Welcome to WOW2!
WOW2 is a thrice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from December 22 through December 31. The Early January WOW2 will post on Saturday, January 11, 2020.
The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.
For the entire previous LATE DECEMBER list as of 2018, click HERE:
www.dailykos.com/...
Otherwise, what you’re seeing on this Late December 2019 page are the NEW people and events, or additional information, found since last year.
This Week in the War on Women will post shortly, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
Late December’s 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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- December 22, 1853 – Teresa Carreño born, Venezuelan singer, composer, conductor and pianist.
- December 22, 1853 – Sarada Devi born, Indian mystic and spiritual consort of Saradamani Mukhopadhyay, who became the leader of the Ramakrishna movement after his death; she paved the way for Indian women to take up the monastic life.
- December 22, 1912 – “Lady Bird” Claudia Johnson born, American who was U.S. First Lady (1963-1969) and advocate for beautifying the nation’s highways, and preserving the native wildflowers (“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”), which also involved environmentalism, conservation, and anti-pollution measures. She was instrumental in passage of the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, and was the first Chair of the federal Head Start program. She also served on the University of Texas Board of Regents, the National Parks Service Advisory Board, and was the first woman to serve on the National Geographic Society’s Board of Trustees. With Helen Hayes, she co-founded the National Wildflower Center in 1982, which works to preserve and reintroduce native plants in the landscape.
- December 22, 1926 – Roberta Leigh born as Rita Lewin, British author of children’s stories, science fiction, romance novels and murder mysteries; also an artist, composer and television producer; screenwriter for Space Patrol and Paul Starr, two marionette space adventure series during the 1960s, and The Solarnauts, a live-action science fiction series.
- December 22, 1938 – South African museum official Marjorie Courtney-Latimer and Prof. J.L.B. Smith of Rhodes University identify the first coelacanth found after it had been thought extinct for 50 million years.
- December 22, 1939 – Gloria Jacobs, aged 17, becomes the first girl to hold a world pistol record when her shooting earns 299 out of a possible 300 points.
- December 22, 1944 – Dame Mary Archer born, British chemist and scientist, who specialized in solar power conversion; chair of the British National Energy Foundation (1988-2000); she is the president of the UK Solar Energy Society (UK-ISES).
- December 22, 1945 – Frances Lannon born, British historian and academic specializing in Spanish history; a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE – 2016); Women and Images of Women in the Spanish Civil War, Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy: the Catholic Church in Spain.
- December 22, 1945 – Diane Sawyer born, American TV journalist; CBS reporter and correspondent (1978-1981); 60 Minutes correspondent (1984-1989); co-anchor of Good Morning America (1999-2009) and Primetime newsmagazine (1989-1998 and since 2000); 2009 Peabody Award for "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains." Sawyer was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1997.
- December 22, 1952 – Sandra Kalniete born, Latvian politician and diplomat, Member of the European Parliament for Latvia since 2009; European Commissioner for Agriculture and Fisheries (2004); Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2002-2004).
- December 22, 1957 – Carole James born, Canadian politician and public administrator; Deputy Premier of British Columbia since 2017; Member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly for Victoria-Beacon Hill since 2005; Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia (2005-2011); she was also the Leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party (2003-2011).
- December 22, 1976 – Aya Takano born, Japanese Superflat and Manga artist, science fiction essayist; her female figure are often androgynous, floating through alternate realities.
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- December 23, 583 – Yohl Ik’nal is crowned as the first recorded female ruler of the Maya city-state of Palenque, one of only a few Maya women to have a full royal title.
- December 23, 1657 – Hannah Duston, taken captive by Abenaki people from Québec during King William’s War, with her newborn daughter, during a Raid on Haverhill in 1697, in which 27 colonists were killed. While held on an island in the Merrimack River in present-day New Hampshire, she killed and scalped ten of the Native American family members holding them hostage, with the assistance of two other captives. She claimed the Abenaki had killed her baby during the journey to the island.
- December 23, 1815 – The novel Emma by Jane Austen is first published.
- December 23, 1828 – Matilde Wesendonck born, German poet and author; the words of five of her verses were the basis of Richard Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder.
- December 23, 1860 – Harriet Monroe born, American editor, scholar, literary critic and poet, founding publisher and editor of Poetry magazine.
- December 23, 1867 – “Madam C. J.” Sara Walker born, American businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist; considered the first black woman millionaire. She invented a metal heating comb and conditioner for straightening hair, then made her fortune with a hugely successful marketing campaign for the hair and beauty products she developed for black women. After she started her business in 1910, in Indianapolis, Indiana, she opened part of her company operations in New York City. She established a chain of beauty parlors throughout the U.S. and the Caribbean. About 5,000 African American agents were earning commissions by selling her products in 1910, and by 1919 the number of agents had risen to 25,000.
- December 23, 1895 – Nola Luxford born in New Zealand, American broadcaster and actress; during the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, she was the pioneering writer-broadcaster of a daily radio programme for audiences in Australia and New Zealand. During WWII, she founded the ANZAC Club of New York, and through her wartime broadcasts, she became known as the “Angel of the ANZACS.” As an actress, several of her silent films are now lost, so she is best-known for her role as Rose, the murder victim in 1935’s Kind Lady, which starred Basil Rathbone and Aline MacMahon.
- December 23, 1900 – Marie Bell born as Marie-Jeanne Bellon, French classical tragedian, comic actor and stage director. She was the director of the Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris from 1962 until her death in 1985, and this theatre now bears her name. During the German Occupation of France (1940–1944), she participated in the French resistance as one of nine directors of the Front national du theatre.
- December 23, 1912 – Anna J. Harrison born, American organic chemist, first woman president of the American Chemical Society; chemistry professor (Mount Holyoke College 1945-89); noted for research on ultraviolet spectroscopy. She helped increase public understanding of science and technology, and was active supporter of women in science. During WWII, she conducted secret research on toxic smoke which led to the creation of smoke-detecting field kits for the U.S. Army; her post-war research focused on organic compounds and their interaction with light. She served on the National Board of Science (1972-1978) and as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1983.
- December 23, 1919 – By Act of British Parliament and Royal Assent, the Sex Disqualification Removal Act 1919 amends the laws disqualifying a person on account of sex or marriage from public function or vocation, lifting the bans on women in civil service, serving on juries and higher education.
- December 23, 1939 – Nancy Graves born, American sculptor, painter and printmaker; elected to the National Academy of Design (1992); she died of ovarian cancer in 1995.
- December 23, 1943 – Queen Silvia of Sweden born; in 2011 she became the longest-serving queen in Swedish history; noted for establishing Mentor International in 1994 in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the fields of international youth development and prevention of substance abuse, as co-founder of the World Childhood Foundation in 1999, inspired by her work as Patron of the first World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children held in Stockholm. She has also been involved in the Global Child Forum, and founded Stiftelsen Silviahemmet in 1996, which was part of her efforts to help dementia sufferers. Silviahemmet offers nurses training and entire unit training certification, combined with broad-based training in practical dementia care for different categories of staff involved with providing care.
- December 23, 1955 – Carol Ann Duffy born, Scottish poet and playwright; the first woman, first Scot and first openly LGBT person appointed as Britain's Poet Laureate (2009-2019).
- December 23, 1963 – Donna Tartt born, American novelist; won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Goldfinch.
- December 23, 1979 – Megan Mayhew Bergman born, American short story writer and columnist for The Guardian newspaper; noted for her story collections, Birds of a Lesser Paradise; and Almost Famous Women.
- December 23, 1981 – Hiro Fujiwara born, Japanese manga artist, known for her series, Kaichō wa Maid-sama! (The class president is a maid! 2005-2013).
- December 23, 1989 – Liis Koger born, Estonian painter and poet; she had her first major solo exhibition of her paintings in 2012 at Camponeschi in Rome, Italy.
- December 23, 2014 – A three-judge panel of the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a North Carolina abortion law is unconstitutional. The 2011 law required all women seeking abortion to first undergo ultrasounds, with the fetal image displayed and described to them in detail by a doctor. In the 37-page opinion, the panel wrote, “The First Amendment not only protects against prohibitions of speech, but also against regulations that compel speech.” The North Carolina law “forces physicians to say things they otherwise would not say. Moreover, the statement compelled here is ideological; it conveys a particular opinion. The state freely admits that the purpose … is to convince women seeking abortions to change their minds or reassess their decisions.”
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- December 24, 1634 – Mariana of Austria born, Queen consort of Spain (1649-1665). When her husband died in 1665, she was appointed regent for her 3-year-old son Charles II, and due to his ill health remained an influential figure until her death in 1696. During her regency, she was engaged in a struggle with her son’s illegitimate half-brother, John of Austria the Younger, leader of one of the factions trying to oust Charles, and also faced Spain’s grave financial difficulties, caused by almost a century of continuous war, but later made even worse by the ‘Little Ice Age’ – a period of cold and wet weather that affected all of Europe. Between 1692 and 1699, between 5% and 10% of Europe’s population starved to death.
- December 24, 1731 – Julie von Bondeli born, Swiss intellectual who hosted a scientific salon that became the center of cultural life in Bern; as a child, she was given a comprehensive education in languages, mathematics and philosophy, very rare for a girl in her time; she corresponded regularly with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sophie von La Roche.
- December 24, 1843 – Lydia Koidula born, pen name of Lydia Jannsen, Estonian poet and writer who, as a respectable young lady, had to publish her work anonymously in her father’s newspaper, the first Estonian language newspaper allowed by the Russian Empire; her use of vernacular Estonian in her poetry had a major impact on Estonian letters.
- December 24, 1869 – Henriette Roland Holst born, Dutch poet, non-fiction writer, socialist, and activist for workers’ rights; active in the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) which became the Communist Party of the Netherlands; was part of the Dutch Resistance during WWII.
- December 24, 1877 – Sigrid Schauman born, Finnish artist and art critic; after her husband died, she worked for the newspaper Dagens Press nearly 30 years, publishing over 1500 art reviews, interviews and travel reports.
- December 24, 1895 – Noel Streatfeild born, English children’s author, best known for her book Ballet Shoes, the first of her Shoes series.
- December 24, 1895 – Marguerite Williams born, American geologist; first African American to earn a doctorate in geology in the U.S., from Catholic University of America; chair of the Geology Department of Miner Teacher’s College (1923-1933).
- December 24, 1900 – Hawayo Hiromi Takata born, Japanese-American master of Reiki, who helped introduce the spiritual practice to Westerners, she formed the American Reiki Association with Dr. Barbara Weber Ray, later renamed the Radiance Technique Association.
- December 24, 1903 – Ava H. Pauling born, American human rights activist; campaigned for women’s rights, racial equality, international peace, and particularly against nuclear proliferation; married to Linus Pauling; she volunteered for the American Civil Liberties Union in opposing the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, giving employment to one of the released internees, in spite of criticism; served as the national vice president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), helping to organize the “Women’s Peace March” in Europe.
- December 24, 1904 – Mary Bingham born, Bingham newspaper empire matriarch, philanthropist and civic leader, died suddenly in Louisville KY, on April 18, 1995, at age 90, while delivering a speech at a fundraising dinner in her honor to support the Louisville Free Public Library.
- December 24, 1906 – Anna Neethling Pohl born, South African actress, film producer and the first woman broadcaster for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC); she helped to found the Cape Afrikaans Theatrical Society, the volksteater in Pretoria and the National Drama Organisation; she also wrote under the pen names Niehausvor and Wynand du Preez, and translated seven of Shakespeare’s dramas into Afrikaans.
- December 24, 1920 – Yevgeniya Rudneva born, Russian astronomer who worked at the Moscow Solar department of the Astronomical-Geodesical Society of the USSR before WWII, and became the head navigator of the 46th Guards Night Bomber regiment during the war. She flew 645 night combat missions before her plane was shot down in 1944.
- December 24, 1927 – Mary Higgins Clark born, prolific American author of suspense and mystery novels; dubbed "The Queen of Suspense."
- December 24, 1943 – Tarja Halonen born, Finnish Social Democratic politician; first woman elected as President of Finland (2000-2012); Minister of Foreign Affairs (1995-2000); Minister of Justice (1990-1991); Member of Parliament for Helsinki (1979-2000).
- December 24, 1950 – Libby Larsen born, American orchestral composer; co-founder of the American Composers Forum.
- December 24, 1951 – Marsha Gomez born, artist and activist, used pottery and sculpture from her Choctaw ancestry to teach and further demand rights for indigenous women of many cultures, achieved NGO (non-governmental organization consultant) status for indigenous women in the United Nations, co-founder, Foundation for a Compassionate Society.
- December 24, 1954 – Helen M. Jones born, British Labour politician; Chair of the Petitions Committee since 2015; Vice-Chamberlain of the Household (2009-2010); Member of Parliament for Warrington North since 1997.
- December 24, 1961 – Mary Barra born, Chair and CEO of General Motors Company since 2014; the first woman CEO of a major global automaker; GM Executive Vice President of Global Product Development (2011-2014); Vice President in various departments (2008-2011).
- December 24, 1973 – Stephenie Meyer born, American novelist and film producer, best known for her Twilight fantasy vampire series.
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- December 25, 1281 – Alice de Lacy born, suo jure (in her own right) Countess of Lincoln and of Salisbury; her two brothers died in childhood accidents, leaving Alice as the sole heir to two Earldoms, one from each parent. King Edward I arranged her betrothal to his nephew, Thomas of Lancaster when she was 9 years old. They were married when she was 12 or 13 years old. By the terms of their marriage settlement the bulk of her great inheritance from her father, which included the Earldom of Lincoln and many other estates, was to go to Thomas, with reversion to Thomas's heirs. In other words, during his lifetime Thomas had control of Alice's inheritance from her father. If Alice outlived Thomas, and had control of her father's inheritance returned to her on his death, then on her own death her father's inheritance would pass to Thomas's heirs. Her father also came to an agreement with the King that should Alice have no children, her father's Earldom of Lincoln would pass into the royal family on her death. But the marriage was not successful – they lived separate lives, and had no children. When her parents died, Thomas inherited all her lands, and controlled her inheritance from her mother, making him the richest and most powerful man in England. In the spring of 1317 Alice was abducted from her manor of Canford, Dorset, by some of the household Knights of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey and taken to the Warenne stronghold of Castle Reigate. The disreputable Warrene is thought to have carried out the abduction in order to humiliate Thomas of Lancaster, who had helped block Warenne's divorce, and persuaded the Bishop of Chichester to prosecute Warenne for his adultery with his mistress, resulting in Warenne's excommunication in 1316. After Alice was abducted her husband Thomas then waged a private war on Warenne, but never once asked for Alice's return. Thomas also thought King Edward II, his cousin, had been involved in the planning of the abduction. It is not known when Alice was released, and her whereabouts from 1317 to 1322 are uncertain. Thomas of Lancaster was captured at Boroughbridge after the failure of his rebellion against the King. On 22 March 1322 he was executed for treason. With Thomas gone Alice should have had control of the vast inheritances from both of her parents for the first time. Thomas's estates were forfeited to the Crown, but that could not legally include the estates that he controlled by right of his wife and that were her inheritance. But the King had Alice arrested and imprisoned at York, under threat of execution. Alice surrendered into the King's hands a great part of the lands which she had inherited from her father, in order to secure the confirmation of some portion of these possessions to herself. She was then permitted to hold some of her estates in life tenure by the king's "special grace.” In addition, she had to pay a staggering indemnity of £20,000 to the Crown, in order to secure her release from prison, be allowed to remarry if she chose, and to gain control of what lands and income remained of her inheritance. She lost the Earldom of Salisbury to the Crown, but the Earldom of Lincoln was restored to her. But she was placed under virtual house arrest for “her own protection” and even more of her lands were stripped from her, and her abductor was given a life grant of many of them. When Edward II was deposed, his wife Isabella took for herself some of the estates that had been taken from Alice. In 1331, Edward III restored some of Alice’s forfeited lands to her, but only for her life. Even when Alice married Eubulus le Strange, at age 42, which made it unlikely they would have children, the King made certain that Eubulus could not claim them by right of his wife. After Eubulus died in 1335, Alice genuinely mourned him, and took a vow of chastity. But even after all that had been taken from her, she was still a rich woman, and she was abducted a second time at the age of 54, by Hugh de Freyne, Baron Freyne, who raped her, and forced her to marry him. But the marriage had not been licensed by the King, so Sheriffs were sent to take the lands, goods and chattels into the King’s hands. Hugh probably paid a fine, because the lands were restored to his control in 1336, but he died less than a year later. Alice was imprisoned again shortly after that by Roger le Strange, the nephew and heir of Eubulus, and Sir John de Lacy of Lacyes (Alice’s illegitimate half-brother.) Eventually, she made a deal with Roger, and was released. She died at age 66 in 1348, and was buried next to Eubulus. Her Earldom of Lincoln became extinct upon her death. Her remaining lands from her father went to the nephew of her first husband. Most of her lands reverted to the Crown upon her death, and what was left of her fortune and estates went to her late husband’s nephew, Roger le Strange.
- December 25, 1584 – Margaret of Austria born, Queen consort of Spain and Portugal (1599-1611). She was an influential figure in the court of her husband, Philip III. She formed a circle with Empress Maria, widow of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, and the latter's daughter Archduchess Margaret, who lived as a nun in Madrid, which wielded considerable influence. She was also a great patron of the arts. She bore five children who survived past childhood, but died in 1611 at age 26, while giving birth to her youngest child, Alfonso. Philip III did not remarry, and he died in 1621.
- December 25, 1665 – Lady Grizel Baillie born, Scottish songwriter; "And werena my heart light I wad dee" is her best-known song; her meticulously kept account books (1692-1746) are valuable to historians because they contain much information about social life in 18th century Scotland.
- December 25, 1771 – Dorothy Wordsworth born, English author, poet and diarist; sister of William Wordsworth; noted for her diaries and Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, published in 1874, and Grasmere Journal, published posthumously, which was taken from diaries of her life in the Lake District, where she lived with her brother and his family.
- December 25, 1781 – Sydney, Lady Morgan born, Irish novelist and poet; best known for her novel, The Wild Irish Girl.
- December 25, 1805 – Mariya Volkonskaya born, Russian In 1825, she married the Decembrist rebel Major General Prince Sergey Grigorievich Volkonsky. When Volkonsky was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1826, she followed him into exile, but only on the condition that any children born after her departure to Siberia would be forever struck from the noble estate and become bonded laborers. This threat, however, was not put into practice. She moved to the Siberian city of Irkutsk, where she became known as the Princess of Siberia. She founded a local hospital and opened a concert hall, and often hosted musical and cultural soirees in her home. She was one of the inspirations for Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, and for several of his other poems.
- December 25, 1806 – Martha Coffin Wright born, women’s rights pioneer and abolitionist, who was part of the Underground Railroad. She called for and helped organize the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848, together with her sister Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others. She was president of women’s conventions in 1855 in Cincinnati, Saratoga, and Albany, then became the founder of the American Equal Rights Association (1866). She continued working for equal suffrage during the American Civil War.
- December 25, 1809 – Dr. Ephraim McDowell performs first ovariotomy, removing a 22-pound tumor from Jane Todd Crawford of Green County KY, who traveled 60 miles to Danville KY to brave the surgery without anesthetic or antisepsis, returned home 25 days later, and lived another 32 years
- December 25, 1821 – Clara Barton born, American nursing pioneer, humanitarian, and almost single-handedly, founder and first president (1881-1904) of the American Red Cross. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Barton worked as a U.S. Patent Office clerk and collected provisions and medical supplies for the Union Army. Restless with her limited role, and undeterred by War Department regulations and prevailing stereotypes, Barton distributed supplies and tended to the wounded and dying despite life-threatening conditions. She was called "the angel of the battlefield" for her nursing of wounded soldiers. After the war, she helped to reunite missing soldiers and their families or resolve what happened to MIAs, later lectured to crowds about her war experiences.
- December 25, 1865 – Evangeline Booth born, English-American, first woman Salvation Army General; after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, she led a mass meeting in New York’s Union Square, raising over $12,000 for Salvation Army relief work among the victims of the disaster.
- December 25, 1878 – Helena Rubinstein born as Chaja Rubinstein in Austrian Poland; Polish-American businesswoman, art collector and philanthropist. Founder of the Helena Rubinstein cosmetics company, which began in 1915 as a cosmetics salon, became a major enterprise, which made her one of the world’s richest women. She had an intense rivalry with Elizabeth Arden. The Helena Rubinstein Foundation, established in 1953, provided funds to organizations specializing in health, medical research and rehabilitation, and education projects and scholarships, as well as the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, until it ceased operations in 2011 after distributing over $130 million USD over nearly sixty years.
- December 25, 1878 – Noël, Countess of Rothes, born, noted as a prolific philanthropist, especially for the Red Cross, as a nurse for wounded soldiers who turned her home into a hospital during WWI, and as a woman suffrage supporter. But she is best remembered for helping to maintain order and morale aboard her lifeboat during the 1912 Titanic disaster. She took a turn at the tiller, steering the boat clear of the sinking liner, then encouraged the other survivors, including a young woman whose husband went down with the ship, with her calm decisiveness and comforting words, while helping to row the lifeboat. She and the other survivors sang “Pull for the Shore” and “Lead Kindly Light” when the Carpathia, the ship which rescued them, was sighted. She then cared for the rescued women and children from steerage aboard the Carpathia, but shunned reporters who labeled her a heroine, giving the all credit to the cool head and skill of Seaman Jones, who was in charge of their lifeboat, and the other women aboard. She gave an inscribed silver pocket watch to Seaman Jones as thanks, and they wrote to each other for her Christmas Day birthday until her death in 1956.
- December 25, 1883 – Hana Miesel born in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire; Israeli agronomist, Zionist and feminist; founder of Havat HaAlamot (the maidens’ farm) and a women’s agricultural school at Hahalal.
- December 25, 1886 – Malak Hifni Nasif born, Egyptian feminist and writer. After graduating in 1903 at the top of her class from the Saniyyah Teacher Training College, she taught in the Girls Section of the Abbas Primary School, but was forced to quit when she married in 1907 because of an Egyptian law forbidding married women work as teachers. She began writing under the pen name Bahithat al-Badiya, and soon found out that her husband already had a wife and children which he had told her nothing about before their marriage. Unable to get a divorce, she stayed on as his second wife until her death, but her writing became full of observations about the status of women in Egypt, and she corresponded extensively with women writers. She also wrote rebuttals to some of the writings of major male writers involved the growing nationalist political movement who wanted reforms for Egyptian men, but not for women. She was however opposed to unveiling, advocated by most of the other women’s rights activists of the time. She mostly wrote about making major reforms in the marital rights of Egyptian women, including ending polygamy, raising the minimum age for women to marry to at least age 16, and advocating for women to have the right to divorce their husbands. She was also concerned with better education for women, which she believed must not be in missionary schools, but in public schools controlled by Egyptians, which included the history and culture of Egypt in the curriculum.
- December 25, 1889 – Lila Bell Wallace born, American magazine publisher and philanthropist; co-founder in 1922 of Reader’s Digest with her husband. She gave an estimated $60 million USD to various charities in her lifetime.
- December 25, 1911 – Louise Bourgeois born in Paris, French-American artist best known for her large-scale sculpture and installation art, but she was also a painter and printmaker; her work is related to both Surrealism and Feminist art, but it is not considered as fully part of either school.
- December 25, 1921 – Zaib-un-Nissa Hamidullah born, Pakistani author, journalist, publisher, poet and feminist; a pioneer of Pakistani literature and journalism in English, and in women’s rights in Pakistan. Before independence, she was the first Muslim woman to write a column in an Indian newspaper. After independence, she became Pakistan’s first English-language woman columnist, writing for the Karachi daily newspaper Dawn, as well as a pioneering woman editor, publisher and political commentator when she founded Pakistan’s first glossy social magazine, the Mirror. She was also the first Pakistani woman included in press delegations sent to other countries. She was a founding member of the Pakistani Working Women’s Association and the Karachi branch of Business and Professional Women’s Foundation. In 1957, her magazine was banned for six months because of her outspoken editorials criticising the harsh regime of Major-General Iskander Mirza. After refusing to publically apologise to get the ban lifted, she appealed to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which found in her favour, holding the ban order illegal and unconstitutional, making her the first woman journalist to win a case in the Pakistani Supreme Court.
- December 25, 1929 – Christine Miller Jones born, American Democratic politician and teacher; member of the Maryland House of Delegates and served on the Economic Matters Committee (1982-1994); chaired the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland (1991-1992); Assistant majority floor leader in 1994; died from injuries and burns a week after being rescued from a house fire in 2013.
- December 25, 1935 – Jeanne Hopkins Lucas born, first African American woman elected to the North Carolina state Senate where she was originally appointed to finish out the term of Senator Ralph Hunt in 1993, and then was re-elected six times, serving in leadership positions like Majority Whip and Senior Chair of the Appropriations on Education and Higher Education Committee.
- December 25, 1940 – Hilary Spurling born, British writer, journalist and biographer; Spurling won the 2005 Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her Henri Matisse biography, Matisse the Master: The Conquest of Colour 1909-1954.
- December 25, 1942 – Barbara Follett born, British Labour politician and literary agent-business manager; Parliamentary Undersecretary, Department for Communities and Local Government (2009-2010); Undersecretary of State for Equality (2007-2008); Undersecretary of State for Department for Work and Pensions (2007); Minister for the East of England, Regional Affairs (2007-2010); Member of Parliament for Stevenage (1997-2010); she left politics in 2010 to take over as CEO of the Follett Office, and literary agent for her husband, author Ken Follett.
- December 25, 1945 – Eve Pollard born Evelyn Pollack, Lady Lloyd, English author, journalist and editor; second woman editor of a UK national newspaper, at the Sunday Mirror (1987-1991), and the Sunday Express (1991-1994); in 1985, launch editor-in-chief of ELLE magazine in the U.S.; published books include Jackie, a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and her novels Splash, Best of Enemies and Unfinished Business.
- December 25, 1948 – Kay S. Hymowitz born, American nonfiction author, and contributor to the Wall Street Journal; her books include Liberation’s children: parents and kids in a postmodern age, and Marriage and caste in America: separate and unequal families in a post-marital age.
- December 25, 1961 – Íngrid Betancourt born, Colombian Oxygen Green Party politician, and anti-corruption activist, with dual Columbian and French citizenship; Senator of Colombia (1998-2002); Member of the Chamber of Representatives of Colombia (1994-1998). She was kidnapped by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February 2002 while campaigning for the Colombian presidency as a Green, and was rescued by Colombian security forces six and a half years later in July 2008, along with 14 other hostages (three U.S. citizens, and 11 Colombian policemen and soldiers).
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- December 26, 1526 – Rose Lok Hickham born, English memoirist and Protestant exile, who worked for her husband and one of her brothers, who were mercers (dealers in textiles, especially silk and other fine materials) in partnership together. Her father had been King Henry VIII’s mercer. But when Catholic Mary I came to the throne in 1553, Rose’s husband and brother were imprisoned as ‘religious heretics’ but were later released to house arrest, and eventually freed. The Hickhams went into exile in Antwerp, but Rose returned to England after Queen Mary’s death. At the age of 84, she wrote an account of her parents, and of the events during her life up to the year 1558.
- December 26, 1618 – Elisabeth Princess of the Palatinate born, Princess-Abbess of Herford Abbey (1667-1680); she provided refuge for persecuted Protestants; noted for her extensive correspondence with the prominent intellectuals of the time, René Descartes in particular, with whom she carried on a lively debate about his idea of Dualism (mind separate from the body); her correspondence with Descartes has given scholars insight into 17th century theoretical debates.
- December 26, 1780 – Mary Fairfax Somerville born, Scottish polymath and author; she and Caroline Herschel became the first women members of the Royal Astronomical Society at the same time; the term “scientist” was first used to describe her, someone who possesses the intellect to combine mathematics, astronomy and physics seamlessly; author of “On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays.”
- December 26, 1819 – E.D.E.N. Southworth born, American author of over 60 novels, who took up writing to support her children when her husband deserted the family in 1844; supporter of women’s rights and friend of Harriet Beecher Stowe; best known for The Hidden Hand, a novel which first appeared in serial form in the New York Ledger.
- December 26, 1862 – The USN Red Rover is commissioned by the U.S. Navy as a hospital ship and takes aboard Sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross, the first women to serve as nurses aboard a navy ship.
- December 26, 1900 – Evelyn Bark born, leading member of the British Red Cross; fluent in six languages with a working knowledge of several others, she developed language cards to help doctors and nurses communicate with patients when there was no shared language; during WWII, she was part of the British Red Cross Commission entering just-liberated Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany; one of the first volunteers to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; after the war, worked for the Red Cross International Tracing Service, helping survivors from the camps, trying to reunite them with their families, as well as organizing a hospital and rehabilitation center for them; coordinated relief for Hungarian refugees in 1956; one of the first women to receive the British Order of St Michael and St George in 1967; No Time to Kill is her autobiography.
- December 26,1918 – Dame Olga Lopes-Seale born in Guyana, social and community volunteer in Barbados, and radio broadcaster in both countries; she worked as a broadcaster for Radio Demerara in Guyana, then for Barbados Rediffusion Services, and was actively involved with the Needy Children’s Fund in Barbados.
- December 26, 1948 – Candy Crowley born, American news anchor and political correspondent; she began her career at the Washington DC radio station WASH-FM, became a news anchor for Mutual Broadcasting, and then the Associated Press White House Correspondent. In 1987, she moved to CNN, hosting Inside Politics, and became anchor of the Sunday morning political talk show, State of the Union (2010-2014). She was the moderator for the second debate between President Barak Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. In 2015, Crowley became a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
- December 26, 1954 – Susan Butcher born, sled dog racer, 4-time winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
- December 26, 1964 – Elizabeth Kostova born, American author, best known for her first novel, The Historian, a historical fantasy thriller, for which she won the 2005 Quill Award for Debut Author of the Year.
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- December 27, 1797 – Manuela Sáenz born, Ecuadorian revolutionary; she left her husband to join Simón Bolívar, who led the fight against Spain to liberate the Spanish Empire in South America, now the republics of Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Panama. In choosing the revolution and its charismatic leader over her marriage to a rich husband, she said, “Marriage pledges one to nothing.”
- December 27, 1821 – Lady Jane Wilde born, Irish poet, essayist, and women’s rights advocate, supporter of the Irish nationalist movement, writing under the pseudonym ‘Speranza’; and collected Celtic folktales. She was the mother of Oscar Wilde.
- December 27, 1845 – The first known use of Ether as an anesthetic for childbirth by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia. Dr. Long’s patient was his wife, Caroline Swain Long.
- December 27, 1888 – Thea von Harbou born, German screenwriter, novelist and film director; noted for writing the original story and the screenplay for the science fiction film classic Metropolis.
- December 27, 1901 – Marlene Dietrich born, legendary film star, actor-singer, and early opponent of Nazism; she financed the escape of several Jewish friends before WWII. In 1937, Hitler’s agents offered her an almost blank check to return home to star in movies of her choice – she angrily rejected the offer, and her films were banned in Germany. She became an American citizen in 1939. During World War II, she made anti-Nazi broadcasts in German, took part in the war-bond drives, and she tirelessly entertained half a million Allied troops and war prisoners across North Africa and Western Europe.
- December 27, 1924 – Jean Bartik born, American computer scientist and engineer; one of the original programmers for the ENIAC computer; studied mathematics in school then began work at the University of Pennsylvania, first manually calculating ballistics trajectories, then using ENIAC to do so. She and her colleagues developed and codified many fundamentals of programming while working on the ENIAC, since it was the first computer of its kind. After her work on ENIAC, Bartik went on to work on BINAC and UNIVAC, and spent time at a variety of technical companies as a writer, manager, engineer and programmer.
- December 27, 1927 – Anne Armstrong born, American diplomat and Republican politician; first woman Counselor to the President (1973-1974); first woman United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (1976-1977); Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board (1981-1990); Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient in 1987.
- December 27, 1927 – Audrey Wagner born, All-American Girls Professional Baseball League outfielder (1943-1949), and All Star player for the National Girls Baseball League of Chicago (1950-1953). Wagner later earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Illinois, and became an obstetrician and gynecologist; she earned a private pilot’s license, and also served on the Crescent City city council in Northern California. She was killed in a small plane accident in Wyoming at the age of 56.
- December 27, 1930 – Meg Greenfield born, named editorial editor at the Washington Post in 1979 after winning a Pulitzer Prize; Greenfield penned commentaries on issues from civil rights and integration to the nuclear arms race and the military establishment.
- December 27, 1935 – Regina Jonas receives her semicha and is ordained as a rabbi, becoming the first woman to officially serve in that role.
- December 27, 1943 – Cokie Roberts born, American television journalist and syndicated columnist; reporter on National Public Radio; won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting in 1988 for coverage of the Iran-Contra Affair; author of Capital Dames: The Civil War and the Women of Washington, 1848-1868.
- December 27, 1946 – Janet Street-Porter born, English journalist, broadcaster and media personality; career highlights include: reporter on LWT’s The London Weekend Show (1975-1979); produced Twentieth Century Box (1980-1982) for LWT; editor of Network 7 (1987-1988) for Channel Four; editor of The Independent on Sunday (2000-2002); since 2011, she has been a regular panelist on ITV’s Loose Women.
- December 27, 1946 – Polly Toynbee born, British journalist and author; worked for The Guardian, the BCC and The Independent newspaper; president of the British Humanist Association (2007-2012).
- December 27, 1954 – Mandie Fletcher born, British television and film director; noted for directing series episodes and the 2016 film of Absolutely Fabulous; she also worked on the TV series Hamish Macbeth (1996-1997), and Jam and Jerusalem (2006-2009); her feature film debut was Deadly Advice in 1994; in 2018, she co-authored the screenplay and then directed Patrick, a comedy film.
- December 27, 1966 – Marianne Elliott born, British theatre director; currently working with Elliott & Harper Productions since 2017; has worked at the National Theatre (2002-2017), where her production of Saint Joan won the 2008 Olivier Award for Best Revival, and at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester (1995-2005), where she was also Artistic Director (1998-2005).
- December 27, 1969 – Sarah Vowell born, American non-fiction author, journalist, social commentator and essayist, noted for her quirky and amusing books on American History, including Unfamiliar Fishes, Assassination Vacation, and Lafayette in the Somewhat United States.
- December 27, 1971 – Savannah Guthrie born in Australia, Australian-American attorney and broadcast journalist; co-anchor on NBC’s Today show since 2012; NBC News White House correspondent (2008-2010), legal analyst and trial reporter (2007-2008).
- December 27, 1982 – Erin E. Stead born, American children’s book illustrator; she was the winner of the 2011 Caldecott Medal for A Sick Day for Amos McGee.
- December 27, 2007 – Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in Rawalpindi by a gunman, who fired three shots at her, then detonated a suicide vest packed with ball bearings, which also killed twenty people in the crowd.
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- December 28, 1522 – Margaret of Parma born, illegitimate but acknowledged daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. She was appointed by her half-brother Philip II of Spain as Governor of the Netherlands (1559-1567), but she resigned when it became clear that her authority would be less than that granted to the Duke of Alba, sent to put down by force northern Dutch opposition to Philip’s religious oppression, in spite of her warnings that military intervention would be disastrous.
- December 28, 1722 – Eliza Lucas Pinckney born in the British West Indies, educated in French music and botany, a subject at which she excelled; when her family moved to South Carolina, she became an overseer on one of her family's plantations, and kept a record of her decisions and experiments; the result was that Indigo became one of the South’s major cash crops, its cultivation and processing as dye would produce one-third of South Carolina’s exports before the Revolutionary War.
- December 28, 1789 – Catharine Maria Sedgwick born, American novelist and short story writer who earned her living with her pen; noted for her spirited heroines, and her promotion of the idea of American mothers as custodians and transmitters of republican ideals, civic virtue and patriotism, advocating for the education of women, but only in order to make them better mothers and wives; her books include Hope Leslie, which encouraged religious tolerance and fair treatment for American Indians.
- December 28, 1816 – Elizabeth Packard born, advocate for women’s rights and for those wrongly committed to insane asylums. In 1839, her parents pressured her into an arranged marriage with a minister 14 years her senior, and they had six children. In 1860, her husband had her committed to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum in Illinois because she disagreed with him on religion, how to raise their children and the issue of slavery. She spent three years denying she was insane before her older children were able to pressure the authorities into releasing her, but her husband locked her in the nursery of their home and nailed the windows shut. She managed to get a letter out to her friend Sarah Haslett, who gave it to Judge Charles Starr. Starr issued a writ of habeas corpus, and after hearing the couple’s conflicting statements, scheduled a jury trial to determine her sanity. At the trial of Packard v. Packard, her husband’s family members testified that she argued with him, and had tried to withdraw from his congregation. The State Hospital records stating that her condition was incurable were entered into evidence. Her lawyers called neighbors who were not members of his congregation as witnesses to testify that they had never seen her exhibit any signs of insanity. The last witness was Dr. Duncanson, a physician and theologian who had interviewed her, and testified that he did not agree with some of her religious beliefs, but “I do not call people insane because they differ with me. I pronounce her a sane woman and wish we had a nation of such women.” The jury returned a verdict in her favor after only seven minutes of deliberation, and the Judge issued an order that she should not be confined. But when Elizabeth Packard returned to the family home, she found that the night before her release, her husband had rented their home to another family, sold her furniture, and had taken her money, notes, wardrobe, and children, leaving the state for Boston MA.. She appealed to both the Supreme Courts in Chicago and Boston, but had no legal recourse, as married women in these states at the time had no legal rights to their property or children. In 1869, after legislation was passed in Massachusetts granting married women property and child custody rights, her husband ceded custody of the children back to her. The Packards never divorced, but remained separated for the rest of their lives. She founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, and published several books, including Marital Power Exemplified, or Three Years Imprisonment for Religious Belief. In 1867, Illinois passed a Bill for the Protection of Personal Liberty which guaranteed that all people accused of insanity, including women accused by their husbands, had the right to a public hearing.
- December 28, 1882 – Lili Elbe born as Einar Magnus Wegener, Danish painter, and a pioneering transgender woman, who underwent sex reassignment surgery in 1930, but died from complications caused by an attempted uterus transplant in 1931.
- December 28, 1894 – Burnita Shelton Matthews born, American judge; the first woman appointed to serve on a U.S. district court, as Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (1949-1968). During World War I, she moved to Washington, DC, took the civil service exam, and worked at the Veterans Administration. She enrolled in night school of at National University Law School (now George Washington University Law School). She earned her degree and passed the District of Columbia bar in 1920. As a young law student in DC, she staged a silent vigil after learning she could carry a banner outside White House but would be arrested for not having a permit if she spoke. Worked as counsel for the National Woman’s Party; President Truman appointed her a Federal District Court Judge (1949).
- December 28, 1895 – Carol Ryrie Brink born, American novelist and juvenile author; her book Caddie Woodlawn won the 1936 Newbery Medal.
- December 28, 1918 – Constance Markievicz, Irish revolutionary nationalist, socialist and feminist; while detained in Holloway prison for making a seditious speech, became the first woman to be elected MP to the British House of Commons. As a member of Sinn Féin, she declined to take her seat after being released as part of their abstentionist strategy.
- December 28, 1919 – Emily Cheney Neville born in England, American children’s author; won the 1964 Newbery Medal for It’s Like This, Cat.
- December 28, 1930 – Mariam A. Aleem born, Egyptian artist, academic, graphic designer and illustrator; at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria, she first taught in (1957-1968), then became head of, the Printmaking Department (1968-1975), and was promoted to head of the Design Department (1985-1990).
- December 28, 1934 – Maggie Smith born, English actress, Academy award winner for The Prime of Miss Jean Broody, and Best Supporting for California Suite; Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films and Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey. Smith helped with the raising of $4.6 million needed to rebuild the Court Theatre in Christchurch, New Zealand, after the earthquake in 2011 that caused severe damage to the area. In 2012, she became a patron of the International Glaucoma Association. In 2012, she contributed a drawing of her own hand to the 2012 Celebrity Paw Auction, to raise funds for Cats Protection.
- December 28, 1943 – Dame Joan Ruddock born, Welsh British Labour politician; appointed as a Privy Councellor in 2010; Minister of State for Energy (2009-2010); MP for Lewisham Deptford (1987-2015).
- December 28, 1944 – Sandra M. Faber born, American astrophysicist known for research on the evolution of galaxies, making important discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of their stars; co-discoverer of the Faber-Jackson relation, an empirical power-law relation; worked on the design of the Keck observatory and its telescopes in Hawaii; awarded the National Medal of Science in 2013.
- December 28, 1946 – Barbara Thomas Judge, Lady Judge, born in the U.S., but has dual British-American citizenship; first female Chairman of the Institute of Directors; Chairman Emeritus of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA); Chairman of the United Kingdom's fraud prevention service Cifas; former Chairman of the Pension Protection Fund and a UK Business Ambassador on behalf of UK Trade & Investment; also a trustee of several cultural and charitable institutions, including the Royal Academy of Arts.
- December 28, 1952 – Bridget Prentice born, British Labour politician; Member of the Labour Party Electoral Commission since 2014; MP for Lewisham East (1992-2010).
- December 28, 1953 – Martha Wash born, singer-musician, civil rights activist who campaigned for legislation to make vocal credits mandatory; The Weather Girls, “It’s Raining Men.”
- December 28, 1954 – Gayle King born, American television journalist; co-anchor of CBS This Morning since 2012, and an editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine.
- December 28, 1967 – Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the N.Y. Stock Exchange.
- December 28, 1981 – Elizabeth Jordan Carr, first American test-tube baby, is born in Norfolk VA; she becomes a journalist, currently working as editor of Daybreak.com, and has worked for newspapers in Maine, and for the Boston Globe.
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- December 29, 1709 – Elizabeth Petrovna born, Empress Elizabeth I of Russia, who strengthened the nobles dominance in local government, reconstituting the senate, which her predecessor had abolished, encouraged the establishment of the University of Moscow and the Imperial Academy of Arts, and also spent exorbitant sums of money on the Winter Palace and the Smolny Cathedral; after she was brought to power in a bloodless coup staged by the Imperial Guard in 1741, she vowed as Empress, she would not sign a single death sentence, a vow she kept all the way to her death in 1762.
- December 29, 1843 – ‘Carmen Sylvia’ born Princess Elizabeth of Wied, became Queen consort of Romania, author as Carmen Sylvia of poetry, prose aphorisms, plays, novels and short stories. English translation is available for The Bard of the Dimbovitza. She was secretly pro-Democracy (from her diary): “I must sympathize with the Social Democrats, especially in view of the inaction and corruption of the nobles. These "little people" after all, want only what nature confers: equality. The Republican form of government is the only rational one. I can never understand the foolish people, the fact that they continue to tolerate us.”
- December 29, 1923 – Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat born, French mathematician and physicist; proved the local existence and uniqueness of solutions to the vacuum Einstein Equations; pioneer in mathematical study of supergravity; first woman elected to the Académie des Sciences Française (French Academy of Sciences); a Grand Officer of the Légion d’honneur.
- December 29, 1937 – Thea Bowman born, the first black Catholic nun to join the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, the first black woman to address the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; instrumental in the 1987 publication of Catholic hymnal, Lead Me, Guide Me: The African American Catholic Hymnal; teacher, speaker on racial inequality. She was an inspiration to thousands, and was declared a servant of God in 2018. She may next be declared venerable, if a tribunal finds in her favor, and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome endorses their decision.
- December 29, 1943 – Molly Bang born, American illustrator; noted for children’s books illustrations, three-time runner-up for the Caldecott Medal.
- December 29, 1952 – Gelsey Kirkland born, American ballerina and choreographer; soloist and principle with the New York City Ballet (1968-1974) and the American Ballet Theatre (1974-1984); danced Clara in Baryshnikov’s 1977 televised production of The Nutcracker; her biography, Dancing On My Grave, sent shockwaves through the dance world because of her detailed chronicle of struggles with anorexia, bulimia, and drug addiction; co-director of the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet and the Gelsey Kirkland Ballet Company.
- December 29, 1958 – Nancy J. Currie born, American engineer, U.S. Army officer and flight instructor, NASA astronaut on four space shuttle missions, and academic in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Texas A&M.
- December 29, 1959 – Paula Poundstone born, American stand-up comic, author, interviewer and commentator; (2017); author of There Is Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say and The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness; National Spokesperson for the American Library Association's "United for Libraries" since 2007.
- December 29, 1987 – Juliana Huxtable born, American artist, performer, author and poet; co-founder of the new York-based nightlife project Shock Value; author of Mucus in My Pineal Gland, and co-author with Hannah Black of Life.
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- December 30, 1841 – Agnes Irwin born, American educator; the first dean of Radcliffe College (1894–1909). She was principal (1869-1894) of the West Penn Square Seminary for Young Ladies in Philadelphia (later renamed the Agnes Irwin School in her honor).
- December 30, 1912 – Margaret Wade born, won semi-professional basketball state and regional championships; as a High School coach she set a lifetime record of 453 wins, 89 losses and 6 ties; inspired the Wade Trophy (1978) awarded annually to best collegiate women’s team.
- December 30, 1913 – Elyne Mitchell born, Australian author; noted for her Silver Brumby series of children’s novels, and non-fiction books about Australia’s natural wonders and history, including: Speak to the Earth, Light Horse: The Story of Australia’s Mounted Troops, and Discoverers of the Snowy Mountains.
- December 30, 1919 – The Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court in London, admits its first female bar student, Helena Normanton, after the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 receives Royal Assent and becomes law on December 23, 1919. The act amended all laws that prevented ‘persons’ by sex or marriage “from the exercise of any public function, or from being appointed to or holding any civil or judicial office or post, or from entering into or assuming or carrying on any civil profession or vocation, or for admission to any incorporated society….” It also said “a person shall not be exempted by sex or marriage from the liability to serve as a juror.” Women over age 30 who met minimum property requirements got the right to vote in 1918, but universal suffrage for women over age 21 didn’t come until 1928.
- December 30 1922 – Jane Langton born, American illustrator and author of children’s books and adult mystery novels; noted for The Hall Family Chronicles, and Homer Kelly series.
- December 30, 1924 – Yvonne Brill born, Canadian-American propulsion engineer; developed rocket and jet propulsion systems, much of her work for NASA; awarded U.S. National Medal of Technology in 2010.
- December 30 1929 – Dame Rosalinde Hurley born, British physician, microbiologist, pathologist, public health administrator and barrister; her medical thesis on perinatal candida infections led to her lifelong interest in mycology; knighted in 1988 for services to medicine and public health.
- December 30, 1930 – Tu Youyou born, Chinese pharmaceutical chemist who discovered artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin, used to treat malaria, saving millions of lives; she was co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the first woman from the People’s Republic of China to receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
- December 30, 1939 – Glenda Adams born, Australian author and playwright, Dancing on Coral, The Monkey Trap.
- December 30, 1959 – Tracey Ullman, English-American television, stage, and film performer, screenwriter-producer-director, and author; The animated TV series, The Simpsons, was originally a spin-off from The Tracey Ullman Show.
- December 30, 1969 – Kersti Kaljulaid born, Estonian politician and state official; she was the first woman, and the youngest person to be elected, as President of Estonia; Estonia’s representative in the European Court of Auditors (2004-2016).
- December 30, 1972 – Dita Indah Sari born, Indonesian trade unionist, social and human rights activist; sentenced to 5 years in prison in 1996, charged with sedition. Amnesty International named her a prisoner of conscience. After her release in 1999 she was elected Chairperson by the Congress of the National Front for Indonesian Workers Struggle (FNPBI). She was awarded the 2001 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership. In 2002 she refused a $50,000 human rights award from Reebok to protest what she considers the company's poor record on the issue of workers rights. She is the leader of the PRD, a socialist party within the broader Papernas alliance.
- December 30, 1980 – Eliza Dushku born, American television and film actress, honorary citizen of Tirana, Albania, and the city’s honorary ambassador of culture and tourism. She has struggled with ADHD, and addiction to Opioids and alcohol, but has been sober for almost a decade. She is the founder of Boston Diva Productions, and serves on the board of the THRIVEGulu organization (The Trauma Healing and Reflection Center in Gulu), an organization dedicated to helping the survivors of war (including former child soldiers) in Northern Uganda. In January 2018, Dushku made public an account of her sexual molestation by stunt coordinator Joel Kramer when she was 12 and working on the film True Lies. She wrote that soon after, an adult friend of Dushku confronted Kramer on set, and that the same day, Dushku was injured during a stunt and several of her ribs were broken, while Kramer was responsible for her safety. Kramer has denied the accusation of sexual misconduct.
- December 30, 1980 – Alison McGovern born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Wirral South since 2010; Chair of the Advisory Committee on Works of Art since 2016.
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- December 31, 1493 – Eleonora Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, born; she was largely responsible for the internal government of Urbino during her husband’s exile from 1521 to 1538, and a notable patron of the arts, including the Italian painter Titian.
- December 31, 1805 – Marie d'Agoult born in Germany, French historian and author who used the pen name Daniel Stern to publish her three volume Histoire de la révolution de 1848, and several other works, including her novels Nélida and Mes souvenirs; after divorce from her husband, the Comte d’Agoult in 1835, she lived with Franz Liszt – they had three children together but never married.
- December 31, 1834 – Mary Jane Safford Blake born, educator and nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War. She later graduated from medical school and worked as a practicing physician.
- December 31, 1878 – ‘Elizabeth Arden’ born as Florence Nightingale Graham; Canadian-American businesswoman who founded Elizabeth Arden, Inc. By 1929, she owned 150 salons in Europe and the United States, and her products were being sold in 22 countries. She was the sole owner, and at the peak of her career she was one of the wealthiest women in the world. Archrival of Helen Rubenstein.
- December 31, 1900 – Selma Burke born, American sculptor, part of Black Renaissance under Augusta Savage, created artwork for “Roosevelt dime,” and established the Selma Burke Art Center (1970s).
- December 31, 1905 – Helen Dodson Prince born, American astronomer; pioneer in work on solar flares, also studied the spectroscopy of 25 Orionis; during WWI, she worked at MIT on radar.
- December 31, 1914 – Mary Logan Reddick born, African-American neuroembryologist; noted for worked on embryo chick blastoderm, transplanting tissues, nerve cell differentiation and time-lapse microscopy; first woman biology instructor at Morehouse College in 1939; she was a full professor and chair of the biology department at the University of Atlanta (1953- 1966).
- December 31, 1919 – Recy Taylor born, black American sharecropper. When she was a 24-year-old wife and mother walking home from church with two friends on the evening of September 3, 1944, she was abducted and raped by six white men armed with guns and knives. After she reported the crime, white vigilantes set her porch on fire. The story was widely covered in the black press, and the NAACP sent Rosa Parks, later famed for refusing to give up her seat on the bus, as an investigator. In spite of the outcry among African-Americans, including prominent black leaders like W.E.B. Dubois, across the nation, two all-white-male grand juries refused to indict the men, even though one of them admitted to having sex with her, but claimed the men had paid her. In 2010, historian Danielle L. McGuire published her doctoral dissertation, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power.” Her account of Recy Taylor’s story prompted the Alabama Legislature to issue an official apology to Mrs. Taylor in 2011, calling the failure to prosecute her attackers “morally abhorrent and repugnant.”
- December 31, 1919 – Carmen Contreras-Bozak born in Puerto Rico, first Hispanic American to serve in the U.S. Women’s Army Corp (WAC) and one of the first to go overseas, working as an interpreter and also transmitting encoded messages (1942-1945).
- December 31, 1925 – Daphne Oram born, British composer and pioneer in electronic music.
- December 31, 1926 – Valerie Pearl born, British historian noted for work on the English Civil War; Lecturer in History at Somerville College, Oxford.
- December 31, 1930 – Odetta Holmes born, known simply as Odetta, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, actress, civil and human rights activist, “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement.”
- December 31, 1937 – Tess Jaray born, British painter-printmaker; she has completed a number of major public art projects, including the terrazzo pattern design for the London Victoria train station, and the forecourt of the new British Embassy in Moscow; Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
- December 31, 1945 – Connie Willis born, American science fiction and fantasy writer; winner of a record 11 Hugo Awards and 7 Nebula Awards, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009, and named as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2011; noted for Firewatch, Doomsday Book and Blackout/All Clear.
- December 31, 1949 – Ellen Datlow born, American science fiction/fantasy/horror anthologist and author; fiction editor of Omni magazine (1981-1998); honored in 2014 with the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
- December 31, 1949 – Susan Shwartz born, American author of fantasy and science fiction; noted for Byzantium's Crown, Queensblade and The Woman of Flowers.
- December 31, 1950 – Cheryl Womack born, American businesswoman who founded VCW and National Association of Independent Truckers, Inc., which became a $100 million business selling insurance to independent truckers who became association members .
- December 31, 1962 – Jennifer Higdon born, American composer of orchestral music; awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto.
- December 31, 1965 – Julie Doucet born, Canadian underground cartoonist and artist; best known for Dirty Plotte, My New York Diary and The Madame Paul Affair.
- December 31, 1991 – Noelle Stevenson born, American cartoonist and animation producer; note for the comic Nimona, and the comic series Lumberjanes. She is also the creator, showrunner and executive producer of the animated TV series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
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Sources
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