Welcome to WOW2 — Mid-August!
WOW2 is a sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events just from August 13 to August 23. Since I’ve broken the data limit on individual diaries, I’m splitting WOW2 into three posts. On Saturday, August 31, Late August will complete the month.
This is an on-going, evolving project. So many women have been added to the lists since its beginning in 2015 that even changing the posts from monthly to twice a month, the pages kept getting longer and more unwieldy – an astonishing and wonderful problem to have!
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.
Many thanks to libera nos — not only for volunteering to be the proofreader for WOW2, but for also contributing to the research. So he is now officially Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5.
And I joyfully welcome another contributor to the team — wow2lib, who happens to be married to libera nos, and has used her considerable library science skills to seek out new sources of information, and add more names to WOW 2’s ever-expanding pantheon of Women of Achievement. She will be an occasional contributor, and is WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
For the entire previous EARLY AUGUST list as of 2018,
click HERE: www.dailykos.com/…
For the entire previous LATE AUGUST list as of 2018,
click HERE: www.dailykos.com/...
Otherwise, what you’re seeing on this Mid-August 2019 page are the
new people and events, or additional information and visuals,
found since last year.
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.
This Week in the War on Women
has posted, so be sure to go there next to catch
up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines:
www.dailykos.com/...
Mid-August’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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- August 13, 1752 — Maria Carolina of Austria born, Queen consort of Naples and Sicily, the wife of King Ferdinand IV & III and sister of Marie Antoinette; de facto ruler of her husband’s kingdoms, she oversaw many reforms, including revocation of a ban on Freemasonry, enlargement of the navy, and expulsion of Spanish influence; she was a believer in enlightened absolutism until the French Revolution, during which she made Naples a police state.
- August 13, 1818 – Lucy Stone born, abolitionist, women’s rights pioneer and author. She had to earn the money to pay for her college education because her parents only provided for her brothers’ higher education. She became the first Massachusetts woman to earn a college degree, but she was almost thirty before she finished. Her only job offer was from Renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, head of the American Anti-Slavery Society, who hired her to write and deliver abolitionist speeches. She was often heckled and at least once was physically attacked by a mob. Nevertheless, she proved so popular that soon she was out-earning many male lecturers. She again defied gender norms when she famously wrote marriage vows to reflect her egalitarian beliefs and refused to take her husband’s last name. Stone spoke the second day of the first National Women’s Convention in Worcester Massachusetts (1850). She was co-founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association (1869); and co-founder with her husband, Henry Blackwell, of the Woman’s Journal (1870-1931), a weekly newspaper “devoted to the interests of women – to their educational, industrial, legal and political Equality, and especially to their right of Suffrage.”
- August 13, 1829 – Martha J. Lamb born, American author, editor, historian and reformer; owner-editor of The Magazine of American History; co-founder of the Home for the Friendless and the Half-Orphan Asylum; secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission.
- August 13, 1849 – Leonora Kearney Barry born in Ireland, American labor reformer and women’s rights activist, the only woman to hold national office in the Knights of Labor.
- August 13, 1860 – Annie Oakley born, stage name of Phoebe Ann Moses Butler, American target and exhibition shooter, star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.
- August 13, 1890 – Ellen Osiier born, Danish 1924 Olympic champion; winner of the gold medal in the first women’s fencing event in the Olympics, the Women’s Individual Foil competition; her teammate, Grete Heckscher, won the Bronze.
- August 13, 1914 – Grace Bates born, American mathematician and academic, one of the few women who earned a Ph.D. in math in the 1940s. She had to fight to get into advanced classes in mathematics in high school and college, and had to petition to become the only woman studying differential equations at Middlebury College, which was segregated by sex. She got her master’s at Brown University in 1938. Bates taught in elementary and secondary schools for several years, then went to the University of Illinois to get her Ph.D., in 1949. She spent several summers as an assistant at the Berkeley Statistical Laboratory under Jerzy Neyman, and worked with him on a number of research articles on probability theory. She taught at Mount Holyoke College, becoming a full professor, then emeritus before her retirement in 1979; author of The Real Number System and Modern Algebra, Second Course.
- August 13, 1918 – Opha May Johnson was the first of the 305 women to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps.
- August 13, 1933 – Joycelyn Elders born, American physician and research scientist, public health administrator as vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, first African American and second woman appointed as U.S. Surgeon General.
- August 13, 1943 – Ertha Pascal-Trouillot born, acting President of Haiti (1990-1991), the first woman in Haiti to hold the office; also one of the first women in Haiti to earn a law degree. After several years as a federal judge (1975-1988), she became the first woman justice on the Supreme Court of Haiti.
- August 13, 1947 – Margareta Winberg born, Swedish Social Democratic politician; Swedish Ambassador to Brazil (2003-2007); Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden (2002-2003); Minister of Gender Equality (1998-2002); Minister for Labour (1996-1998); Minister for Agriculture (1994-1996). Outspoken feminist: in her interview for the 2005 Swedish documentary The Gender War, she expressed strong support for radical feminism, particularly feminist sociologist Eva Lundgren’s theory of the process of normalization of violence against women, including the role played by religion, which got Winberg into political hot water.
- August 13, 1948 – Kathleen Battle born, American operatic coloratura soprano; she started singing gospel music with the choir at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in her hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio, but her professional career began in 1972 when she auditioned for Thomas Schippers, who chose her to sing the soprano solo in Brahms’ German Requiem at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. This led to more orchestral concerts back in the U.S., a 1973 grant from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music to support her career, and her 1975 opera debut in The Barber of Seville with the Michigan Opera Theatre. She was an established artist at the Metropolitan Opera in NY by the 1980s. But her temper and increasing demands caused a parting of the ways with the Met, for what the opera company termed “unprofessional behavior.” She returned to the Metropolitan Opera in 2016, with a recital of spirituals called “Kathleen Battle: Underground Railroad—A Spiritual Journey.”
- August 13, 1963 – Valerie Plame born, American operations officer at the CIA (1985-2006) until her identity as a covert officer was leaked to the press by Richard Armitage of the State Department and Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, during the George W. Bush administration; when the information was made public, she resigned, and worked with a ghostwriter on Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House; since then, she co-authored with Sarah Lovett a spy novel called Blowback, published in 2013.
- August 13, 2014 – Maryam Mirzakhani wins the Fields Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, becoming the first woman and the first Iranian to win the award.
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- August 14, 1802 – Letitia E. Landon born, British author and poet, known by her initials L.E.L., a popular writer in the 19th century; her first poem to appear in print was published in the Literary Gazette in 1820. Landon later became the Gazette’s chief reviewer, but she also continued to write poetry, and may have carried on a secret affair with the Gazette’s editor, William Jerdan, 20 years her senior. Rumours of an affair, which grew to be rumours of multiple affairs, whether true or not, damaged her reputation. After her father’s death in 1824, she had to write to help support her family. She married George Maclean, governor of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1838, and they sailed to Ghana shortly after the wedding. She was found dead, two months after they arrived in Africa, with a bottle of prussic acid in her hand, but no autopsy was performed. Best known for her novel Romance and Reality, and for her poetry collection, The Improvisatrice.
- August 14, 1814 – Charlotte Fowler Wells born, American phrenologist, teacher and publisher. She taught classes in phrenology (the study of head bumps, which at the time were believed by some to indicate the individual’s mental traits – discredited by the 1900s as pseudo-science) until 1837, when she ended teaching to help run the family business. O.S. & L.N. Fowler was a lecture bureau, museum and publishing house. As her husband and brothers traveled frequently, she was often left in charge of the business. In 1875, upon becoming a widow, she was sole proprietor and manager until 1884, when she formed a stock company, Fowler & Wells Company. She served as the new company’s president, and published the American Phrenological Journal. She was also a co-founder in 1863 and a trustee of the New York Medical College for Women, one of the first medical schools founded exclusively to train women as doctors. Susan McKinney Steward graduated as valedictorian from the school in 1869, the first African American woman to earn a medical degree in New York state, and the third black woman doctor in the U.S.
- August 14, 1848 – Margaret Lindsay Huggins born, Anglo-Irish astronomer and scientific investigator; her grandfather was an amateur astronomer, and shared his enthusiasm with her from an early age; she was unable to receive formal training in astronomy, but studied by reading many books, and viewing the stars, with her grandfather, and on her own with a spectroscope she constructed; she also became interested in photography. When she was introduced to astronomer William Huggins, it was the beginning of a lifetime collaboration, and they were married in 1875. They were the first to observe and identify hydrogen lines in the spectrum of the star Vega, and observed the Nova Aurigae of 1892. She was in charge of visual observations, and photography, mainly at the Tulse Hill Observatory, while they both kept meticulous notes, and he did more of the writing on publications of their findings. Beginning in the 1880s, she was listed as co-author of their publications, a rare acknowledgement for a woman at the time. They worked together for 35 years as equal partners. After Williams’ death in 1910, Margaret faced increasing health problems of her own. She donated her scientific papers to Wellesley College in the U.S., as she was a supporter of women’s education, and greatly admired the advances American women were making in education, and in opening up career opportunities for women.
- August 14, 1882 – Gisela Richter born, prominent British-American classical archaeologist, art historian and author; attended Girton College (1901-1904) at the University of Cambridge, but Cambridge did not award degrees to women at that time; spent a year at the British School in Athens, then moved to the U.S. in 1905 and became an American citizen in 1917. She was hired as an assistant at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1905, was promoted to assistant curator in 1910, then to associate curator in 1922. Richter was the Met’s first woman curator, of Greek and Roman art (1925- 1948), and one of the most influential figures in classical art history of the day; she wrote several popular books on classical art, which increased the general public’s understanding and appreciation of the subject, including Animals in Greek Sculpture: A Survey, Roman Portraits, A Handbook of Greek Art and Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes.
- August 14, 1895 – Amaza Lee Meredith born, African American architect, artist and educator. Her father was a white master stair builder, and her mother was black. They were unable to marry in Virginia, so they were married in Washington DC. Her father’s business suffered, and he committed suicide in 1915, when she was 20 years old. She never received formal training in architecture both because of her race and her gender, so she became an art teacher at Virginia State College, where she was the founder of the Fine Arts Department. In spite of her lack of training, she designed homes for many friends and family; her most notable design was for Azurest South, her own home which she shared with her companion Dr. Edna Meade Colson. After teaching elementary and high school classes for several years, she moved to New York to attend the Teacher’s College of Columbia University, receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts by 1934. In 1935, she began her career at Virginia State University, and started work on Azuret South, which was completed in 1939. In 1947, she formed the Azurest Syndicate to create Azurest North, an African American leisure community of 120 lots in Sag Harbor, where several of the homes were her designs. She retired from teaching in 1958, but continued to design buildings through the 1960s.
- August 14, 1900 – Margret Boveri born, German journalist and writer who survived an uneasy relationship with the Nazi regime during WWII to become one of the best-known writers in Germany after the war. She worked for the Foreign Affairs section of the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper (1934-1939), then was a foreign correspondent in Stockholm and New York City for the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper. After the U.S. entered the war, she was interned in New York, but was returned to Europe, arriving in Lisbon in 1942, still working as a correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper, until it was banned in 1943. Boveri then returned to Berlin, where her apartment was destroyed by an air strike. She next worked as a report writer at the German embassy in Madrid. Although she was never a member of the National Socialist Party, she worked as freelance writer for the National Socialist weekly Das Reich (1944-1945). After the war, she was an outspoken critic of the division of Germany by the Allies into separate political zones. In 1968, she was awarded the German Critics’ Prize, and in 1970, the Bundesverdienstkreuz, the highest civilian honour in West Germany, for promoting understanding between East and West Germany. Boveri died in West Berlin in 1975.
- August 14, 1901 – Alice Rivaz born, Swiss author and feminist, wrote about women in art and the family, including Nuages dans la main (Clouds in your Hands) and Jette ton pain (Cast your Bread).
- August 14, 1909 – Winifred C. Stanley born, American lawyer and politician; as a member of the United States House of Representatives in the 1940s, she was the first to propose a bill for equal pay for equal work in HR 5056.
- August 14, 1911 – Ethel Payne born, American writer, journalist and columnist for The Chicago Defender; “The First Lady of the Black Press” with a reputation for asking tough questions; the first African American woman radio and television commentator for a national news organization, for CBS (1972-1982); civil rights activist; associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press; Payne was the inaugural recipient of the Ida B. Wells Distinguished Journalism Chair in 1973.
- August 14, 1926 – Lina Wertmüller born, Italian writer and director, first woman ever nominated for an Academy Award for Directing for her film Seven Beauties; she is also known for The Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy and Swept Away.
- August 14, 1932 – Lee Hoffman born, American author and editor of early science fiction and folk music fanzines. She was the editor (1950-1953) of the highly regarded science fiction fanzine, Quandry, and began publication of the Science-Fiction Five Yearly in 1951, which continued until 2006. She was assistant editor (1956-1958) on the magazines Infinity Science Fiction and Science Fiction Adventures, and also edited and published the folk music fanzines, Caravan and Gardyloo. From 1966 through 1977, she wrote 17 Western novels, and 4 science fiction novels. Her book, The Valdez Horses, won the 1967 Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Novel. Under the pen name Georgia York, she wrote historical romances from 1979 through 1983. She died of a heart attack in 2007.
- August 14, 1956 – Erica Flapan born, American mathematician, known for research in low-dimensional topology and knot theory; professor of mathematics at Pomona College in California; recipient of a 2011 Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics, from the Mathematical Association of America; became a fellow of the American mathematical Society in 2012.
- August 14, 1966 – Halle Berry born, African American actress, producer, environmental and political activist. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Monster’s Ball, and both a Golden Globe and a Prime-Time Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series for Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. Her Executive Producer credits include the 2017 film Kidnap, and the current television series Boomerang. She was a member of the group which successfully fought against a proposed liquefied natural gas facility to be sited in the Pacific Ocean near Malibu, and has campaigned to raise funds for women’s health and education issues. She also campaigned in 2008 for Barack Obama, and testified with Jennifer Garner before the California State Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in support of the 2013 bill to protect celebrities’ children from harassment by photographers.
- August 14, 1968 – Medy van der Laan born, Dutch Democrats 66 politician and chair or member of various councils and associations; chair of Energie Nederland, an energy company (2014 to present); member of the Supervisory Board of the Consumers Association (2007-2015); chair of the AOC council (2009-2014), a green education organization; Dutch Secretary of State for Culture and Media (2003-2006).
- August 14, 1969 – Tracy Caldwell Dyson born, American chemist and NASA astronaut; Mission Specialist on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2007, and Expedition 24 crew member on the International Space Station in 2010; she completed three space walks, logging 22 hours, while repairing a malfunctioning coolant pump.
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- August 15, 1882 – Marion Eugenié Bauer born, American composer, teacher and author; composed piano, orchestral and voice pieces; associated with New York University and Juilliard; editor of the Musical Leader, and author of Twentieth Century Music.
- August 15, 1886 – Gerty Radnitz Cori born, Jewish Czech-American biochemist; she was one of the few women in medical school in Prague in 1917, where she met Carl F. Cori; they were married upon graduation in 1920, and emigrated to America in 1922. They collaborated on medical research, and published their findings as co-authors at Carl’s insistence, in spite of attempts by the institutions who hired him to discourage the practice; Gerty Cori became the first woman to be awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1947), shared with her husband and Argentine physiologist Bernardo Houssay (who did related work on the role of the pituitary gland), for their discovery of the mechanism by which glucogen is broken down in muscle tissue into lactic acid, then resynthesized in the body and stored as a source of energy (known as the Cori cycle). They also identified the important catalyzing compound, the Cori ester. She died in 1957, after a ten-year struggle with myelosclerosis, a rare form of bone cancer, but was still active in research until the end. In 2004, both Carl and Gerty Cori were honored posthumously by the American Chemical Society for their achievements in expanding knowledge of carbohydrate metabolism.
- August 15, 1920 – Judy Cassab born as Judit Kaszab in Austria; artist who emigrated to Australia in 1950; first woman to win the Archibald Prize twice, in 1960 and 1967; appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1988.
- August 15, 1938 – Maxine Waters born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Representative from California since 1991, member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus; California State Assembly (1976-1990); outspoken opponent of the administrations of both Bushes and Donald Trump.
- August 15, 1943 – Eileen Bell born, Northern Irish Alliance Party politician; Member of the Northern Irish Assembly (1998-2007), the second Speaker of the Assembly (2007); General Secretary of the Alliance Party (1986-1993); left politics in 2007, and became the Legislative Advisor and Vice President of Autism NI, a charitable organization which promotes collaboration between parents and professionals, and supports families of children with Autism.
- August 15, 1945 – Khaleda Zia born, Bangladeshi politician; Leader of the Opposition (2008-2014); the first woman Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996, and again from 2001 to 2006; leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (1984-2018); found guilty of corruption in 2018 for embezzling funds from an orphanage trust she set up.
- August 15, 1951 – Ann Biderman born, American screenwriter and television producer; adapted the screenplay for the English language version of Smilla's Sense of Snow; creator and producer of two TV series, Southland and Ray Donovan.
- August 15, 1956 – Lorraine Desmarais born, French Canadian jazz pianist and composer.
- August 15, 1962 – Inês Pedrosa born, Portuguese author, journalist and playwright; director of the Casa Fernando Pessoa cultural center.
- August 15, 1962 – Vilja Toomast born, Estonian politician; member of the Estonian Riigikogu (legislature, 1992-2008), then served in the European Parliament (2009-2013).
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- August 16, 1637 – Emilie Juliane, Countess of Barby-Mühlingen born, most prolific German woman hymn writer, with approximately 600 hymns attributed to her.
- August 16, 1813 – Sarah Porter born, American educator, founder of Miss Porter’s School, a private girl’s college preparatory school; she acquired her education through private tutoring by Yale professors, and continued study on her own. Her school was a pioneer in offering an expansive curriculum for women, including the sciences.
- August 16, 1832 – Helen Knowlton born, American artist and author, principal biographer of William Morris Hunt.
- August 16, 1836 – Virginia Thrall Smith born, American social and charity worker, City Missionary Society member, established Connecticut’s first free kindergarten; elected to the Connecticut State Board of Charities; started the Connecticut Children’s Aid Society; founder of a children’s home that became the Newington Children’s Hospital.
- August 16, 1865 – Mary Gilmore born, Australian writer, journalist, poet, labor movement activist, and crusader for the disadvantaged; inaugural editor of the women’s section of The Australian Worker (1908-1931), advocating for women’s suffrage, pensions for the elderly and invalids, and just treatment of the Aboriginal people. During this time she also wrote for The Bulletin and The Sydney Morning Herald. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1910, which was followed by 20 additional collections; her best-known poem is “No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest” a morale booster during WWII. She was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1937 for her contributions to literature. By the late 1940s, she was the doyenne of the Sydney literati, and in the 1950s and 1960s became a well-known personality on radio and television. At 87, she began writing “Arrows,” a column for The Tribune, the Australian Communist Party’s newspaper (1952-1963), but never joined the party. When Dame Mary died at age 97, she was accorded a state funeral, one of the few writers to be so honored. Her likeness has been featured on the Australian ten-dollar note since 1993.
- August 16, 1900 – Ida A. Browne born, Australian geologist and palaeontologist; she graduated from the University of Sydney with Honors in 1922, and won the University medal in geology. She then worked as a demonstrator in geology and petrology at the University (1922-1927), researching the minerals and geology of New South Wales. A Linnean-Macleay Fellowship (1927-1931) enabled her to extend her research, producing extensive mapping of the region, and also paid for travels overseas to research facilities and conferences. In 1932, she was the second woman at the University of Sydney to earn a doctorate in Geology, but was unable to find work in her field; no mining company would hire her because women were forbidden to work underground. She worked for the University again, and was promoted from demonstrator to Assistant Lecturer in palaeontology when Professor W.S. Dun became ill, putting aside her geology studies to gain extensive knowledge of palaeontology, and keep ahead of her students. She became a full lecturer in 1940. Moving from hard rock to soft rock studies, Brown's research evolved into the study of Palaeozoic invertebrates, specifically brachiopods, and stratigraphical studies. She had exceptional mapping skills; her Taemas map continues to be used. She was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1945, but resigned from teaching in 1950 when she married to fellow geologist and colleague, William Rowan Browne. She then worked with him, often in the field, and continued publishing papers under her name. Browne was a member and first woman president of both of the Royal Society of New South Wales (president 1942-1950) and of the Linnean Society of New South Wales (president in 1953); member of the Australian National Research Council, and the Geological Society of Australia.
- August 16, 1902 – Georgette Heyer born, British novelist, detective fiction and historical romance, often set in the Regency period. Her description of Battle of Waterloo in An Infamous Army was so definitive, military history instructors at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst have used it in their classes.
- August 16, 1934 – Diana Wynne Jones born, British author of science fiction/fantasy; Howl’s Moving Castle.
- August 16, 1945 – Suzanne Farrell born as Roberta Sue Ficker, American lyric ballerina, founder of Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center.
- August 16, 1947 – Carol Moseley Braun born, American politician and diplomat; U.S. Ambassador to Samoa (2000-2001); U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand (1999-2001); the first African American woman U.S Senator, and first woman U.S. Senator from Illinois (1993-1999); considered centrist or conservative on economic issues, but liberal on social issues; strongly pro-choice, against the death penalty, and in favor of gun control; voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In 1993, she convinced the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s application for renewal of its design patent because the design contained a Confederate flag. With Senator Barbara Mikulski, in 1993 she broke the ban on women wearing pants on the Senate floor, which was finally amended in 1994 to allow pants on the floor as long they were worn with a jacket. Moseley Braun delivered the eulogy for Thurgood Marshall in 1993.
- August 16, 1957 – Laura Innes born, American actress and television director; known for her work on the medical drama ER. An advocate for persons with disabilities; as a director she helps them find employment, and supports the Performers with Disabilities Committee of the Screen Actors Guild.
- August 16, 1958 – Angela Bassett born, African American actress and activist, known for her Golden Globe-winning performance in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It as Tuna Turner, as Betty Shabazz in Malcolm X, and as Coretta Scott King in Betty & Coretta. She also played the title role in the television film The Rosa Parks Story, for which she won a 2003 Black Reel Award. She is a supporter of arts programs for youth, and programs for children with diabetes. Bassett is also an Ambassador for UNICEF. She contributed to Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and made appearances to urge people to vote. She also endorsed Hilary Clinton for president in 2016, and introduced survivors of the 2015 Charleston church shooting at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
- August 16, 1958 – Diane Dodds born, Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party politician; Member for Northern Ireland of the European Parliament since 2009; Member of the Northern Irish Legislative Assembly for Belfast West (2003-2007).
- August 16, 1960 – Rosita Baltazar born in Guatemala, Belizean Garifuna choreographer, dancer, dance instructor and founding assistant director of the Belize National Dance Company in 1990. In 2009 she was honored with the Chatoyer Recognition Award from the National Garifuna Council of Belize for her efforts at preserving Garifuna culture. The Garifuna are a mixed indigenous people originally from the Caribbean island of St. Vincent who speak an eponymous Arawakan language.
- August 16, 1961 – Angela Smith born, British Independent (previously Change UK) politician; Change UK Spokesperson for Energy and Environment and for Transport, Local Government and Housing (2019); Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (2011-2014); Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge Sheffield Hillsborough (2005–2010).
- August 16, 2002 – The Africa Women’s Peace Train leaves Kampala, Uganda, to run through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana and finally to Johannesburg in South Africa, for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). Their goal is to bring an end to the civil wars, corruption and genocide which are making their families unsafe.
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- August 17, 1801 – Fredrika Bremer born, Swedish writer and feminist reformer. In the 1840s and 1850s, her Sketches of Everyday Life were extremely popular in Britain and the U.S., where she was hailed as the “Swedish Jane Austen” and greatly increased the popularity of the realist novel in Sweden. Her work as a reformer began because she found the role of a debutante in Stockholm’s upper-class society intolerably stultifying, and started doing charity work, including volunteering at a hospital. She sought a publisher for her writing as a means to earn funds for her charity projects. Her four-volume Sketches of Everyday Life, originally published as an anonymous serial from 1828 to 1831, became an immediate success. Under the terms of Sweden’s 1734 civil code, all unmarried women were minors under the guardianship of their closest male relative until they married and became wards of their husbands; only widowed and divorced women were of legal majority. Under this law, her elder brother had complete control over her finances, even though he had squandered the family fortune during the ten years after their father’s death. The sole recourse of unmarried women was an appeal to the King to become emancipated. In her late 30s, she successfully petitioned King Charles XIV for emancipation from her brother’s wardship. In her 50s, she wrote the novel Hertha, a story which was an example of the injustice of this system, and included an appendix recounting recent court cases related to the legal status of adult Swedish women. It launched a social movement which ultimately won all Swedish women automatic legal majority at age 25. It also inspired Sophie Adlersparre to begin publishing the Home Review, Sweden’s first women’s magazine. In 1842, Bremer published Morning Watches, the first work she published under her own name. She founded the Stockholm Women’s Society for Children’s Care to help the orphans left by a cholera outbreak in 1853. She also founded the Women’s Society for the Betterment of Prisoners, to provide female inmates with moral guidance and rehabilitation. She died in 1865 at the age of 64. In 1884, the Fredrika Bremer Association was founded, first women’s rights organization in Sweden.
- August 17, 1837 – Charlotte Forten Grimké born, African American abolitionist, writer and poet; taught South Carolina freedmen; her diaries were published as The Journal of Charlotte Forten.
- August 17, 1838 – Laura de Force Gordon born, American lawyer, editor and women’s rights activist, editor and manager of the Stockton Daily Leader in 1873, instrumental in obtaining the right for women to practice law in California.
- August 17, 1858 – Caroline Bartlett Crane born, American suffragist, educator, journalist, reformer, and Unitarian minister. In 1889 Bartlett became pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Kalamazoo, and led the church in starting the first free public kindergarten, a school of manual training and domestic science, a gymnasium for women, a day nursery, a cafeteria and the Frederick Douglass Club for the “young colored people of the city.” The church continued to expand until it outgrew its building. In 1894, the church moved into a new building, renamed “People’s Church.” She was also known for public health and sanitation reforms, inspected and wrote sanitary surveys for over 60 cities, campaigned for meat inspection ordinances, and succeeded: before 1900, Michigan had the highest standards in the nation.
- August 17, 1863 – Geneva Stratton-Porter born, American author as ‘Gene’ Stratton-Porter, columnist, naturalist, wildlife photographer and best-selling author during her lifetime, known for her novel A Girl of the Limberlost.
- August 17, 1893 – Mae West born, American performer, star of stage and screen, playwright, screenwriter, and witty sex symbol; noted for amusing and bawdy double entendres, she was often in trouble with the censors. Her 1927 play Sex, which she wrote, then played the starring role, ran for 10 months on Broadway before a grand jury found it to be such an “obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure drama” that it might corrupt “the morals of youth,” West was sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity, and travelled there in style – garlanded in roses, wearing silk underwear and riding in a limousine. Sex made her both notorious and a star. Her films include She Done Him Wrong, I’m No Angel and My Little Chickadee.
- August 17, 1900 – Vivienne de Watteville born, British travel writer and adventurer; her mother died when she was 9; thereafter her father referred to her as “Murray, my son.” In 1923, Vivienne, age 24, took charge of a hunting and fauna-specimen-collecting (she handled all the taxidermy) expedition to the Congo and Uganda led by her father, after he was killed by a lion. Her first book, Out in the Blue, is a description of her experiences on safari. She spent months (1928-1929) in Kenya photographing and filming elephants, camping for 5 months in the Massai Game Preserve with porters from the 1923-1924 expedition and her Irish Setter, then 2 months on Mount Kenya collecting seeds and sketching flora; when she got a bad toothache, she pulled out the tooth herself with pliers; her second book, Speak to the Earth: Wanderings among Elephants and Mountains, was published in 1935; her last book, Seeds that the Wind may bring, is a soul-searching account of a her impulsive decision to rent a house on Port-Cros off the Côte d’Azur, after a visit with her Swiss grandmother, thinking of using it as a “rest-home for world-weary friends.” This idyll turns into a tension-fraught winter of high winds and her young Italian servant becoming passionately obsessed with her, then driven to frenzies of jealousy when her friend “Bunt” (Captain George Gerard Goschen) comes to visit. Bunt shares her love of solitude, natural beauty, music and games. In spite of her fears about losing her freedom, and saddling herself with the wrong companion for the rest of her life, she finally allows herself to fall in love with Bunt, and they become engaged. They marry in July 1930, move to Shropshire, and have two children, David and Tana (named for the River Tana in Kenya). Seeds that the Wind May Bring is not published until 1965, eight years after her death from cancer. Ernest Hemingway was influenced by her two books on Africa, and originally included a quote from Speak to the Earth as an epigraph to his story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
- August 17, 1900 – Pauline A. Young born, African-American historian, teacher, librarian, and community activist. Her father died when she was a child, and her family moved from Massachusetts to Wilmington, Delaware, to live with her mother’s family. She and her siblings were raised by her mother, grandmother and her aunt, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, a writer and activist who greatly influenced Pauline. Pauline joined the NAACP at the age of 12, and remained a participating member for the rest of her life. Civil Rights activists and writers such as W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson would stop overnight at their house while traveling because there was no hotel in the area which would allow Negro guests. She went to Howard High School, the only school for black children in the state of Delaware, where her mother and aunt both taught. Young became the only black student in her class at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, earning a B.A. in history and English, then did some graduate work on educational tests and measurements. After two brief jobs in unrelated fields, she taught social studies and Latin at a segregated high school in Newport News, Virginia. There, she was thrown off a bus for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. She returned to Wilmington in 1928, and became a librarian, then a history and Latin Teacher, at her old high school. After receiving her graduate degree in 1935 from the Columbia University School of Library Service, she taught at the University of Southern California, then became a member of the press staff at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In 1942, she completed 114 hours of ground school work and 12 hours of dual flight at the black-owned Coffey School of Aeronautics in Chicago. In 1943, she went through 50 hours of pre-flight instruction for teachers at Temple University, then taught pre-fight at Howard High’s night school. Young was chair of the Delaware NAACP education committee, and a coordinator of membership drives in Delaware, and during her time in Chicago. She also served on the Wilmington Council on Youth as the representative for the Wilmington Federation of Teachers. She wrote book reviews for The Baltimore Afro-American, The Wilson Bulletin for Librarians, and The Journal of Negro History, and countless letters to the editors of newspapers, and to publishing companies advocating for better Black representation and opportunities. She was a founder of the Delaware Fellowship Commission, which fought against segregated facilities and discriminatory hiring practices, and campaigned for equal opportunity for nurses’ training. Young wrote the chapter “The Negro in Delaware: Past and Present” in the three Delaware: A History of the First State, which was the first published comprehensive history of Black Americans in Delaware.
- August 17, 1906 – Hazel Bishop born, organic chemist, creator of “kiss-proof” lipstick in her home kitchen in 1949; during WWII, she was senior organic chemist at Standard Oil, and discovered the cause of deposits which were affecting superchargers of aircraft engines.
- August 17, 1920 – Lida Moser born, American ‘New York school’ photographer and author; noted for photojournalism and street photography; she started as an assistant in photographer Berenice Abbott’s studio in 1947; she got her first independent assignment from Vogue in 1949, travelling across Canada, then did work for Harper’s Bazaar, Look and Esquire. Moser wrote “Camera View” articles (1974-1981) for The New York Times and articles for many photography magazines. Also published both how-to books on photography, and a number of collections of her photographs. Her work fetches prices in the thousands, and is displayed at over 40 museums worldwide.
- August 17, 1936 – Margaret Heafield Hamilton born, American computer scientist and systems engineer, noted for her paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBFT) for systems and software design, and for coining the term, “software engineer.” Hamilton is the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies (since 1986). She was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and lead developer of on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo space program (1964-1973). Recipient of numerous awards, including the 1986 August Ada Lovelace Award, the 2003 NASA Exceptional Space Act Award, and a 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- August 17, 1945 – Rachel Pollack born, American science fiction, ‘magical realism’ fantasy novelist, and comic book author; Unquenchable Fire won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award; Godmother Night won the 1997 World Fantasy Award; has also written non-fiction books on the Kabbalah, the Tarot and the history of the Goddess; she is a transsexual who writes frequently on transgender issues.
- August 17, 1946 – Martha Coolidge born, American filmmaker, producer, editor, and screenwriter; president of the Directors Guild of America (2002-2003); began her career making award-winning documentaries; noted for Not a Pretty Picture, Valley Girl, Rambling Rose, Real Genius and the TV miniseries Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
- August 17, 1953 – Herta Müller born in Romania of Banat Swabian heritage, German-language novelist, poet-lyricist and essayist; won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature; noted for depicting “the landscape of the dispossessed.” After publication in 1984 of her second book, Drückender Tango (Oppressive Tango), a collection of short stories, her work was banned in Romania, and she moved to Germany.
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- August 18, 1629 – Agneta Horn born, Swedish autobiographer, whose family often traveled with her father, a Swedish Count and military officer, during Sweden’s war with Denmark, until he was captured and held for eight years as a prisoner of war. When her mother died, she was sent to live with an aunt she detested. She married a soldier in 1648, and went with him to Poland and Germany, but he was killed in Poland, and she returned home as a 26-year-old widow with four children, where she ran her estates. She is remembered for her account of her life and travels, Agneta Horn’s Leverne.
- August 18, 1885 – Gertrude “Nettie” Higgins Palmer born, Australian poet and essayist, one of Australia’s leading literary critics.
- August 18, 1893 – Ragini Devi born, American specialist in classical and folk ethnographic dances, won acclaim from dance critics, author of Dance Dialects of India (1972) performed with her daughter and granddaughter.
- August 18, 1900 – Ruth Grigorievna Bonner born, Soviet Communist activist who was sent to a labor camp during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge. In 1937, she was a health official in Moscow when her husband was arrested on charges of espionage and sentenced to death. She was arrested a few days later, and spent 8 years in the Gulag in Kazakhstan, then another 9 years in internal exile. In 1954, she was one of the first of Stalin’s victims to be “rehabilitated” under new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Her husband was rehabilitated posthumously. Then her daughter, human rights activist Yelena Bonner, and her son-in-law, Andrei Sakharov, were exiled to Gorky in 1980. Ruth Bonner, at age 80, was allowed to move to the U.S. to be with her grandchildren. After her daughter was released, she came home in 1987 and died in Moscow a few months later.
- August 18, 1902 – Leona Baumgartner born, physician, first woman to be commissioner of New York City Department of Health (1954); advocate for public health education; head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (1962).
- August 18, 1902 – Mardy (Margaret) Murie born, author and pioneering conservationist, worked for wilderness preservation, instrumental in passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, and the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Noted for her books, Two in the Far North and Island Between. Murie was honored with the 1980 Audubon Medal, the 1983 John Muir Award, and was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1998. She lived to be 101 years old.
- August 18, 1908 – Minnie Postma born as Magdalena Jacomina Wille, South African writer who published short stories and novels in Afrikaans, many for young readers, including Kewaantjie and Kewyntjie, which was broadcast on South African radio.
- August 18, 1911 – Klara Dan von Neumann born in what was Austria-Hungary, Hungarian-American pioneer in computer science. As a teenager she was a figure skating champion. She emigrated to America in 1938 to be with her second husband, physicist John von Neumann. By 1943, she was the head of the Statistical Computing Group at Princeton University. In 1946, she and her husband moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory where she worked on programming the MANIAC I machine designed by John von Neumann and Julian Bigelow. She was also involved as a primary programmer, and in designing new controls, for ENIAC.
- August 18, 1911 – Amelia Boynton Robinson born, American suffragist, civil rights activist and playwright; American Civil Rights Movement leader who ran for Congress, the first African American woman to run for office in Alabama and the first woman of any race to run for the ticket of the Democratic Party in the state. She was a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. Robinson was the founding vice-president of the Schiller Institute; awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Medal in 1990.
- August 18, 1914 – Lucy Ozarin born, American psychiatrist and physician, one of the first seven women in psychiatry who served as commissioned officers during WWII. After Pearl Harbor, almost all the male staff left the state hospital where she was working, leaving her the only physician for 1000 patients, and she quickly felt overwhelmed. When Federal legislation established the W.A.V.E.S. as part of the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942, she decided to join. The hospital refused to approve her request for leave, so she resigned her position. As an “officer and a gentleman” (the Navy just used the commission papers for women that they already had for men), she started an Assistant Surgeon, Lieutenant Junior Grade. With no military training, she was immediately assigned to the military hospital at Bethesda, Maryland, then sent to Camp Lejeune. There, the hospital’s commander assigned her to doing physical examinations on civilian applicants for laborer jobs, even though male doctors with only 90 days of psychiatric training were treating psychiatry patients. A colleague helped her get a transfer, and she returned to Bethesda, to treat WAVES. She also studied for and passed the boards in psychiatry (1945). After the war, she went to work for the Veterans Administration, and was soon promoted to Chief of Hospital Psychiatry. She visited all of the Veterans Hospitals to investigate and make recommendations on clearing up the backlog of mental health services. She started programs for VA hospital staffers to improve their skills in relating to patients, and a training institute for clinical directors on advances in psychiatry. Ozarin joined the U.S. Public Health Services in 1957, working in the Kansas City regional office while studying for a Master’s in Public Health, which she earned in 1961. The National Institute of Mental Health chose her as one of 5 people to write the regulations and establish community health centers across the U.S. after passage of the 1963 Community Mental Health Act. Ozarin was an advocate for the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients. In the 1970s, she did a study for the World Health Organization (WHO) on drug and alcohol treatments in nine European countries, then convened a conference to report her findings, attended by representatives from 21 countries. After her “retirement” in 1983, she volunteered to catalog medical books, and thousands of documents, medical dissertations, and publications for the National Library of Medicine, to facilitate medical research. Received the Director’s Honor Award for her efforts in 2008. Even in her late nineties, she continued working, this time as author of over 50 mini-biographies of notable psychiatrists, posted at Wikipedia. She lived to be 103 years old.
- August 18, 1916 – Dame Moura Lympany born, English concert pianist; in February 1945, she was the first British musician to perform in Paris after the city was liberated, as a soloist with the orchestra of the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1981, she helped establish the annual Festival des Sept Chapelles in Guidel, Brittany, France.
- August 18, 1920 – 19th Amendment Yellow Rose Day: The U.S. Constitution’s 19th Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote. But it almost didn’t happen. Battle of the Roses: Yellow roses were worn by suffrage supporters, red roses by opponents. Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify the 19th Amendment, by a single vote. That vote was cast by 24-year-old Harry Burn, who had been in the anti-ratification camp and was still wearing his red rose when he voted for passage, because he had received a last-minute letter from his mother that morning. Phoebe Ensminger Burn, called “Miss Febb,” wrote, “Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don’t keep them in doubt. I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet.” She ended the missive with a rousing endorsement of the suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt, imploring her son to “be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.” He explained his sudden change of heart, “I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
- August 18, 1921 – Lydia Litvyak born, Soviet fighter pilot during WWII, the first woman fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft, and one of the first two women certified as aces.
- August 18, 1927 – Rosalynn Carter born, U.S. First Lady (1977-1981), politically active while in White House, focused on mental health, senior citizens, and community voluntarism; co-founder with husband of the Carter Center; active supporter of Habitat for Humanity.
- August 18, 1937 – Sheila Cassidy born, English doctor who is a leader in the UK hospice movement. She completed her medical studies at Oxford University in 1963. In the 1970s, she went to practice medicine in Chile when Salvador Allende was president. In 1975, after Cassidy gave medical treatment to Nelson Gutierrez, a political opponent of the new Pinochet regime being sought by police, she was arrested by the Chilean secret police and kept in custody without trial, and severely tortured at the notorious Villa Grimaldi, trying to force her to disclose information about her patients and other contacts. The combined efforts of the British Embassy and Argentinean diplomat Roberto Kozak secured her release, and she was expelled from Chile. The interviews she gave about her imprisonment and torture on the parrilla (a metal frame to which a victim is strapped and subjected to electric shock) brought attention in the UK to the widespread human rights abuses in Chile. She also published her account in Audacity to Believe. After her recovery from her ordeal, she continued to practice medicine. She was medical director of the new St. Luke’s Hospice in Plymouth (1982-1997), and set up palliative care service for Plymouth hospitals. Since retiring from St. Luke’s, she’s been an advocate for hospice, and written books with hospice and religious themes.
- August 18, 1944 – Paula Danziger born, American author of over 30 children’s books, including The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, and the Amber Brown series.
- August 18, 1952 – Elayne Boosler born, American comedian and writer; in 1986, she became the first woman comedian to get her own one-hour comedy special on cable when Showtime aired Party of One. She is active in liberal politics, and was the moderator for a 2003 Democratic presidential candidates debate on C-Span hosted by the National Organization for Women (NOW). She is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post, and a strong support of women’s reproductive rights. She founded Tails of Joy in 2001, a nonprofit that benefits the smallest animal rescue organizations, and advocates for animal rescue.
- August 18, 1972 – Victoria Coren Mitchell born, English professional poker player, weekly columnist for The Observer, and television presenter of the BBC quiz show Only Connect since 2008. She was the winner of the 2014 European Poker Tour.
- August 18, 1974 – Nicole Krauss born, American writer and novelist; noted for her contributions to The New Yorker, and her novels Man Walks Into a Room, The History of Love, Great House, and Forest Dark.
- August 18, 1997 – Beth Ann Hogan becomes first woman to attend Virginia Military Institute (VMI). She left before the year was out, in part because of an injury which left her unable to participate in many of the activities.
- August 18, 2000 – A Federal jury finds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Guilty of discrimination against Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo; she was passed over for promotion after repeatedly reporting complaints that a U.S. company was mining toxic vanadium in South Africa; her example helped to pass “No FEAR,” the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-Discrimination and Retaliation Act (2002).
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- August 19, 1612 – The Samlesbury Witches: three women from the village of Samlesbury in Lancashire, England, are put on trial, accused by a 14-year-old girl of practicing witchcraft, including child murder and cannibalism. Ten others accused during the same Assizes are hanged, but the three from Samlesbury are acquitted when the girl is discredited as a“perjuring tool of a Catholic priest.”
- August 19, 1692 – Five people found guilty of witchcraft executed by hanging in Massachusetts colony, including John Proctor, who with his wife Elizabeth, would be used by Arthur Miller as major characters in his play The Crucible. Elizabeth Proctor was given a stay of execution because she was pregnant, then released after witch hysteria had died down.
- August 19, 1814 (?) – Mary Ellen Pleasant born as a slave, American abolitionist and entrepreneur, self-made multimillionaire; she often “passed for white,” which helped keep her from getting caught as an Underground Railroad conductor, but changed her designation to “Black” after the civil war; sometimes called the “Mother of Civil Rights in California” – her successful lawsuit against a streetcar company for forcing her and two other black women off the streetcar ended segregation on public transportation in San Francisco, and set a precedent used by the California Supreme Court in other cases.
- August 19, 1815 – Harriette Newell Woods Baker born, American children’s book author and editor; she used the pen names Mrs. Madeline Leslie and Aunt Hattie. Her best-known book was Tim, the Scissors Grinder. As ‘Mrs. Leslie,’ she wrote moral and religious tales. Her first published story appeared in The Youth’s Companion magazine when she was 11 years old, and earned for her the sum of one dollar. She wrote almost to the end of her life, dying at age 77 of a respiratory ailment at the home of her son.
- August 19, 1858 – Ellen Willmott born, English horticulturalist, influential member of the Royal Horticultural Society, one of the first women to be elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and with Gertrude Jekyll, one of only two women to receive the Victorian Medal of Honour in 1897, newly instituted that year for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. She published Warley Garden in Spring and Summer, and a two-volume work, The Genus Rosa. Her highly cultivated garden at Warley Place is now a nature reserve, owned by the Essex Wildlife Trust, but many of the native flowers she planted are still there.
- August 19, 1883 – Coco Chanel born, influential French fashion designer of the ‘little black dress’ and the Chanel suit. She began her fashion career as a milliner in 1910, then opened a boutique in 1913, in the resort town of Deauville, to sell deluxe clothing for leisure and sport, making jersey and tricot fabrics into high-fashion sportswear. Next, she expanded her enterprise to Biarritz in 1915, which was so successful she was able to pay back her lover’s investment after the first year. By 1919, she was a registered couturière and established her maison de couture in Paris. By 1927, she owned her original building and four adjacent buildings. By 1935, she employed 4,000 people, but Elsa Schiaparelli had become a serious rival. She closed her business in 1939, moved into the Hotel Ritz, the favored hotel of high-ranking Nazi officers, and narrowly escaped being tried as a Nazi collaborator after the war, due to Winston Churchill’s intervention, said by some to be due to her close association with several English peers, and even members of Britain’s royal family. After several years living in a sort of exile in Switzerland, she returned to Paris in 1954 with her come-back collection. She was back in business, and continued until her death at age 87.
- August 19, 1900 – Dorothy Burr Thompson born, classical archaeologist, art historian and academic; a leading authority on Hellenistic terracotta figurines; the first graduate from Bryn Mawr College with a major in Greek and archaeology, summa cum laude in 1923; she then studied at the American School of Classical Studies, and worked on excavations at Phlius on the Peloponnese peninsula with Carl Blegen. She discovered a tholos (‘beehive’) tomb in 1925, which was the burial place of the king and queen of Midea. Completed her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr in 1931. In 1933, she was the first woman appointed as a Fellow of the Athenian Agora excavations, where Canadian archaeologist Homer Thompson was the assistant director of field work. They were married in 1934. In between giving birth to three daughters, she still did some work on the Athenian excavations, discovering the garden of the Temple of Hephaistos in 1936. The family moved to Princeton NJ in 1946 when Homer Thompson accepted a chair at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she continued to carry out her research and publish her work. In 1987, she was awarded the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement by the Archaeological Institute of America.
- August 19, 1933 – Bettina Cirone born, American portrait photographer, worked as a Ford model in the 1960s, then began her photographic career in 1970, shooting landmark buildings in downtown Manhattan, then switched to portrait photography of political figures and celebrities.
- August 19, 1934 – Renée Richards born, American ophthalmologist, author and tennis player; United States Tennis Association Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame inductee in 2000; after undergoing sex reassignment surgery in 1975, she was denied entrance to the U.S. Open by the USTA; she fought the ban in court – New York State Court ruled in her favor in 1977.
- August 19, 1938 – Nelly Vuksic born, Argentinian choral conductor and singer. When her family could not afford to pay for her secondary education, she earned the money herself by playing the piano and singing, then studied conducting at the National University of Rosario, and conducted the University’s youth choir, and later, its adult choir. After graduation in 1969, she married pianist Cesar Vuksic, and they went to the U.S. when he got a scholarship to Ball State University in Indiana. After arriving, she was also offered a scholarship continue her studies in music, and also to learn English. She became the conductor of the school’s women’s chorus, and earned her Ph.D. in conducting in 1978. In New York City, after some lean years when she had to take jobs cleaning houses and performing in night clubs, she was hired by Hugh Ross, choral director of the Schola Cantorum, as a singer. She went on to found the Americas Vocal Ensemble, and has taught at the Bloomingdale School of Music, Columbia University; now Director of the Conservatory Chorale at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.
- August 19, 1946 – Dawn Steele born, one of the first women to run a major Hollywood Studio, beginning in merchandising and rising through the ranks of production to President of Production at Paramount Pictures in 1985, and took over as President of ailing Columbia Pictures (1987-1990), but after a string of loses, she resigned, and the studio was sold to Sony Corporation. Next, she formed Steel Pictures and made films for the Walt Disney Company (1990-1993), then she became a partner in Atlas Entertainment (1994-1997); her 1993 memoir, They Can Kill You But They Can’t Eat You, described her tenure at Columbia. In Steel’s obituary, Norah Ephron said she was the first powerful woman in Hollywood to hire large numbers of women as executives, producers, marketing people and directors.
- August 19, 1947 – Anuška Ferligoj born, Slovenian mathematician; noted for her work in network analysis, multivariate analysis, social networks, and survey methodology. Professor of Multivariate Statistics and head of the graduate program on Statistics at the University of Ljubljana, and Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology.
- August 19, 1950 – Jennie Bond born, English journalist and television presenter; the BBC’s Royal Correspondent (1989-2003); has published several books on Britain’s Royal Family.
- August 19, 1955 – Patricia Scotland born in Dominica, British Leeward Islands, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, called to the Middle Temple in 1977, specializing in family law. In 1991, she became the first black woman to be appointed as a Queen’s Counsel, then was elected as a Bencher of the Middle Temple. She was named as a Millennium Commissioner, and a member of the Commission for Racial Equality, in 1994. Received a Life Peerage in 1997, and is a Lord Temporal Member of the House of Lords. Parliamentary Under-secretary of State (1999-2001), then Parliamentary Secretary (2001-2003). Appointed as Attorney General (2007-2010) then Advocate General (2010) for Northern Ireland, and also served as the first woman Attorney General for England and Wales (2007-2010). Currently the first woman Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations (since 2016).
- August 19, 1957 – Gerda Verburg born, Dutch politician and trade union member; Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations organizations for Food and Agriculture since 2011; Member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands (2010-2011); Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (2007-2010); youth worker then member of the board of the construction trade union for the National Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Netherlands (1982-1997).
- August 19, 1975 – Chynna Clugston Flores born, freelance American comic book creator; known for her manga-influenced teen comedy series Blue Monday.
- August 19, 1988 – Veronica Roth born, American writer and dystopian novelist, known for her Divergent trilogy.
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- August 20, 1630 – Maria van Oosterwijck born, Dutch ‘Golden Age’ painter, specializing in richly detailed flower paintings and other still lifes, often with allegorical themes; one of the very few women professional painters in the 1600s. She was born near Delft, and did her early work there, but moved to Amsterdam at some point in the 1670s. Her studio was opposite the workshop of painter Willem van Aelst, who courted her, but she turned down his marriage proposal because she was devoted to her painting. She remained single, but raised her orphaned nephew. Van Oosterwijck picked an excellent agent in Amsterdam to market her work outside the Netherlands, and counted among her patrons Louis XIV of France, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, Elector of Saxony Augustus II the Strong, William III of England, and the King of Poland. In spite of her skill and widespread popularity, she was denied membership in the painters’ guild, because women were not allowed to join. She taught her servant Geertgen Wyntges, also known as Geertje Pieters, to mix her paints, and trained her as a painter too. After van Oosterwijck died, Wyntges lived independently, supporting herself as a painter. Arnold Houbraken, an artist better known for his biographies of Dutch Golden Age painters, wrote about her, but considered her an amateur painter, overlooking the large sums paid for her work by high-profile collectors, including European royalty.
- August 20, 1841 – Maria Louise Pool, American author, noted for sketches of New England life; published in periodicals like the New York Evening Post and the New York Tribune, then collected in book form.
- August 20, 1919 – ‘Noni’ (Helen Nontando) Jabavu born, one of the first Black South African women writers and journalists, and one of the earliest Black South African women to publish her autobiographies, The Ochre People and Drawn in Colour. She was a radio personality for the BBC, worked as a film technician, a semi-skilled engineer, and as an oxyacetylene welder working on bomber engine parts during WWII.
- August 20, 1946 – Connie Chung born, American television journalist, the second woman to co-anchor a network evening news program, on CBS. During her nearly 50 year career, she has worked for NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and MSNBC. She is on the list of Notable Chinese Americans in Journalism and the Media.
- August 20, 1955 – Janet Royall born, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, British Labour Co-operative Party politician and academic; Principal of Somerville College, Oxford since 2017; Leader of the House of Lords (2009-2010); became a member of the Privy Council in 2008, and Lord President of the Council (2008-2009); Lord Temporal of the House of Lords since 2004; head of the European Commission Office in Wales (2003).
- August 20, 1958 – Patricia Rozema born, Canadian film director-producer-writer; her credits include I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Mansfield Park, When Night Is Falling, and Into the Forest.
- August 20, 1961 – Amanda S. Berry born, OBE; CEO of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) since 2000; BAFTA’s Director of Development and Events (1988-2000); Scottish Television Enterprises (1990-1997); London Weekend Television (LWT – 1989); Duncan Heath Associates (1983-1988).
- August 20, 1988 – Sarah R. Lotfi born, American filmmaker, noted for films inspired by historical figures and events, including the short Tudor Rose, and the feature-length films The Last Bogatyr and Menschen.
- August 20, 2015 – Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, president of the Greek Court of Cassation, and Greece’s most senior judge, briefly becomes the nation’s first woman prime minister, from August 27 to September 21, 2015, after Alexis Tsipras resigned over the latest German economic bailout proposal for the beleaguered nation.
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- August 21, 1861 – Mary Lizzie Macomber born, American artist in the Pre-Raphaelite style. Much of her work was lost in a fire at her studio in 1913.
- August 21, 1886 – Ruth Manning-Sanders born in Wales, British poet and author of children’s books and collections of folk and fairy tales, who published over 90 books. After their marriage in 1911, she and her husband, artist (not the actor) George Sanders, toured Britain in a horse-drawn caravan and worked in a circus, which she wrote about extensively. Noted for her A Book of series, from A Book of Giants (1962) to A Book of Magic Horses (1984).
- August 21, 1893 – Lili Boulanger born, French composer, first woman to win the Prix de Rome with her composition Faust et Hélène.
- August 21, 1897 – Constance McLaughlin Green born, American historian and author; Pulitzer Prize for History for Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878.
- August 21, 1916 – Consuelo Velázquez born, Mexican concert pianist, and singer-songwriter, best known for “Bésame Mucho.” She was also elected as a member of the Mexican Congress, served as president of the Society of Authors and Composers of Mexico (SACM), and was vice-president of the International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies (CISAC).
- August 21, 1921 – Jaymala Shiledar born, Indian Hindustani classical singer and stage actress, influential in reviving Marathi musical theatre.
- August 21, 1929 – Marie Severin born, American illustrator and comic book artist, known for her work for Marvel Comics and EC Comics, Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame inductee.
- August 21, 1933 – Dame Janet Baker born, British mezzo-soprano, noted for her acting ability, performances in Italian operas and works by Benjamin Britten and Gustav Mahler.
- August 21, 1945 – Celia Brayfield born, English novelist, non-fiction writer, and cultural commentator; she wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times before the birth of her daughter in 1980, when she began work on her first book, a non-fiction work entitled Glitter: The Truth About Fame. She is the author of Pearls, White Ice, Getting Home, and Heartswap.
- August 21, 1951 – Yana Bland (née Mintoff) born, Maltese Labour politician, economist and educator; she worked as a teacher in the United Kingdom, where she was active in the Socialist Workers Party. On her return to Malta, she was one of the founders of the Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region. She was an editor on four non-fiction books of collected works, Militarism in the Mediterranean, Health in the Mediterranean, Nobody Can Imagine Our Longing: Refugees and Immigrants in the Mediterranean, and In Search of Peace. In 1998, she was a founder and superintendent of the Katherine Anne Porter School in Wimberly, near Austin, Texas. She returned to Malta in 2012 to help her ailing father. In 2013, she ran for a seat in the Maltese House of Representatives, but was not elected.
- August 21, 1962 – Sister Dr Bernadette Porter born, British Roman Catholic nun, educator and academic administrator. She held several posts at Roehampton University before serving as Vice Chancellor (1999-2004). She was appointed CBE in 2005, and is a member of the Reform Club, the first gentlemen’s club in London to accept women as equal members, beginning in 1981.
- August 21, 1968 – Laura Trevelyan born, BBC World News America anchor/correspondent based in New York City; BBC United Nations correspondent (2006-2009). She is the author of A Very British Family: The Trevelyans and Their World, and The Winchester: The Gun That Built An American Dynasty. Trevelyan became a U.S. citizen in 2016.
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- August 22, 1762 – Ann Smith Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s sister-in-law, becomes the first U.S. woman newspaper editor, for The Newport Mercury.
- August 22, 1860 – Eleonore Reuss of Köstritz born, Tsaritsa of Bulgaria as the second wife of Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria; she worked as a nurse during the Balkan and First World Wars.
- August 22, 1861 – Mary Elizabeth Wood, librarian and missionary to China, founder of the first library school in China.
- August 22, 1868 – Maud Powell born, American violinist, first American violinist to achieve international rank; awarded GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in January 2014.
- August 22, 1883 – Ruth Underhill born, anthropologist, professor and author; studied with Ruth Benedict who encouraged traveling with native women to learn their history. Underhill wrote about Papago and Navajo culture, and taught in Bureau of Indian Affairs schools.
- August 22, 1893 – Dorothy Parker born, American poet, author, screenwriter and critic, known for her satirical wit; member of the famed New York literary group, the Algonquin Round Table; nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, as co-author of the 1937 version of A Star is Born, and co-author for 1947’s Smash-up. She won the O. Henry Award in 1929 for “Big Blonde.” In her will she left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr., a man she had never met, but greatly admired. Upon his death, his family donated the bequest to the NAACP. After Parker died in 1967, her ashes were moved around unclaimed for 17 years, including several years in her attorney’s filing cabinet drawer. In 1988, the NAACP asked for them, and placed them in a memorial garden at its Baltimore headquarters, under a plaque which reads, “Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested, 'Excuse my dust'. This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988.”
- August 22, 1902 – Leni Riefenstahl born, Nazi film producer-director, noted for Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) and Olympia, two of the most technically innovative and effective propaganda films ever made. She was arrested after WWII and classified as a “fellow traveler and Nazi sympathizer” and detained in Allied prison camps (1945-1948), which badly damaged her reputation and ended her directing career. She spent much of the rest of her life on still photography, photographing and publishing books on the Nuba peoples of Sudan, and underwater photography.
- August 22, 1912 – Cornelia “Coya” Knutson born, first woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Minnesota (1955-1959); first woman to serve on the Agriculture Committee (at the insistence of House Speaker Sam Rayburn over vehement gender-based objections of its chairman). Coya Knutson was two months shy of her 30th birthday in June 1942 when she heard Eleanor Roosevelt asking on the radio for women to become more politically active. The speech ignited her social consciousness. “It was as if the sun burned into me that day. All of a sudden I had an awareness of something I can’t explain — but the idea of going into politics popped into my head.” Two years earlier, she had married farmer Andy Knutson, and settled in a house lit by kerosene lamps. She started her political career by calling a meeting of local farmers in her town of Oklee to discuss bringing electricity to the area. Over the next eight years, she continued to grow her political profile, advocating on behalf of small farmers. In 1950, she ran for and won a seat in the Minnesota state House. But as her career flourished, her marriage fell apart. Her husband resented her success and began drinking heavily, and neglecting the farm. In 1954, she defied Democratic Farm Labor Party elders, who refused to endorse her, and waged an independent run for U.S. Congress. She was a folksy and tireless campaigner, attracting voters by accompanying herself on guitar, accordion or piano as she sang songs like “The Happy Wanderer.” Her upset win over six-term Republican Harold Hagen was a shock to the state’s political pundits. While in Washington, she was the champion of the federal student loan program, family-owned farms, campaign finance reform, and funding for cystic fibrosis research. But her husband became increasingly abusive, threatening her with a shotgun, and beating her so violently she had to hide black eyes behind sunglasses. She finally decided to divorce him. Undoubtedly egged on by her opponents, he falsely accused her of having an affair in a “Come Home Coya” letter published in the newspapers, which caused a huge scandal. She won the primary, but lost the election to a 6’4” Republican whose campaign slogan was “A Big Man for a Man-Sized Job.” She went through with the divorce, and stayed in Washington, working for the Defense Department, but Coya Knutson never ran for office again.
- August 22, 1918 – Mary McGrory born, American journalist and columnist, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on the Watergate scandal.
- August 22, 1921 – Sotiria Bellou born, Greek singer and performer, known for rebetiko style music. She was also a member of the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. She was caught by the Nazis, tortured and put into prison. In 1944, she participated in the Dekemvriana as a member of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS). During the civil war she supported the leftists and she was caught at least once and kept in detention. Extreme Rightists never forgave her for supporting the leftists, and later six members of the royalist group X showed up at a club where she was performing with other musicians, and demanded she sing a famous right-wing song. When she refused, they beat her, called her insulting names, and threatened to kill her. Not one of the men onstage with her or in the audience came to her defense.
- August 22, 1922 – Theoni V. Aldredge born in Greece, American costume designer; won three Tony Awards, 11 other Tony nominations, an Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 1975 Oscar for Best Costume Design for The Great Gatsby.
- August 22, 1935 – Annie Proulx born, American journalist and author, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. National Book Award for her novel The Shipping News and the PEN/Faulkner Award for the novel Postcards.
- August 22, 1950 – Althea Gibson becomes the first black tennis player accepted at a U.S. national competition.
- August 22, 1959 – Pia Gjellerup born, Danish solicitor and Social Democrat politician; Member of Folketinget (Parliament) since 1987; Finance Minister (2000-2001); Minister of Trade and Industry (1998-2000); Justice Minister (1993).
- August 22, 1964 – Diane Setterfield born, British novelist and academic; noted for her Gothic romance The Thirteenth Tale, and a ghost story, Bellman & Black.
- August 22, 1973 – Kristen Wiig born, American comedian, writer, actress and producer; began her career as a member of improvisational comedy group, The Groundlings in the early 2000s. She was a cast member of Saturday Night Live in 2005, and appeared in several films, including Knocked Up and Paul. She co-wrote the screenplay and starred in the 2011 hit comedy film Bridesmaids, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
- August 22, 1977 – Keren Cytter born, Israeli visual and performance artist, and novelist.
- August 22, 1986 – Kerr-McGee agrees to pay the estate of whistleblower Karen Silkwood $1.36 million to settle her nuclear contamination lawsuit, which had been going through appeals for 10 years.
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- August 23, 1847 – Sarah Frances Whiting born, American physicist, astronomer and first professor of physics at Wellesley College (1876-1916); Whiting was quick to explore the newest techniques being applied to astronomy, and became the first director of the college’s Whitin Observatory. Annie Jump Cannon was among her notable students, one of the most effective Harvard “computers,” a group of women who worked on completing the Henry Draper Catalogue, an ambitious project to map and define every star in the sky to a photographic magnitude of around 9. Whiting also wrote numerous articles for Popular Astronomy, and became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1883.
- August 23, 1900 – Malvina Reynolds born to Jewish immigrant parents who were socialist and peace activists. She was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songs, “Little Boxes” and “What Have They Done to the Rain.” Reynolds sang her songs frequently at gatherings for liberal causes. She opposed nuclear weapons, campaigned for civil rights, but also wrote several songs for children, including “Morningtown Ride.” She later contributed several songs and materials to Sesame Street, and made occasional appearances on the show. She earned a doctorate in English from the University of California, Berkeley (1938), and later returned to UC-Berkeley to study music theory. Reynolds was an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, which was founded in 1972.
- August 23, 1908 – Hannah Frank born in Glasgow to Russian Jewish immigrants, Scottish artist and sculptor; she was an illustrator for GUM, the student magazine of Glasgow University even after graduation, while she continued her studies at the Glasgow School of Art, where she began clay modeling, and focused more on sculpting than painting. She often donated pieces of her work to fundraisers for Jewish organizations in Glasgow. She was a member of the Glasgow branch of Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her work was exhibited by the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute and the Royal Academy in London.
- August 23, 1922 – Nazik Al-Malaika born to a feminist poet mother and academic father; Iraqi poet, one of the most influential women poets in Iraq. Notable as the first Arabic poet to use free verse, in her ground-breaking second book of poetry, Sparks and Ashes. Her poems covered nationalism, social and feminist issues, honour killings, and alienation. She left Iraq with her husband and family in 1970 after the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party came to power, moving to Kuwait, until it was invaded by Saddam Hussein in 1990, and then to Egypt, where she lived for the rest of her life in Cairo. Her other three books of poetry are And the sea changes its colour, Bottom of the Wave, and The Night’s Lover.
- August 23, 1941 – Onora O’Neill born, Baroness O’Neill of Bengrave, philosopher, academic and crossbench member of the House of Lords; President of the British Academy (2005-2009), the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences; Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge (1992-2006); founding President of the British Philosophical Association (BPA); author of numerous works on political philosophy, ethics, international justice, bioethics, the importance of trust, consent and respect for autonomy in a just society, and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
- August 23, 1944 – Antonia C. Novello born, American physician and public health administrator; she joined the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in 1979, serving in various capacities. She was appointed as Surgeon General of the United States (1990-1993), the first woman and first Hispanic Surgeon General. Novello later served as Commissioner of Health for the State of New York (1999- 2006).
- August 23, 1949 – Vicky Leandros born as Vassiliki Papathanasiou, Greek singer with an international career, but best known in Europe, record producer and politician. She was elected as town councilor of the Greek harbour town of Piraeus in 2006, and also served as Deputy Mayor until 2008. She has several gold and platinum records, and sings in German, English, French and Spanish as well as Greek.
- August 23, 1954 – Halimah Yacob born, Singapore Independent politician; first woman President of Singapore; National Singapore University Chancellor since 2017; Speaker of the Parliament of Singapore (2013-2017); Member of Parliament (2001-2017).
- August 23, 1956 – Valgerd Svarstad Haugland born, Norwegian teacher, politician and civil servant. Governor of Akershus since 2011; Minister of Culture (2001-2005); leader of the Christian Democratic Party (1995-2004); Minister of Children and Family Affairs (1997-2000).
- August 23, 1958 – Roberta Rudnick born, American earth scientist and professor of geology at University of California, Santa Barbara; world expert on the continental crust and lithosphere; fellow of the American Geophysical Union since 2005, and member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2010; awarded the 2012 Dana Medal by the Mineralogical Society of America; editor-in-chief of Chemical Geology (2000-2010).
- August 23, 1971 – Gretchen Whitmer born, Democratic politician; Governor of Michigan since January, 2019; Ingham County Prosecutor (2016 – finished the term of the previous prosecutor after he was arrested on charges of involvement with a prostitute and willful neglect of duty); Minority Leader of the Michigan Senate (2011-2015); Member of the Michigan Senate, 23rd district (2006-2015); Member of the Michigan House of Representatives (2001-2006).
- August 23, 1983 – Athena Farrokhzad born in Iran, Iranian-Swedish poet, playwright, translator, literary critic, and controversial host of the Sverges Radio show Sommar since 2014; joint winner of the Karin Boye Literary Prize in 2013.
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Sources
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