Valerie E. Taylor born, African American computer scientist, director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory since 2017; head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University (2003-2011); notable for work on high performance computing; fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and of the Association of Computing Machinery
- May 24, 1990 – Judi Bari, union organizer, feminist, and Earthfirst! nonviolent activist, driving in her car with fellow activist Darryl Cherney, is nearly killed when a pipe bomb hidden under her seat explodes in Oakland; they had been organizing for the Redwood Summer campaign, a grassroots effort to halt logging of the last remaining old-growth redwoods in California. Numerous threats had been made, and a timber worker had already run Bari’s car off an isolated rural road; the threats were reported to Oakland police, but there had been little response; within minutes after the explosion, the police and the FBI arrived on the scene – to arrest the injured activists for “transporting a bomb.” But law enforcement’s case fell apart when a letter from “The Lord’s Avenger” taking credit for the bombing, with credible details kept from the public, was sent to a newspaper reporter. Charges were dropped against Bari and Cherney, who sued the FBI and Oakland PD for violating their civil rights, finally being awarded $4.4 million in 2002 (posthumously to Bari’s estate, who died of cancer in 1997). No other arrests have ever been made in the case
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- May 25, 1680 – Elizabeth Haddon born, American colonialist, Quaker, founder of Haddon Township and Haddonfield, New Jersey; her courtship with John Estaugh is described in Longfellow’s poem “Elizabeth” from Tales of a Wayside Inn
- May 25, 1818 – Louise de Broglie born, Countess d'Haussonville, French essayist and biographer; granddaughter of saloniste and novelist Germaine de Staël; considered independent, liberal and outspoken, she wrote biographical sketches and biographies of people who interested her, from Irish nationalist Robert Emmet, Marguerite of Valois, literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, to Lord Byron (a two volume work, in which she used some of her grandmother’s observations and interactions with Byron)
- May 25, 1886 – Leta Stetter Hollingworth born, American psychologist; pioneer in psychology of women, clinical and educational psychology; did pioneering work with exceptional children
- May 25, 1887 – Sue Shelton White born, American feminist leader and lawyer; editor of the National Woman’s Party’s newspaper, The Suffragist; arrested in 1919 for burning a paper effigy of Woodrow Wilson during a protest in front of the White House – after her release from jail, traveled with other arrestees on a train tour of the U.S. they called the “Prison Special” to keep the suffrage issue before the public; earned a law degree in 1923, helping to draft the Equal Rights Amendment (E.R.A.); worked for the Democratic National Committee and Eleanor Roosevelt; was on legal staff for the Social Security Administration (1935), then principle attorney for the Federal Security Agency, until she became ill with cancer
- May 25, 1905 – Dorothy Porter Wesley born, librarian, curator and historian, one of the first African- American women to earn a master’s degree in library science (Howard University, 1932). As curator of the Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University, she helped make it a world renowned resource on the history and culture of African-Americans
- May 25, 1910 – Mary Keyserling born, economist, Director of the Women’s Bureau of the Labor Department (1964-1969), Executive Director of the National Consumers’ League (1938), and personal adviser to Eleanor Roosevelt in the Office of Civilian Defense
- May 25, 1925 – Rosario Castellanos born, Mexican poet, author; her work deals with cultural and gender oppression; one of Mexico’s most important 20th century literary figures
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May 25, 1926 – Phyllis Gotlieb born, Canadian science fiction novelist and poet; won the Prix Aurora Award for Best Novel in 1982 for her novel A Judgement of Dragons; The Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is named for her first novel in 1964, Sunburst; much of her poetry is collected in Red Blood Black Ink White Paper: New and Selected Poems 1961-2001
- May 25, 1928 – Mary Wells Lawrence born, first American woman executive of an advertising firm, first female CEO of a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, named Advertising Woman of the Year (1971)
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May 25,1929 – Beverly Sills born, leading American lyric coloratura soprano; after retiring from the stage, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera, then chair of Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera; devoted time to arts and charity causes, especially the March of Dimes
- May 25, 1938 – Margaret Forster born, English novelist, biographer, and historian; best known for her novel Georgy Girl
- May 25, 1941 – Uta Frith born, German developmental psychologist and author, pioneer in research on autism (initiated theory of mind deficit, and was one of the first to study Asperger’s syndrome) and has also studied dyslexia; on faculty of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London; advocate for the advancement of women in science, one of the developers of the support network Science & Shopping, and co-founder of the UCL Women network; elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005, and as chair of the Royal Society’s Diversity Committee in 2015, wrote about unconscious bias and its effect on which scientists receive grants
- May 25, 1947 – Catherine G. Wolf born, American psychologist, expert in human-computer interaction and author of over 100 research articles, she held six patents related to artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction and collaboration; known for work at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York; after she was diagnosed in 1997 with Amyotrophic lateral schlerosis (ALS aka Lou Gehrig’s disease), she was still able to communicate via electronic sensory equipment, including a sophisticated brain-computer interface. Even with almost no voluntary physical functions remaining, she published innovative research into fine-scale abilities of ALS patients, collaborating with scientists and designers on the programs and devices she used; she died in February, 2018, at the age of 70
- May 25,1948 – Marianne Elliott born, Irish historian and author brought up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, who has written extensively on Irish history, including biographies of Irish republican revolutionaries Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, and Catholics of Ulster: a history; served on the Opsahl Commission in 1993 and co-wrote its report “A Citizens’ Inquiry,” promoting peace efforts in Northern Ireland; in 2000, awarded an OBE for her services to Irish studies and the Northern Ireland peace process, and in 2002, elected as a Fellow of the British Academy
- May 25, 1949 – Jamaica Kincaid born in Antigua, fiction author, essayist, gardener and gardening writer, who lives in Vermont during the summer months; professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard during the academic year; 1997 Anisfield-Wolfe Book Award for The Autobiography of My Mother, 1999 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and the 2000 Prix Femina étranger for My Brother, among many other honors
May 25,1953 – Eve Ensler born, American playwright, feminist, activist and performer, best known for her play, The Vagina Monologues, and the V-Day movement to stop violence against women
May 25, 1958 – Dorothy Straight born, American children’s author, who wrote and illustrated her first book, How the World Began, in 1962 at the age of four, which was published in 1964, making her one of the youngest published authors in history
May 25, 1960 – Amy Klobuchar born, American prosecutor, Democraticpolitician and author; first woman elected as U.S. Senator from Minnesota,serving since 2007, and ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee since 2017
May 25, 1972 – Octavia Spencer born, American actress and children’s book author; one of two black actresses to be nominated for three Academy Awards (won Best Supporting Actress for The Help in 2012, and nominated for Hidden Figures in 2017 and The Shape of Water in 2018), the only black actress to be nominated for two consecutive Oscars; author of the Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective series,about an amateur detective who is a 12-year-old girl
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- May 26, 1647 – Alse Young is hanged in Hartford, Connecticut, becoming the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies
- May 26, 1689 – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu born, English poet and letter writer; “stole” her education from books in her father’s library, teaching herself Latin. Remembered for letters written home from the Ottoman Empire as the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, the first notable secular work by a woman about “the Muslim Orient” (Letters from Turkey). Also notable for introducing and campaigning for smallpox inoculation in Britain after her return from Turkey. In her writings, she addresses and challenges the hindering attitudes of her society toward women and their intellectual and social growth
- May 26,1881 – Julia C. Stimson born, American nurse, Major in the United States Army, superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during WWI, chief of the Nursing Council on National Defense during WWII, recipient of the Distinguished Service Medal as well as Victory Medals for WWI and WWII
- May 26, 1883 – Mamie Smith born, American singer, pianist, and dancer; the first African American artist to make a vocal blues recording (1920)
- May 26, 1895 – Dorothea Lange born, American photographer and journalist; notable work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression
- May 26, 1899 – Muriel McQueen Fergusson born, Canadian politician, Senator and first woman Speaker of the Canadian Senate
- May 26, 1909 – Helen Moore Anderson born, American diplomat; President Truman appoints her as Ambassador to Denmark, first woman to serve as chief of mission at the level of ambassador (1949-1953). She learned Danish after her appointment. Appointed by President Kennedy as minister to Bulgaria (1962-1964), the first woman chief of a U.S. diplomatic mission behind the Iron Curtain; President Lyndon Johnson appointed her to the UN Trusteeship Council in 1965, where she was the first woman to sit on the Security Council; in 1966, served on the UN Committee for Decolonization
- May 26, 1916 – Helen Kanahele born, labor organizer in Hawaii, worked with the Women’s Auxiliary of the International Longshoreman’s and Warehousemen’s Union (1949-51) and the United Public Workers union, subpoenaed before the Territorial Committee on Subversive Activities in the 1950’s because of her labor organizing and opposition to the death penalty
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May 26, 1916 – Henriette Roosenburg born, journalist, Dutch resistance courier during WWII and political prisoner; tells the story in her memoir The Walls Came Tumbling Down; after WWII, she became a correspondent for Time Inc, in Paris, The Hague and New York; awarded the Bronze Lion of the Netherlands
- May 26, 1924 – Thelma Hill born, dancer, choreographer, educator, co-founder of N.Y. Negro Ballet Company (1954), founding member of dance troupe that became Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, after an injury she focused on teaching dance
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May 26, 1938 – Lyudmila Petrushevskaya born, Russian novelist and playwright; her work was often censored by the Soviet government, but she published a number of well-respected works of prose after perestroika; her memoir is The Girl from the Metropol Hotel
- May 26,1940 – Monique Gagnon-Tremblay born, French Canadian Liberal politician; member of the National Assembly of Quebec (1985-2012); Leader of the Opposition (1998)
- May 26, 1943 – Erica Terpstra born, Dutch politician of the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (WD); Undersecretary for Health, Welfare and Sport (1994-1998); member of the House of Representatives (1977-1994); was a swimmer at the 1960 and 1964 Summer Olympics
- May 26, 1947 – Carol O’Connell born, American crime fiction author, known for Kathy Mallory series, and the stand-alone novels, The Judas Child and Bone by Bone
- May 26, 1949 – Dame Anne McGuire born, British Labour politician; member of Parliament (1997-2015);Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (2005-2008)
- May 26, 1951 – Sally Ride born, American astrophysicist, first American woman astronaut in space; physics professor, member of committees to investigate the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters
May 26, 1953 – Kay Hagan born, American lobbyist and politician; joined lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in 2016; defeated Elizabeth Dole in 2008, the first woman to defeat an incumbent woman in a U.S. Senate race, for U.S. Senator from North Carolina (2009-2015); served in North Carolina Senate (1999-2009)
May 26, 1964 – Caitlín R. Kiernan born in Ireland, (alternate pen name Kathleen Tierney), American author of science fiction and dark fantasy, trained as a paleontologist, transsexual lesbian; noted for Silk, and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, which won the 2012 James Tiptree Jr. Award
May 26, 2009 – President Obama nominates federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court
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- May 27, 1792 – Julia Evelina Smith born, American suffragist, author and translator, known for Abby Smith and her Cows about the tax resistance struggle for suffrage that she and her sister fought, and for translating the Bible from the original languages
- May 27, 1812 – After an uprising in Cochabamba, Bolivia, is put down for a second time by Spanish General Goyeneche, the women of the city are gathered by Manuela Gandarilla, an old blind woman, to take up the arms of their dead and wounded in the Battle of La Coronilla, named for the hill where it is fought. They are slaughtered by the Spanish. Commemorated as Mothers’ Day, also known as “Day of the Heroines of Coronillas”
- May 27, 1818 – Amelia Bloomer born, American journalist, women’s rights activist; editor of The Lily, first newspaper specifically for women; advocate for female “rational dress”
- May 27, 1819 – Julia Ward Howe born, American poet and songwriter; wrote lyrics of The Battle Hymn of the Republic; first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame
- May 27, 1849 – Alzina Parsons Stevens born, American labor leader and journalist, notable for her work at Hull House and as a leader of the Knights of Labor
- May 27, 1861 – Victoria Earle Matthews born, American author, essayist, journalist, settlement worker and activist; founder of the White Rose Mission, a settlement house for young black women
- May 27, 1907 – Rachel Carson born, scientist, environmentalist and author, her book “The Silent Spring” became a cornerstone of the modern environmental protection movement
- May 27, 1909 – Mary Fieser born, organic chemist, co-wrote the textbook “Organic Chemistry” in 1944, and the series “Reagents for Organic Synthesis” (1967-1994) a constantly updated standard laboratory reference
May 27, 1931 – Faten Hamama born, Egyptian film and television actress and producer, a child actor who became an icon of Middle Eastern cinema; she fled the country in 1966 after being harassed by Egyptian Intelligence for her liberal views, but returned in 1971 after President Gamal Nasser’s death; in her films and television programs, she often criticized Egyptian laws that restricted women; her film Oridu Hallan (أريد حلاً, I Want a Solution) portrayed the hardships of an Egyptian woman unable to get a divorce from her husband because at the time, only men could file for divorce. After the success of the film, the Egyptian government changed the law to allow a woman to divorce her husbands, if she returned the mahr (dowry) he had given her
May 27, 1944 – Ingrid Roscoe born, English historian and politician, writer on English art and Lord Lieutenant of West Yorkshire
May 27, 1950 – Dee Dee Bridgewater born, American Jazz singer-songwriter; UN Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization
May 27, 1956 – Cynthia McFadden born, American television journalist; senior legal and investigative correspondent for NBC News since 2014; anchor and correspondent for ABC News, and co-anchor of Nightime (1994-2014); recipient of the 1995 George Foster Peabody Award
May 27, 1956 – Dame Rosemary Squire born, British theatre owner and producer; co-founder and joint chief executive of Trafalgar Entertainment Group Ltd, and of The Ambassador Theatre Group, which has venues in Britain, the U.S. and Australia, one of the most prolific theatre producers in the world
May 27, 1971 – Sophie Walker born, journalist and leader of the UK’s Women’s Equality Party since 2015; the WEP’s candidate in the 2016 London mayoral election; author of Grace Under Pressure, about her daughter who has Asperger’s syndrome, and an advocate for the National Autistic Society
May 27, 1975 – Feryal Özel born in Turkey; American astrophysicist specializing in the physics of compact objects and high energy astrophysical phenomena; recognized for her contributions to the field of neutron stars, black holes, and magnetars: currently a professor in the University of Arizona’s Astronomy Department and the Steward Observatory. Recipient of a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship (2002-2005) and the 2013 Maria Goeppert Mayer award from the American Physical Society
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- May 28, 1858 – Lizzie Black Kander born, American social reformer; working as a truant officer, she is appalled at the living conditions of immigrants, and joins the Milwaukee chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, which provides classes in sewing, cooking and English to Russian immigrants; Kander founds Milwaukee Jewish Settlement House, teaching cooking and nutrition classes there; compiles The Settlement Cookbook, its sales fund the settlement and allows it to move into larger facilities as it grows
- May 28, 1912 – Ruby Payne-Scott born, Australian physicist and astronomer, the first woman radio astronomer; noted for her work at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation solar bursts; she discovered Type I and Type III bursts, and contributed to work on Type II and IV bursts, and the development of the first radio astronomical interferometer observation
- May 28, 1913 – May Swenson born, poet, wrote 15 volumes of poetry (4 published posthumously); lover of nature; writer-in-residence at Bryn Mawr and Purdue University; Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
- May 28, 1922 – Lucille Kallen born, television comedy writer, novelist, wrote humorous skits with Mel Tolkin for Imogene Coca and Sid Caesar (1950-54), also wrote for Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, wrote mysteries in her late 70s
- May 28, 1936 – Betty Shabazz born, American civil rights activist; raised six daughters, and took college classes in her 30s to earn a PhD; Medgar Evers College Director of Institutional Advancement and Public Affairs (1980-1997); widow of Malcolm X
- May 28, 1940 – Maeve Binchy born, Irish author, playwright, columnist; one of Ireland’s most recognizable writers; 1999 British Book Award for Lifetime Achievement
- May 28, 1943 – Helen Hardin aka Tsa-sah-wee-eh ("Little Standing Spruce") born, contemporary painter who incorporated symbols and motifs from her Santa Clara Pueblo heritage in her work. Featured in 1976 PBS American Indian artists series
- May, 28, 1946 – Dame Janet Paraskeva born, British government official; chair of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission (2007-2012); Civil Service commissioner (2006-2007); previously served as a magistrate and member of the Youth Justice Board
- May 28, 1947 – Lynn Johnston born, Canadian cartoonist, known for her comic strip For Better or For Worse; first woman and first Canadian to win the National Cartoonist’s Society’s 1985 Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year
- May 28, 1952 – The women of Greece win the right to vote
- May 28, 1955 – Laura Amy Schiltz born, American children’s and young adult author and librarian; her books are often set in historical times, including Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, 2008 Newbery Medal winner, and The Hired Girl, winner of the 2015 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction; she also writes fantasy, like The Night Fairy
- May 28, 1965 – Mary Coughlan born, Irish politician; served as Teachta Dála (1987-2011), which is a member of Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament); where she served on a number of committees, and was appointed several different cabinet positions; she served as Tánaiste (second most-senior officer in the Irish government, from 2009 to 2010)
- May 28, 2014 – Menstrual Hygiene Day is created by NGO WASH United, a German-based group, with support from over 270 global partners, to end the isolation and shaming of women and girls as “unclean” during their monthly menses
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- May 29, 1851 – Sojourner Truth delivers her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio
- May 29, 1852 – Jenny Lind, the ‘Swedish Nightingale’ completes a very successful two-year American tour, and donates her considerable profits to charity
- May 29, 1861 – Dorothea Dix offers her help in setting up hospitals for Union Army
- May 29, 1876 – Helen Woodard Atwater born, author and editor, first full-time editor of the Journal of Home Economics
- May 29, 1892 – Alfonsina Storni born in Switzerland, Argentinean poet, journalist and feminist; important Argentine and Latin-American modernist poet; health issues, depression and economic hardship led her to commit suicide by drowning in the sea at age 46
- May 29, 1894 – Beatrice Lillie born in Canada, British comedic performer and singer, satirical lyrics and sketch writer; inveterate entertainer of WWII troops – before one performance she learned that her only son had been killed in action, but refused to cancel or postpone her appearance; won a Tony Award in 1953 for her revue, An Evening With Beatrice Lillie
- May 29, 1908 – Diana Morgan born, Welsh playwright and screenwriter for Ealing Studios; Bats in the Belfry, A Run for Your Money, Hand in Hand
- May 29, 1912 – Curtis Publishing fires 15 young women for dancing the “Turkey Trot” during their lunch break
- May 29, 1923 – Louisiana’s Attorney General declares it is legal for women to wear slacks in public
- May 29, 1935 – Sylvia Robinson born, American singer, record producer and co-founder/CEO of Sugar Hill Records, and founder of Bon Ami Records; dubbed the “Mother of Hip-Hop”
- May 29, 1943 – “Rosie the Riveter” by Norman Rockwell appears on the Saturday Evening Post cover
- May 29, 1945 – Joyce Tenneson born, American fine arts photographer; noted for her nude studies, and primarily using a large-format (20 X 24) Polaroid camera; recipient of the 1990 “Photographer of the Year” Award from Women in Photography International
- May 29, 1968 – Jessica Morden born, British Labour Party Member of Parliament for Newport East since 2005, the first woman MP in South Wales; on the board of The Young People’s Trust for the Environment
- May 29, 1968 – Hida Viloria born, Lantinx American writer and intersex/non-binary rights activist; author of Born Both: An Intersex Life; outspoken opponent to medically unnecessary genital surgeries and hormone therapies on intersex infants and minors
- May 29, 1974 – Jenny Willott born, British Liberal Democrat, Member of Parliament for Cardiff Central (2005-2015), the first woman elected to the seat; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment Relations, Consumer and Postal Affairs and Women and Equalities (2013-2014)
- May 29, 1977 – Janet Guthrie becomes the first woman to qualify for and complete in Indy 500 auto race
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- May 30, 1431 – Joan d’Arc, age 19, burned at the stake in Rouen, France, as a heretic. One of the charges against her was that she refused to give up wearing her soldier’s clothing after her arrest — she complained that her guards tried to rape her, but the Inquisitors continued to insist she should wear female garb. Later, the Inquisitor-General reversed all charges on appeal (1456), exonerating her 25 years after her death
- May 30, 1686 – Antonina Houbraken born, Dutch artist, portraitist and illustrator known for topographical drawings; many of her drawings were attributed to her husband until the recent discovery that drawings signed J.S. were actually hers, and drawings signed J:St were her husband’s work; her work is now regarded as more precise and detailed than his, and often includes human figures
- May 30, 1847 – Alice Stopford Green born, Irish historian and nationalist, supported the pro-Treaty side in the Irish Civil War and was among the first nominees to the newly formed Seanad Éireann in 1922, where she served as an independent member until her death; her books include Town Life in the Fifteenth Century and The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing
- May 30, 1869 – Grace Andrews born, American mathematician; PhD from Columbia in 1899; Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Barnard College (1900-1902); she and Charlotte Angas Scott are the only women listed in the first edition of American Men of Science, initially published in 1906
- May 30, 1874 – Josephine Preston Peabody born, American poet and playwright; won the Stratford-on-Avon prize for her drama The Piper
- May 30, 1901 – Cornelia Otis Skinner born, author, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
- May 30, 1907 – Germaine Tillion born, French anthropologist, ethnologist and French resistance member, for which she spent time in Ravensbrück concentration camp
- May 30 or 31, 1910 – Maria Teresa Babin born, Puerto Rican writer, poet, literary critic, and educator, taught in U.S. schools and universities as well as in Puerto Rico
- May 30, 1912 – Millicent Selsam born, American science teacher and children’s science book author; noted for Egg to Chick, her First Look series, and Biography of an Atom, which won the 1965 Thomas Alva Edison Award for best children’s science book
- May 30, 1918 – Guadalupe Amor Schmidtlein born,Mexican poet who used the pen name Pita Amor; she was called the “11thMuse” during her youth because she modeled for painters and photographers likeDiego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Raúl Anguiano, which scandalized herupper-class family; her poetry is notable for its direct expression aboutmetaphysical quandaries in first person voice; Yo soy mi casa, Poesía, and El Zoológico de Pita Amor
- May 30, 1927 – Joan L. Birman born, American mathematician, specialist in braid theory and knot theory; her book Braids, Links, and Mapping Class Groups, became the standard introductory text; on the Barnard faculty since 1973, now as Research Professor Emerita; awarded the 1996 Chauvenet Prize, given for the outstanding expository article on a mathematical topic
- May 30, 1928 – Agnès Varda born, Belgian director, producer, screenwriter and academic; her films focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary
May 30, 1932 – Pauline Oliveros born, American composer, pioneer in development of experimental and post-WWII electronic art music
- May 30, 1938 – Billie Letts born as Billie Dean Gipson, American novelist and university professor; Where the Heart Is, Shoot the Moon, Made in the U.S.A.
- May 30, 1946 – Candy Lightner born, political activist, founder of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)
- May 30, 1955 – Jacqueline McGlade born in Britain, Canadian marine biologist and environmental infomatics (applied science) professor, research focuses on spatial and nonlinear dynamics of ecosystems, climate change and scenario development; Chief Scientist and Director of the Science Division of the UN Environment Programme based in Nairobi (2014-2017); Executive Director of the European Environmental Agency (2003-2013); Professor at University College London Institute for Global Prosperity and Faculty of Engineering, and the Sekenani Research Centre of the Maasai Mara University, Kenya; 2013 Global Citizen Award, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation 1980 Award in Genetics
- May 30, 1955 – Dame Caroline Swift born, the Honorable Mrs. Justice Swift, noted as British leading counsel in the Shipman Inquiry (2001-2002), concerning Dr. Harold Shipman, horrific serial killer of at least 218 patients under his care, mostly elderly women; appointed as a Justice of the High Court, Queen’s Bench Division (2005-2015); chair of the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service since 2017
- May 30, 1963 – Helen Sharman born, British chemist and author, chosen out of almost 13,000 applicants to be Britain’s first astronaut for Project Juno; became the first woman to visit the Mir space station in 1991; presenter of science programmes for BBC radio and television; Operations Manager for the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London since 2015
- May 30, 1965 – Vivian Malone becomes the first black graduate from University of Alabama
- May 30, 1969 – Naomi Kawase born, Japanese film director of documentaries and feature films; 1997 Camera D’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival for Suzaku, the youngest winner of the Camera D’Or; won the 2007 Grand Prix at Cannes for The Mourning Forest, and the 2017 Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes for Radiance
May 30, 1975 – Marissa Mayer born, American information technology executive and computer scientist; president and CEO of Yahoo!, from 2012 until the sale of the company to Verizon in 2017; worked for Google (employee #20) from 1999 to 2012, leaving her position as VP of Google Search Products and User Experience (2005-2012) to take over as head of Yahoo!
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- May 31, 1443 – Margaret Beaufort born, English Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII, and influential matriarch of the House of Tudor; founder of St. John's and Christ's colleges at Cambridge; Lady Margaret Hall, the first Oxford college to admit women, was named for her
- May 31, 1531 – The "Women's Revolt" in Amsterdam. The Burgomasters ignored a petition by the pious women of Amsterdam not to desecrate a churchyard by building a wool storehouse there, and workmen began to dig the foundation. That night, 300 women with shovels replaced all the dirt
- May 31, 1824 – Jessie Ann Benton Frémont born, American author and activist, outspoken opponent of slavery, known for her writings about her husband, John C. Frémont, and their lives in the western U.S.
- May 31, 1827 – Kusumoto Ine born, Japanese physician, first woman doctor of Western Medicine in Japan
- May 31, 1854 – Mary Hannah Fulton born, American physician and medical missionary to China, established the Hackett Medical College for Women in Guangzhou, China
- May 31, 1862 – Cynthia W. Alden born, American author and journalist, worked for the New York Tribune and the Ladies Home Journal, founder of the Sunshine Society, a group which sent cards and letters to shut-ins, then expanded their mission to establish a sanatorium and a school for blind children, and advocated for legislation to provide care for blind children in 18 states
- May 31, 1879 – Frances Alda born, New Zealand-Australian operatic soprano, known for her outstanding voice and frequent partnerships with Enrico Caruso
- May 31, 1890 – Hilla Rebay born as Baroness Hildegard Anna Augusta Elisabeth Rebay von Ehrenwiesen, German-American abstract artist, co-founder and first director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
- May 31, 1912 – Chien-Shiung Wu born, renowned physicist, developed a process of enriching uranium to produce large quantities as fuel, worked on Manhattan Project during WWII, contributed to the development of the process for separating uranium metal into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. In 1956, Wu devised ‘the Wu experiment’ to prove the theory proposed by her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, which would overturn a widely accepted law of physics called the Parity Law, that objects which are mirror images of each other would behave in the same way. Wu’s experiment spun radioactive cobalt-60 nuclei at low temperatures. If the law held, the electrons would shoot off in paired directions. Wu’s experiment demonstrated that they did not. Her work was termed the most important development in the field of atomic and nuclear physics up to that time. Lee and Yang received the Nobel Prize for disproving the Parity Law, but Wu’s contribution was ignored by the Nobel Committee. She was the first woman instructor at Princeton’s University’s Physics Department, the first Chinese-American elected to National Academy of Science (1958), and the first woman elected President of American Physical Society (1975), received National Medal of Science (1975)
- May 31, 1924 – Patricia Harris born, lawyer and ambassador, 1st African-American woman to: hold a Cabinet position as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (1979-83); serve as an Ambassador (Luxembourg, 1965); and head a law school (Howard University, 1969)
- May 31, 1946 – Krista Kilvet born, Estonian radio journalist at Eesti Radio, politician, and a leader of the restored Women’s Union, Estonia’s women’s movement; elected to the Riigikogu (Estonian Parliament – 1992-1998); she was appointed in 2008 as the Estonian ambassador to Norway and Iceland, but was unable to assume the office because of kidney disease; died in January 2009
- May 31, 1948 – Svetlana Alexievich born, Belarusian investigative journalist and non-fiction writer in Russian about 20th century history; in 2015, became the first writer from Belarus to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature; her books Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War and Chernobyl Prayer/Voices from Chernobyl have been translated into English
- May 31, 1953 – Linda Riordan born, English Labour Co-operative politican; Member of Parliament for Halifax (2005-2015)
- May 31, 1955 – Lynne Truss born, English author,journalist, dramatist and radio broadcaster; best known for her 2003 book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
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