_________________________________
- January 23, 1585 – Mary Ward born, English Roman Catholic nun, instrumental in the founding of the Congregation of Jesus and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The institute was based on the structure of the men’s Society of Jesus, and began to open schools for girls in 1609 beyond the walls that enclosed all other religious women, a radical idea at a time when sisters were limited to either teaching boarding students or nursing the sick in hospitals attached to their houses. In addition to being free from enclosure, Ward and her followers were free from the obligation of choir, from wearing a religious habit, and from the jurisdiction of the local bishop. Controversy raged, mostly because of the declaration by Pope Pius V (1566-1572) that solemn vows and strict papal enclosure were essential to all communities of religious women. Ward’s congregation was suppressed by the church in 1631, but it was gradually revived. She traveled throughout Europe, founding schools, then established her institute in London, opening free schools for the poor, nursing the sick and visiting prisoners. In 1642, she moved to Heworth, near York, and founded a convent there. She died in 1645, at St. Mary’s School in the siege of York during the English Civil War. After her death, the Rule of her second institute was at length approved by Pope Clement XI, in 1703.
- January 23, 1813 – Camilla Collett born, Norwegian writer, an early contributor to Norwegian literary realism, and a pioneer in Nordic feminism; Amtmandens Døtre (The District Governor’s Daughters) is her only novel; her marriage was a happy one, but only lasted 10 years before her husband died unexpectedly, leaving her with four young sons, and plunging her into near-poverty for the rest of her life; after his death, she wrote essays, literary criticism, polemics and her memoirs; her polemics call for social and political change to expand women’s education and opportunities, opposing bringing up girls to be reticent and self-sacrificing.
- January 23, 1894 – Jyotirmoyee Devi born, Indian writer born in Jaipur; while she had very little formal education, she was allowed to read whatever she liked in her grandfather’s well-stocked library. She didn’t begin writing until after the death of her husband in 1918 during the world-wide influenza epidemic, when as a Hindu she had to return to her parents’ house with four of her children and into enforced seclusion, while one child remained with her husband’s family. After reading John Stuart Mill’s “On the Subjection of Women,” she remained conservative in her behavior, but vowed to treat her daughters and sons equally, and wrote some non-fiction on the rights of women and the Dalits (so-called ‘untouchables’). However, she is best known for her short stories, mostly about women, inspired by her childhood in Jaipur, or set in the section of the Bengal region which is now Bangladesh, which feature her understated dry wit and sharp sociological observations.
- January 23, 1897 – Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky born, first woman student at Vienna’s arts school, Kunstgewerbeschule, and the first woman Austrian architect. She designed affordable council housing for the working classes; she also collaborated with Adolf Loos on settlements for WWI invalids and veterans, and worked for the Austrian Association for Settlements and Small Gardens; the city council of Frankfurt am Main hired her for the Frankfurt Project, for which she designed the Frankfurt Kitchen, a prototype for the built-in kitchen, one of her most notable achievements. She was a communist activist during WWII in the German resistance against the Nazis.
- January 23, 1897 – Ieva (or Ewa) Simonaitytė born, Lithuanian writer, noted for her representation of the minority Lithuanian population in the territories of German East Prussia, and her best-known novel, Aukštujų Šimonių likimas (The Fate of Šimoniai from Aukštujai).
- January 23, 1898 – Freda Utley born, English author and pro-labor activist; married a Russian in 1928 and moved to Moscow; she escaped with their son after her husband’s arrest in 1936 – she used all her British contacts to try to find her husband and secure his release, not learning he had died in 1938 until 1956 – became virulently anti-communist.
- January 23, 1902 – Lucile Leone born, known for upgrading the programs of the U.S. Nurse Corps, including founding in 1943 the Cadet Nurse Corps, which paid all tuition fees for nurse candidates in the program. The Nurse Corps overall grew to 180,000 by 1948. She was the chief nurse officer of U.S. Public Health, and the first nurse and first woman appointed as Assistant Surgeon General (1949-1966). Leone was honored by the International Red Cross with the Florence Nightingale Medal. The Lucile Petry Leone Award is now given biennially by the National League for Nursing "to an outstanding nurse educator."
- January 23, 1909 – Tatiana Proskouriakoff born, American archaeologist and scholar who prepared reconstructive drawings of Mayan buildings that are now in ruins, and contributed significantly to the deciphering of Mayan hieroglyphs, the writing system of pre-Columbian Maya civilization, by demonstrating that the hieroglyphs on monumental stela and buildings were historical records of Maya rulers’ births, accessions and deaths rather than imagistic prophecy, then demonstrating a sequence of seven rulers over a 200 year span.
- January 23, 1910– Irene Sharaff born, costume designer for 40 movies and 60 Broadway shows, as well as American Ballet Theatre, NYC Ballet, and Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, won five Academy Awards. Noted for her costume designs for the films West Side Story, Cleopatra, The King and I, An American in Paris, and The Great White Hope.
- January 23, 1918 – Gertrude B. Elion born, American pharmacologist, co-recipient, with George Hitchings and James Black, of the 1988 Nobel Prize in Medicine for development of drugs to treat leukemia, gout and malaria, as well as drugs used in organ transplants to help prevent transplant rejection. Research by Elion and Hitchings produced the first drugs specifically designed for cancer therapy, as well as drugs to combat rejection of transplanted organs, gout, malaria and bacterial and viral infections. These medications became well-proven in use over many years, and their drugs appeared on the World Health Organization’s list of so-called "Essential Drugs" as medicines which should be available worldwide to promote "Health for All." Elion held 45 patents, including one for 2-Amino-6-Mercaptopurine, the first major medicine to fight leukemia.
- January 23, 1918 – Florence Rush born, American psychiatric social worker, feminist theorist, author and organizer; noted for introducing the “Freudian Coverup” in her paper “The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View,” which challenged Freudian theories of children having erotic fantasies or seducing adults rather than being victims of sexual abuse; published The Best Kept Secret: The Sexual Abuse of Children in 1980; co-founder of Women Against Pornography; member of the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s Advisory Committee on the Treatment of Sexual Aggressors.
- January 23, 1921 – Merija Gimbutas born, Lithuanian-American archaeologist and author, The Prehistory of Modern Europe (1956) and The Civilization of the Goddess (1994).
- January 23, 1921 – Jeanne Moreau born, French actress, screenwriter and director. In 1971, she was a signer of the Manifesto of the 343 – in which prominent French women each publicly announced she had obtained an illegal abortion, an act of civil disobedience which left them open to criminal prosecution. The manifesto was published in the weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur on April 5, 1971, and called for the legalization of abortion and free access to contraception.
- January 23, 1933 – Chita Rivera born, American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles on Broadway; the first Hispanic woman and the first person of Puerto Rican heritage to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award (2002). She was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
- January 23, 1950 – Suzanne Scotchmer born, American Professor of Law Economics and Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley; noted for many publications on subjects ranging from intellectual property to game theory; one of the leading and most prominent experts in patent law and incentives for Research and Development, she was frequently an expert witness in patent cases. Her death in 2014 was caused by cancer.
- January 23, 1962 – Elvira Lindo born, Spanish broadcast journalist, scriptwriter and novelist; noted for her book Manolito Gafotas, based on one of the characters she developed for a radio serial; currently living in New York City with her husband Antonio Muñoz Molina, director of the Instituto Cervantes of New York. She is a contributor to the Spanish-language newspaper, El País.
- January 23, 1964 – Mariska Hargitay born, American actress, director and executive producer; noted as the founder in 2004 of the Joyful Heart Foundation, which provides support to survivors of sexual abuse.
- January 23, 2018 – U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (Democrat-Illinois) announced that she is expecting her second child. Duckworth, 49, gave birth to her daughter, Abigail O'kalani Bowlsbey, in November 2014 while still a member of the House. Duckworth is the 10th woman to have a child while serving in Congress — Representative Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (Democrat-California) was the first, in 1973. When Duckworth has her second child, she will become the first sitting senator to give birth. She lost both legs in 2004 during the Iraq War when the Black Hawk helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Duckworth was elected to the Senate in 2016 after serving in the House for two terms.
- January 23, 2019 – Arizona police arrested an employee at Hacienda Healthcare on sexual assault charges after a 29-year-old woman in a vegetative state at a Phoenix facility gave birth. The 36-year-old suspect worked as a licensed practical nurse at the facility, and had been responsible for the woman at the time of the rape, which resulted in her pregnancy. Police arrested Sutherland after they obtained his DNA and it matched the baby's. The victim's family said in a statement through their lawyer that she "has significant intellectual disabilities as a result of seizures very early in her childhood." The statement added that she "is a beloved daughter" who "has feelings, likes to be read to, enjoys soft music, and is capable of responding to people she is familiar with, especially family."
_________________________________
- January 24, 1547 – Joanna of Austria born, an Archduchess of Austria; at age 18, she was married to Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, but it was not a happy marriage. Her husband ignored her, openly preferring his mistress, Bianca Cappello, who gave birth to a son in 1576, while Joanna suffered through the births of six daughters in the nine years between 1566 and 1575, but only two reached adulthood, and the rest died at birth or in infancy. Finally in 1577, Joanna gave birth to the son and heir demanded of her, but Filippo suffered from hydrocephalus (cerebrospinal fluid accumulating in the brain). In 1578, Joanna was heavily pregnant with her eighth child when she fell down the stairs, and went into premature labor. The baby, another male, died immediately after being born, and she died the next day. There were rumors that Francesco and/or Bianca were involved in her accident on the stairs, but modern medical investigation of her remains confirm the official report of her death as caused by the birth (the child presented arm first, and Joanna’s uterus ruptured). But Joanna also suffered from severe scoliosis – her spine and pelvis were very deformed. The condition of her pelvis must have made all her pregnancies difficult and excruciatingly painful. It is remarkable that she had survived the first seven births. Filippo, her only surviving son, died before his fifth birthday.
- January 24, 1804 – Delphine de Girardin born, French author who used the pen name Vicomte Charles Delaunay; noted for her sketches written for La Presse (1836-1839), later published as Lettres parisiennes, and her romances, including Contes d’une vieille fille a ses neveux (Tales of an Old Girl to her Nephews). She also wrote several dramatic pieces, some of them in verse, and was influential in contemporary literary society, which included Romantics Théophile Gautier and Victor Hugo, and early Realists like Alfred de Musset and Honoré de Balzac.
- January 24, 1836 – Signe Rink born and grew up in Greenland, Danish writer and ethnologist; co-founder with her husband, geologist Hinrich Rink of Atuagagdliutit, Greenland’s first newspaper (1861). Also noted as the first woman to study and publish works on Greenland and the Inuit culture, including Grønlændere, Grønlændere og Danske i Grønland, Koloni-Idyller fra Grønland. She collected folk tales, and a number of illustrations by Aron of Kangeq for folk tales which showed everyday life in Greenland. After moving to Denmark in 1868, she donated the illustrations to the National Museum of Denmark. This collection was later transferred the National Museum of Greenland, when it was established in the 1960s.
- January 24, 1858 – Constance Naden born, English writer, poet and philosopher; she studied botany and French at Birmingham and Midland Institute (1879-1880), then studied physics, geology, chemistry, physiology, and zoology at Mason Science College (1881-1887), and edited the Mason college magazine. She became a member of the Birmingham Natural History Society. Noted as co-developer with Dr. Robert Lewins of Hylo-Idealism, a philosophy based on the principle that “Man is the maker of his own Cosmos, and all his perceptions – even those which seem to represent solid, extended and external objects – have a merely subjective existence, bounded by the limits moulded by the character and conditions of his sentient being.” Naden published her first volume of poetry, Songs and Sonnets of Springtime, in 1881. In 1885, she won the Paxton Prize for an essay on the geology of the district. In her second poetry collection, A Modern Apostle, the Elixir of Life, published in 1887, contains her best-known poems, the ‘Evolutional Erotics’ a humorous series based on Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. She won the 1887 Heslop gold medal for her essay Induction and Deduction. That same year, she was left a considerable fortune for the time in her grandmother’s will, and she began to travel with her friend and women’s rights campaigner Madeline Daniell. Returning to England in 1888, she bought a house and shared it with Daniell. She also raised funds to allow Indian women to study medicine, and became a member of the National Indian Association in Aid of Social Progress in India, which raised money for a scholarship fund for the education of Indian girls, especially to overcome the lack of female teachers for Hindu girls. She also did some public speaking in favor of women’s suffrage. She died in December 1889, of infection after surgery for ovarian cysts. The Constance Naden Medal was founded at Mason Science College (which merged into the University of Birmingham in 1900).
- January 24, 1862 – Edith Wharton born, American novelist, short story writer and playwright; known for Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, for The Age of Innocence. Wharton was an enthusiastic supporter of French imperialism, and wrote In Morocco about her visit there as a guest of the French Resident General Hubert Lyautey and his wife, which was full of praise for the French administration.
- January 24, 1864 – Marguerite Durand born, French actress, journalist, leading women’s rights advocate and suffragette, founded the feminist newspaper La Fronde (The Slingshot), exclusively run by women, advocating for women’s admission to the Bar association and the École des Beaux-Arts; during the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, she organized the Congress for the Rights of Women; helped to organize several trade unions for working women; she was a famous sight in Paris because she took daily walks with her pet lion, Tigre; in 1931, she gave the bulk of her enormous collection of papers to the City of Paris, which became the foundation of the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand, the first public feminist library in France, still one of the best sources for research on women’s history and the women’s movement.
- January 24, 1888 – ‘Vicki’ Hedwig Baum born, Austrian novelist, best known for Menschen im Hotel, published in English as Grand Hotel.
- January 24, 1910 – Doris Haddock born, dubbed ‘Granny D’ — American political activist who, at the age of 88, began a walk of over 3,200 miles (5,140 km) across the U.S. advocating for campaign finance reform. She completed her walk almost 14 months later at the age of 90.
- January 24, 1925 – Maria Tallchief born, first major American prima ballerina, and the first of the Native American ‘Five Moons.’ She danced with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and was the first star of the New York City Ballet, where she gave notable performances in The Firebird and as the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker. She was also the first American to perform in Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. After retiring from dancing, she became the director of ballet for the Lyric Opera of Chicago in the 1970s.
- January 24, 1926 – Ruth Asawa born, American sculptor, passionate activist for art education and a driving force behind the San Francisco School of Arts, now renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of Arts.
- January 24, 1927 – Paula Hawkins born, American Republican politician; the first and only woman to date to be elected to the U.S. Senate (1981-1987) from the state of Florida. She began her career in 1972 with successful campaign as a consumer advocate for a seat on the Florida Public Service Commission. During her tenure as U.S. Senator, she was the main sponsor of the 1982 Missing Children’s Act, and in 1983 chaired the Investigation and Oversight Subcommittee of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, where she launched an investigation of the increase of children reported missing. In 1984, she revealed that she had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child, and her book, Children at Risk, My Fight Against Child Abuse: A Personal Story and a Public Plea, was published in 1986. After losing her 1986 bid for re-election, she served for seven years as the U.S. representative to the Organization of American States Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (OAS - CICAD).
- January 24, 1932 – Éliane Radigue born, French electronic music composer; her later work has been influenced by her conversion to Tibetan Buddhism.
- January 24, 1955 – Lynda Weinman born, American special effects film animator and computer software training developer and author; co-founder with her husband Bruce Heavin of Lynda.com, which was acquired by LinkedIn in April 2015 for $1.5 billion USD.
- January 24, 1966 – Indira Gandhi is sworn in as the first woman Prime Minister of India.
- January 24, 1968 – Mary Lou Retton born; despite congenital hip dysplasia, she became the first American woman to win gold medal in All-Around in gymnastics at the Olympics (1984); now an analyst for televised gymnastics.
- January 24, 1978 – Kristen Schaal born, comedian, actress, writer, and voice for animated characters; also noted as a commentator on The Daily Show; she is a supporter of women’s rights, and a critic of Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress.
- January 24, 1981 – Rubaiyat Hossain born, Bangladeshi filmmaker, writer and producer. Noted for her films Meherjaan; Under Construction; and Made in Bangladesh. She is an advocate for women’s rights, and in 2007 was one of the coordinators of the first international workshop on Sexuality and Rights sponsored by BRAC School of Public Health.
- January 24, 1985 – Penny Harrington, the first U.S. woman police chief of a major city, assumes her duties as head of the Portland OR force of 940 officers and staff. She cut back the drug and vice squads to increase neighborhood patrols, and introduced the idea that officers should spend less time responding to calls and more time talking to citizens. (Her strategy is now called community policing.) Harrington also wanted to overcome the history of tension with the black community, and cut down on the use of excessive force. She lasted 17 months before she was driven out, after she called for firing four white officers, two involved in the use of a chokehold which killed a black civilian who was the victim of the crime, not the perpetrator. An inquest found Stevenson's death criminally negligent homicide, but the officer at fault and the other officer involved were never charged. Two other white officers wore t-shirts, and sold them in the East Precinct parking lot, showing a gun and the slogan, “Don’t Choke ’em, Smoke ’em.” Though they were fired, both men got their jobs back. In 1987 Harrington filed a federal sex discrimination suit claiming that members of the police department "conspired to embarrass and drive her from office", making it difficult for her to obtain employment following her "forced" resignation. In 1988 Harrington became a special assistant to the California State Bar's director of investigations to "handle a wide range of special projects, including training and computers". In 1995, she founded The National Center for Women & Policing with Katherine Spillar, Executive Vice President of the Feminist Majority Foundation. The NCWP aims to promote increasing the number of women throughout all ranks of law enforcement in an effort to improve police response to violence against women, as well as reduce police brutality and excessive force, and improve and expand community policing.
- January 24, 2019 – Europe's top human rights court ordered Italy to pay $20,800 in compensation to Amanda Knox, ruling that her rights were violated in the hours after her 2007 arrest after the killing of her British housemate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy. The European Court of Human Rights said Italian authorities failed to provide Knox, who was 20 years old and not fluent in Italian, with a lawyer and an appropriate interpreter in the early hours of her detention. The court found no evidence supporting her claim of mistreatment in police custody. Knox was freed in 2011 after nearly four years in detention, then retried and convicted in absentia before she and her former boyfriend were finally cleared of any connection to the murder in 2015.
- January 24, 2020 — In Washington DC, Donald Trump, the first occupant of the Oval Office ever to speak at a March for Life rally, claims, “Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House. And as the Bible tells us, each person is wonderfully made . . . the splendor that radiates from each human soul . . . We are here for a very simple reason: to defend the right of every child, born and unborn, to fulfill their God-given potential.”
_________________________________
- January 25, 1408 – Catherine (Katharina) of Hanau born; served as guardian of her children, and regent of the County of Reineck (now part of the Netherlands) during the minority of her son Philip, from 1431 to 1434.
- January 25, 1477 – Anne of Brittany born, ruled as Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death in 1514; highly regarded in Brittany as a conscientious ruler who tried to defend the duchy against France, and for her architectural projects. Her first marriage, by proxy to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, was annulled in 1491, when the 14-year-old Anne was forced by Charles VIII of France to repudiate the contract and marry him instead. Their son, Charles Orlando, Dauphin of France, died at age three. Charles died in 1498, and Anne was forced to marry the new king, Louis XII, a cousin of Charles, but he fell deeply in love with her, which gave her the opportunity to reassert the independence of Brittany from France. Claude, the eldest of their two daughters, was proclaimed the heiress of Brittany, but after Anne’s death, Claude was married to her cousin, King Francis I, and Brittany was merged with France after all.
- January 25, 1816 – Anna Gardner born, American abolitionist, reformer, women’s rights activist, teacher and author; in 1841, she published the call for the first antislavery meeting in Nantucket, where Frederick Douglass made his first public speech, electrifying the audience. She delivered many lectures in the years leading up to the American Civil War, and after the war, she taught in freedmen’s schools in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina (1865-1878). When she returned to the North, she was severely injured in a carriage accident in New York, and after weeks of suffering made a partial recovery, and returned home, where she lectured at the Nantucket Athenaeum about her experiences, and for the cause of women’s rights. She wrote prose and poetry, and published a collection of her best work, Harvest Gleanings, in 1881.
- January 25, 1882 – Virginia Woolf born, leading English modernist author and feminist; noted for To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway and A Room of One’s Own.
- January 25, 1890 – Nellie Bly, intrepid newspaperwoman, completes her round-the-world journey in 72 days, beating the fictitious record in Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days.
- January 25, 1896 – Helen Heffernan born, developed education and childcare programs for California State Department of Education (1926-66) that influenced public education policy nationally on rural education, progressive education, kindergarten and preschool education, educational supervision, curriculum development, and international education. Strong supporter of United Nations’ bilingual education advocacy.
- January 25, 1905 – Margery Sharp born, English novelist and children’s author; noted for The Rescuers.
- January 25, 1930 – Tatyana Nikolayevna Savicheva born, Russian child who kept a diary in a small notebook during the WWII Siege of Leningrad (September 1941 to January 1944), recording the successive deaths of her family; the final entry was her belief that she was the only member of her family left. Though she was rescued and transferred to a hospital, she died from tuberculosis in July 1944, at age 14.
- January 25, 1933 – Corazon Aquino born, Filipino activist and politician; first woman President of the Philippines; after her husband, Senator Benigno Aquino, is assassinated, she becomes the leader of the 1986 People Power Movement which topples Ferdinand Marcos and restores democracy.
- January 25, 1944 – Florence Li Tim-Oi is ordained in China, becoming the first woman Anglican priest.
- January 25, 1948 – Roslyn “Ros” Kelly born, Australian Labor politician, member for Canberra of the House of Representatives (1980-1995); first Australian federal MP to give birth while in office; first woman Minister for Defense, Science and Personnel (1987-1989); Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women (1993-1994).
- January 25, 1950 – Gloria Naylor born, American novelist; The Women of Brewster Place, Bailey’s Café, The Men of Brewster Place.
- January 25, 1954 – Kay Cottee born, Australian sailor and boat builder; first woman to circumnavigate the globe single-handed, non-stop and unassisted, taking 189 days.
- January 25, 1954 – Renate Dorrestein born, Dutch author, journalist and feminist; recipient of the 1993 Annie Romein prize for her body of work; noted for Verborgen gebreken (Crying Shame).
- January 25, 1963 – Molly Holzschlag born, American computer scientist and author; advocate for the Open Web; Color for Websites: Digital Media Design; her focus changed when she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. Holzschlag began working for Knowbility, using inclusive design to overcome accessibility barriers.
- January 25, 1980 – Mary Decker became the first woman to run a mile under 4 1/2 minutes, running it at 4:17.55.
- January 25, 2016 – A Texas grand jury clears Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing, and indicts the two anti-abortionists who assumed false identities while secretly making videos inside Planned Parenthood, then edited the videos to make it appear that the organization was violating the law, on charges of tampering with a governmental record, a second-degree felony with a possible sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The jury also charged David Daleiden, the leader of the videographers, with the misdemeanor he had alleged Planned Parenthood had committed – the purchase or sale of human organs, presumably because he had offered to buy organs in an attempt to provoke Planned Parenthood employees into saying they would sell.
_________________________________
- January 26, 1872 – Julia Morgan born, architect/engineer; first woman admitted to the architecture program at l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris; first woman architect licensed in California; innovator in earthquake-resistance in structures; architect of 700+ buildings, including Hearst Castle; she became the first woman awarded the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2014 — 57 years after her death!
- January 26, 1892 – Bessie Coleman born, first African-American woman to fly a plane and earn an international pilot’s license. She went to France to learn to fly, and in 1921 was issued an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. She was sponsored by Robert Abbott, publisher of the Chicago Defender, the nation’s largest African-American weekly, and the wealthy real estate dealer, Jessie Binga. Coleman learned aerobatics to make a living at air shows, and became known as “Queen Bell.” In 1923, she was hospitalized for three months after a crash. She returned to flying and speaking engagements, and hoped to open a school for flyers. In 1926, her life ended at age 34 in a flying accident.
- January 26, 1924 – Annette Strauss born, American philanthropist and politician; major supporter of the arts and hospitals, especially pediatric sections, in the Dallas TX area; city councilwoman (1983-1984) second woman and second Jewish mayor of Dallas (1987-1991); the Annette Strauss Artist Square in downtown Dallas named for her.
- January 26, 1935 – Dame Paula Rego born in Portugal, Portuguese-British visual artist known for paintings and prints based on storybooks; the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in London.
- January 26, 1943 – Judy-Lynn del Rey born, Science fiction and fantasy editor; the Del Rey Books imprint for Ballantine Books is named primarily for her, but also for her husband, noted science fiction author Lester del Rey.
- January 26, 1944 – Angela Davis born, American civil rights and radical activist; Communist Party member; professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, now retired, in the Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness Departments.
- January 26, 1945 – Jacqueline du Pré born, English cellist, regarded as one of the greatest cellists of all time, in spite of her career being cut short when she began to lose sensitivity in her fingers in 1971, then was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) in 1973. She struggled with the disease for 14 years, until her death in 1987, at the age of 42.
- January 26, 1946 – Susan Friedlander born, American mathematician; mathematical fluid dynamics, the Euler equations and Navier-Stokes equations; 2012 Fellow, American Mathematical Society and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
- January 26, 1948 – Alda Facio born, Costa Rican jurist, author, feminist and international expert in gender and human rights in Latin America; founding member of Ventana, one of the first feminist organizations in Costa Rica, and co-founder of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice at the International Criminal Court.
- January 26, 1951 – Dame Anne Mills born, British authority on health economics; Vice Director and Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Fellow of the Royal Society; worked on cost-effective interventions for malaria and other diseases in Africa and Asia.
- January 26, 1961 – Dr. Janet G. Travell is appointed by President John F. Kennedy to be his physician, the first woman to be the appointed as Physician to the President.
- January 26,1974 – Shannon Hale born, American Young Adult Fantasy author; Book of a Thousand Days, and 2006 Newbery Honor book Princess Academy, co-written with her husband, Dean Hale.
- January 26, 2005 – Republican Condoleezza Rice is sworn in as the first African-American woman, and the second woman (after Madeleine Albright) to serve as U.S. Secretary of State. She was appointed by George W. Bush, after serving as U.S. National Security Advisor (2001-2005).
- January 26, 2015 – Libby Lane is ordained as the first woman bishop of the Church of England.
- January 26, 2019 – After The Telegraph, a British newspaper, published an excerpt from the book The Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump's Women, by journalist Nina Burleigh, they issued a three-page apology to Melania Trump, and agreed to pay damages for what it called false statements about her early modeling career. The excerpt published by the Telegraph in its magazine said Melania Trump's modeling career was struggling before she met Donald Trump, and only improved with his help. The paper apologized "unreservedly." Burleigh stood by her reporting, noting that U.S. publications have published excerpts "without a peep of objection" since her book came out in October 2018. In U.S. courts, the burden of proof rests on the plaintiff, and statements are not libelous if they can be proved to be true. But under British law, a libel claim is based on the “serious harm” a defamatory statement will cause the plaintiff, even if it is true.
_________________________________
- January 27, 1741 – Hester Thrale born in Wales, British author-diarist and art patron; considered important source on 18th century life and on Samuel Johnson; Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson.
- January 27, 1803 – Eunice Hale Waite Cobb born, American writer, poet, hymnist, public speaker and a temperance activist; she married Universalist minister Sylvanis Cobb, and frequently wrote articles and poems for Universalist publications. While not a public advocate for women’s rights, she was close friends with a number of leaders in the women’s rights movement. She was invited, and did attend, the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Massachusetts, held at Worcester in 1850. She was a public speaker for temperance and for the public welfare causes of the time. Her diaries and many of her papers are held by Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
- January 27, 1805 – Maria Anna of Bavaria born, she became Queen consort of Saxony (1836-1854); noted for organizing the first women’s committees, Frauenvereinsanstalt der obererzgebirgischen und vogtländischen Frauenvereine, to help during the great famine of Erzgebirge and Vogtland in Saxony in 1836. The committees remained in existence under various names until 1932.
- January 27, 1858 – Neel Doff born as Cornelia Doff in the Netherlands; Dutch-Belgium author writing mainly in French; important contributor to proletarian literature; after earning her living as an artist’s model, married Fernand Brouez, founder and publisher of La Société Nouvelle (The New Society), influential magazine on social issues and the arts for French speaking Europeans; her first book, Jours de Famine et de Détresse (Days of Hunger and Distress) was semi-autobiographical, and nominated for the 1911 Prix Goncourt (it lost by one vote); followed by two more books Keetje and Keetje Trottin, forming a trilogy.
- January 27, 1870 – Kappa Alpha Theta, the first women’s sorority, is founded at Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University).
- January 27, 1878 – Dorothy Scarborough born, American novelist and non-fiction author; wrote about the South and the Plains states; best known for her novel The Wind, which was made into the celebrated 1928 silent film starring Lillian Gish.
- January 27, 1898 – Georgia Clark born, American bank president; Kansas Democratic National Committee member (1936-1964); President Truman appointed her as the first woman U.S. Treasurer (1949-1953).
- January 27, 1914 – Black African women in South Africa’s Free State protest their inclusion in the Pass Laws, which previously only applied to Black African men.
- January 27, 1934 – Édith Cresson born, French politician and diplomat; European Commissioner for Research, Science and Technology (1995-1999); first woman Prime Minister of France (1991-1992).
- January 27, 1937 – Nancy Dickerson born, pioneer in American radio and TV journalism; first woman reporter at CBS; associate producer of “Face the Nation” (1960); NBC’s first woman correspondent on the floor of a political convention and their first woman on international assignment (1986-1991).
- January 27, 1941 – Beatrice Tinsley born, New Zealand astronomer-cosmologist, revolutionary pioneer in theoretical studies of how galaxies evolve, relation of stars aging to galaxies, discovering young galaxies are brighter and bluer. After coming to the U.S. for better opportunities in her field, Tinsley wrote to her father: “The University of Texas in Dallas has kept me at the nearest possible level to nothing.” She was asked to design an astronomy department at Dallas for the University of Texas, yet in spite of her ground-breaking scientific achievements, her application for the job as head of the university’s astronomy department was not even answered. She eventually left her husband and children for a professorship at Yale.
- January 27, 1944 – Mairéad Maguire born, Northern Irish peace activist; co-founder with Betty Williams of the Women for Peace, now Community for Peace People; she and Williams were awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize.
- January 27, 1960 – Fiona O’Donnell born in Canada, Scottish Labour Party politician; Member of Parliament for East Lothian (2010-2015); elected in 2017 to the East Lothian Council.
- January 27, 1961 – Leontyne Price makes her debut at NY’s Metropolitan Opera House as Leonora in Verdi’s Il Trovatore.
- January 27, 1977 – A Vatican committee reaffirms the Roman Catholic Church's ban on women in the priesthood, saying a woman priest would not reflect “the image of Christ.”
_________________________________
- January 28, 1813 – Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is first published anonymously. Her identity as the author was revealed by her brother after her death. It has since become a literary classic, and remains immensely popular.
- January 28, 1862 – Hannah Bachman Einstein born, pioneering American social worker and activist; through her sustained efforts, New York passed the Child Welfare Law of 1915, which established local child welfare boards to oversee public aid to widows and their children. Einstein served as chair of New York City’s board from its establishment in 1915 until her death in 1929, which served as model for similar boards throughout the nation. Einstein also became head of the New York State Association of Child Welfare Boards, and founded the National Union of Public Child Welfare Officers.
- January 28, 1873 – Colette born as Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, French novelist and journalist, author of Gigi and the Claudine series.
- January 28, 1886 – Princess Marthe Bibesco born Marta Lahovary in Romania, Romanian-French author, socialite and political hostess; noted for her books Isvor, pays des saules (Isvor, Land of Willows) and Au bal avec Marcel Proust (At the Ball with Marcel Proust).
- January 28, 1900 – Alice Neel born, American expressionistic painter, known for portraits.
- January 28, 1903 – Kathleen Lonsdale born, Irish scientist and crystallographer; she developed several X-ray techniques for the study of crystal structure. She was able to determine the structure of the benzene ring by x-ray diffraction, which showed that all the ring C-C bonds were of the same length and all the internal C-C-C bond angles were 120 degrees, had an enormous impact on organic chemistry. Lonsdale was the first to be elected to the Royal Society of London in 1945, the first woman president of the International Union of Crystallography, and the first woman president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
- January 28, 1908 – Julia Ward Howe is the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
- January 28, 1913 – Hazel Garland born, journalist; she became the first African American woman to serve as editor-in-chief of a nationally circulated newspaper,The Pittsburgh Courier (1974-1977). Encouraged the next generation to work in journalism.
- January 28, 1922 – Anna Gordy Gaye born, American R&B composer, songwriter and record producer; founder of the Anna Label.
- January 28, 1927 – Vera B. Williams, American children’s author-illustrator; noted for A Chair for My Mother, and It’s a Gingerbread House; awarded 2009 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature.
- January 28, 1929 – Edith Marie Flanigen born, American chemist, noted for work on synthesis of emeralds, and zeolites for molecular sieves; 2014 recipient of the National Medal of Technology.
- January 28, 1935 – Iceland becomes the first Western country to legalize therapeutic abortion. “Law No. 38” declared that the mother’s health and “domestic conditions” may be taken into consideration when considering whether to permit doctors to perform an abortion.
- January 28, 1944 – Rosalia Mera born, Spanish entrepreneur, co-founder of Zara, the world’s largest fashion retailer; at the time of her death, she was considered to be the world’s richest self-made woman.
- January 28, 1945 – Marthe Keller born, Swiss actress, noted as a director of opera since 1999, at the Opéra National du Rhin in Alsace, and for the Washington (DC) National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and in 2004, a production of Don Giovanni at the Metropolitan Opera.
- January 28, 1947 – Jeanne Shaheen born, American Democratic politician, first woman U.S. senator from New Hampshire (2009 to present), and first woman governor of New Hampshire (1997-2003).
- January 28, 1950 – Naila Kabeer born in India; Bangladeshi social economist and author; current president of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE) through 2019; expert on South and South East Asian gender, poverty, and labor markets; The quest for national identity: Women, Islam and the state in Bangladesh (1989).
- January 28, 1960 – Loren Legarda born, Filipina politician, and environmentalist; Chair of the Philippines Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 2017, Chair of the Senate Climate Change Committee since 2009, and Chair of the Philippine Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee (2013-2016) ; Senator since 2007, and previously from 1998 to 2004.
- January 28, 1969 – Linda Sánchez born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Representative from California (2013 to present), currently serving on the House Ways and Means Committee, and a ranking member on the Ethics Committee; previous Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, current Vice Chair of the House Democratic Conference fifth-ranking position in House Democratic leadership, the first Hispanic and first woman of color elected to this level of leadership in the House.
- January 28, 2017 – Mike Pence became the highest political official to ever address the annual March for Life as thousands of abortion opponents arrived in Washington, D.C., to protest the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing the practice. "This administration will work with the Congress to end taxpayer funding of abortion and abortion providers," said Pence, who was joined at the rally by Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president. The march drew comparisons to last weekend's Women's March, which attracted half a million people to Washington, but "I don't think that these numbers are the most important," said March for Life president Jeanne Mancini. "The number most important for us is 58 million, which is the number of Americans that have been lost to abortion." The number of marchers was estimated at 202,000 by Digital Design and Imaging Service, which used aerial photographs. FOX News reported that the March for Life organizers claimed almost 800,000 people participated. NOTE: The number of abortions performed has been going down. Compared to every 1,000 live births in 2017, there were 13.5 abortions, down from 14.6 abortions per 1,000 live births in 2014. In 1980, generally considered the year with the highest rate, there were 25 abortions per 1,000 live births.
_________________________________
- January 29, 1499 – Katharina von Bora born; at the age of five, she was sent to the Benedictine cloister in Brehna to be educated; at age nine, she was transferred to the Cistercian monastery of Marienthron (Mary's Throne) in Nimbschen, where her aunt was already a nun. She became increasingly dissatisfied with religious life, and interested in Martin Luther’s reform movement. In secrecy, she and several other like-minded nuns begged for Luther’s help in escaping. On Easter Eve, April 4, 1523, Luther arranged for a man who delivered herring to the monastery to hide them in his covered wagon, and bring them to Wittenberg. After the parents and relatives of the runaways refused to shelter them, Luther found employment or marriages for all the other escaped nuns, except Katharina von Bora. She had several suitors, but refused all of them, letting it be known that she would only be willing to marry Martin Luther, or his friend and fellow reformer Nikolaus von Amsdorf. Luther was unsure if he should marry, worried that it would cause a scandal and hurt the Reformation. He decided that "his marriage would please his father, rile the pope, cause the angels to laugh, and the devils to weep." They were married in 1525. Katharina immediately took over running their new home, the "Black Cloister" and a large farm that provided for the monastery, formerly held by Augustinian friars, which was a wedding gift from the reform-minded John, Elector of Saxony. She managed to feed and house a steady stream of students who boarded with them, and all the visitors who sought audiences with Luther. In times of sickness, she operated a hospital on site, and helped nurse the sick. Luther dubbed her the "morning star of Wittenberg" for her habit of rising at 4 a.m. to begin her long day, including looking after their six children – four of them reached adulthood, but one died at eight months and another at age 13. Their marriage was a reflection of the “separate spheres” accorded to men and women. After Luther’s death in 1546, the loss of income from his salary as professor and pastor, combined with two wars, forced her to flee to safety with the remaining children. The monastery and the farm were decimated by the wars, and she lacked the funds to rebuild, which plunged her into poverty, living on the generosity of the Elector of Saxony. Fleeing from Wittenberg again in 1552, this time from the Black Plague, she was severely injured in a cart accident, and died three months later in Torgau.
- January 29, 1602 – Amalie Elisabeth of Hanau-Münzenberg born; after her husband, Landgrave of Hessel-Kassel, died in 1637, she became regent for her son, William VI. Through skillful diplomacy and military successes in the Thirty Years' War, she increased Hesse-Kassel's prosperity, and handed over an enlarged landgraviate to her son upon his majority in 1650.
- January 29, 1810 – Mary Whitwell Hale born, American teacher, writer, poet, hymnist, and founder of private schools in Taunton, Massachusetts and later in Keene, New Hampshire; ‘Home’ and ‘Music’ are her most notable hymns, both written for a juvenile choir concert at Taunton Unitarian Chapel in 1834.
- January 29, 1861 – Florida Ruffin Ridley born, African-American civil rights activist, suffragist, teacher, writer, and editor. She was born into a distinguished family: her father, George Lewis Ruffin was the first black graduate of Harvard Law School, and the first African-American judge in the U.S., and her mother, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, was a notable black writer, civil rights leader, and suffragist. Florida graduated from Boston Teachers’ College in 1882, and became the second black public schoolteacher (after Elizabeth Smith) in Boston, and edited the Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African-American women. She was an advocate for women’s suffrage and campaigned against lynching. In 1894, with her mother and Maria Louis Baldwin, Ridley co-founded a black women’s advocacy group, the Women’s Era Club (later the New Era Club), and they also started in 1885 what became the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, which hosted meetings where notable black women speakers drew audiences. In 1918, the three women founded the League of Women for Community Service in Boston, which originally offered aid and comfort to African American soldiers. The league evolved after WWI to provide social, educational, and charitable services for the black community. When many city theatres and other venues were off-limits for people of African descent, the league offered art exhibits, literary study groups, plays, concerts and lectures at its headquarters, formerly a large brownstone residence, which is still in use by the league today. As a writer, Ridley wrote articles about black history and race relations in New England which appeared in the Journal of Negro History, The Boston Globe, and other periodicals. She also wrote short stories, and belonged to the Saturday Evening Quill, a literary group which published an annual journal of work by its members, including African-American women authors and artists like Helene Johnson, Lois Mailou Jones and Ridley. Ridley co-founded the Society for the Collection of Negro Folklore in 1890, and founded the Society of the Descendants of Early New England Negroes in the 1920s. In 1923, Ridley conceived and directed an exhibit for the League of Women for Community Service, “Negro Achievement and Abolition Memorials” at the Boston Public Library. She died at age 82 in 1943. Her home now is a stop on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail, and in September 2020, the Florida Ruffin Ridley School in the Coolidge Corner neighborhood of Brookline, Massachusetts, will be named in her honor.
- January 29, 1881 – Alice C. Evans born, American microbiologist, and researcher for the U.S. Department of Agriculture; she demonstrated that Bacillus abortus bacteria in milk caused Brucellosis, a highly contagious disease which affects both animals and humans.
- January 29, 1891 – Elizaveta Gerdt born, Russian ballet dancer and teacher; studied under Michel Fokine at the Imperial Ballet School; Vaslav Nijinsky was her chief partner; stayed in Russia after the Russian Revolution; retired as a dancer in 1928, and taught women dancers in the Leningrad Opera and Ballet Theatre, the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (post-revolution name of the Imperial Ballet School) and the Bolshoi Ballet.
- January 29, 1891 – Liliuokalani is proclaimed as ruler; she is the last monarch and only queen regnant of the Kingdom of Hawaii – American planters and U.S. Marines will overthrow the monarchy two years later.
- January 29, 1895 – Muna Lee born, American poet, mystery novelist, translator and feminist; also worked for the U.S. State Department, primarily on cultural exchanges with Latin America.
- January 29, 1903 – Veña Delmar born into a vaudevillian family; American novelist, short story writer, playwright and screenwriter; noted for her novel, Bad Girl, which became a best-seller after it was banned in Boston, and her screenplay for the screwball comedy, The Awful Truth, which was nominated for an Oscar in 1937.
- January 29, 1921 – Geraldine Pittman Woods born, African American science administrator who established programs that encourage and facilitate minority careers in STEM fields; served on the Personnel Board of the California Department of Employment, and as a member of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS); first black woman appointed to the National Advisory General Medical Services (NAGMS) Council; appointed in 1969 as a special consultant to the NIGMS; helped launch the Head Start Program in 1965; appointed in 1968 as Chair of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services.
- January 29, 1926 – Violette Neatly Anderson becomes the first black woman admitted to practice law before the United States Supreme Court, and campaigned for passage of the Bankhead-Jones Act, which provided low-interest loans to farmers who didn’t own their land, and was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937.
- January 29,1927 – Amelita Ramos born, First Lady of the Philippines (1992-1998); she was the first Filipina First Lady to continue to her work, as registrar at the International School in Manila, refusing to resign, and juggling her work duties with her official duties as First Lady. During her tenure as First Lady, she was an advocate for sports programs, having previously served as president of the Philippine Badminton Association, and also campaigned for the rehabilitation and conservation of the Pasig River. Since her husband left office, she has continued to be an advocate for clearing the Pasig of pollution.
- January 29, 1939 – Germaine Greer born, Australian journalist and controversial feminist author of The Female Eunuch, The Obstacle Race, Sex and Destiny, and The Whole Woman.
- January 29, 1941 – Robin Morgan born, American feminist, political theorist, and poet; co-founder of the Women’s Media Center; and author of over 20 books; editor of the trailblazing anthology Sisterhood is Powerful; founder of The Sisterhood Is Powerful Fund; noted for her essay “Goodbye to All That.”
- January 29, 1947 – Linda B. Buck born, American biologist; co-recipient with Richard Axel of 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, for their work on olfactory receptors, studying the olfactory process at the molecular level, and tracing the travel of odors through the cells of the nose to the brain. She is currently on the faculty of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
- January 29, 1949 – Doris Davenport born, American writer poet and performance artist who uses doris davenport as her pen name. She identifies as African American, Appalachian, Feminist, and LGBTQ. She has published eight poetry collections, and written articles and essays for Appalachian Heritage and other periodicals and journals.
- January 29, 1954 – Oprah Winfrey born, African American talk show host, actress, television and film producer, media mogul and philanthropist; noted for The Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest-rated TV program of its kind from 1986 to 2011; Chair and CEO of Harpo Productions since 1986.
- January 29, 1957 – Grażyna Miller born, Polish poet and translator who lived in Italy from 1983 until her 2009 death. Noted for her collections, Sull'onda del respiro (On breath's weave) and Alibi di una farfalla (A butterfly's alibi).
- January 29, 1998 – A domestic terrorist sets off a bomb at a women’s healthcare clinic which provided abortions in Birmingham, Alabama, killing an off-duty policeman and severely wounding a nurse, the second of four bombings he claimed credit for, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, and at another women’s clinic in Sandy Springs, Georgia, in January 1997. The Sandy Springs clinic, at a different location, had previously been firebombed in 1984, along with two other Atlanta-area clinics that year. In 1994, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act was passed, carrying a punishment of up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for those who impeded access by clients or medical personnel. In 2018, the latest year for which compiled statistics are available, there was a three-fold increase in anti-abortion online hate speech and harassing phone calls, as well as an increase in vandalism and trespassing.
- January 29, 2000 – In Egypt, a 32-year-old woman becomes the first to file for a divorce under a new law that does not require that a woman prove she is suffering from physical or psychological abuse. Under Egypt’s Islamic law, Wafa Mosaad Gabr could not divorce her husband simply because she didn’t want to be married to him anymore. So, for four years she begged him to grant her a divorce and he refused. With the help of a Women’s Legal Aid Centre, Gabr was finally able to divorce her husband and become the first woman to do so on grounds of incompatibility. The new law, which was approved by Hosni Mubarak when he was still president, was welcomed by women’s rights activists who had campaigned for years to change the 1929 law allowing women to file for divorce only on grounds of physical or psychological abuse. Prior to 1929, Egyptian women could not divorce their husbands for any reason. While a woman can now file for divorce on grounds of incompatibility, she is required to return the dowry that he paid for her and give up all financial rights. Women’s rights activists feel that the latter part of the law still needs to be amended because it will be difficult for poor women to return the dowry and also relinquish all financial rights.
_________________________________
- January 30, 58 BC – Livia Drusilla born, wife of Roman Emperor Augustus, later known as Julia Augusta, who wielded considerable power behind the scenes, but always portrayed the ideal Roman matron in public.
- January 30, 1590 – Lady Anne Clifford born, English peeress, heiress and diarist; daughter of the 4th Earl of Cumberland. In 1605, when her father died, she was his only living child, and he left her ₤15,000 pounds, but willed his estate to his younger brother, who also took the title as the 5th Earl of Cumberland. She inherited her father’s ancient barony by writ, becoming the suo jure (“in one’s own right”) 14th Baroness de Clifford. She went to court over the family estates, because they had been granted by King Edward II under absolute cognatic primogeniture (through either the male or female line). Her suit was unsuccessful until the 5th Earl died without male progeny, and she finally gained possession, but not until six years after his death. She held the hereditary office High Sheriff of Westmorland from 1653 to 1676. Lady Anne was a notable patron of literature, and kept up a considerable correspondence. The diary she kept from 1603 to 1616 has been published.
- January 30, 1912 – Barbara Tuchman born, American historian and author; she won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction twice, for The Guns of August, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China. Among her other notable works are A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century; The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam; and The Zimmerman Telegram.
- January 30, 1923 – Marianne Ferber born, American feminist economist and author; co-author of The Economics of Women, Men and Work, which is often used as a textbook and reference; member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She was a founding member and served a term as president (1995-1996) of the International Association of Feminist Economics (IAFFE).
- January 30, 1924 – Margaret Yorke born Margaret B. Nicholson, English crime fiction author; during WWII she worked as a hospital librarian and then joined the WRNS as a driver; she is noted for the Patrick Grant series, and numerous one-offs, including No Medals for the Major; The Scent of Fear; and Summer Flight.
- January 30, 1929 – Lois E. Hole born, Canadian politician, professional gardener and best-selling author; Lieutenant Governor of Alberta (2000-2005); noted for her “Favourites” series on plants, which won the 1996 Educational Media Award from the Professional Plant Growers Association; she was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 1999.
- January 30, 1929 – Dr. Lucille Teasdale-Corti born, Canadian physician and pediatric surgeon who worked in Uganda from 1961 to 1996, developing medical services in Northern Uganda; she was unable to secure an internship in the U.S. in 1960 (several rejections were specifically because she was a woman), so her final internship was at the Hôpital de la Conception in Marseille, France. During her internship, she was asked by Piero Corti to help set up a surgery at a mission hospital near Gulu in Northern Uganda, “just for a couple of months” at no pay, except for travel expenses and cigarettes. She and Piero were married in 1961, and they put many newly graduated Italian doctors through three month of hands-on training as part of an Italian government aid project, and a civil service alternative for the doctors in lieu of compulsory military service. During the dictatorship of Idi Amin, they chose to remain, one of the few hospitals still operating throughout the Uganda-Tanzania War, but she became HIV-positive from performing surgeries on war casualties, often cutting herself on bone fragments; she was diagnosed with AIDS in 1985, but continued her work, in spite of the devastating illness, almost to her death in 1996, because she was the only experienced surgeon available.
- January 30, 1931 – Shirley Hazzard born in Australia, Aussie-American author of Transit of Venus, which won the 1980 National Book Critics’ Circle Award; her collection of essays, We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think; and The Great Fire, for which she won the 2003 National Book Award for Fiction.
- January 30, 1939 – Eleanor Smeal born, activist, grassroots organizer, political analyst, author and major figure in the modern American feminist movement; Three-term president of the National Organization for Women (N.O.W. – 1977-1979, 1979-1982 and 1985-1987); co-founder in 1987, and president, of the Feminist Majority Foundation; she coined the term “gender gap” in her 1984 book, How and Why Women Will Elect the Next President.
- January 30, 1955 – Judith Tarr born, American science fiction, fantasy and historical fantasy author (some fantasy novels written under pen names Caitlin Brennan and Kathleen Bryan); Isle of Glass, Ars Magica, and The Lord of the Two Lands.
- January 30, 1959 – Cynthia Carter born, journalist, academic and feminist; senior lecturer, Cardiff School of Journalism; co-founder and editor of the journal Feminist Media Studies.
- January 30, 1997 – A New Jersey judge rules that the unborn child of a woman prisoner must have legal representation, and denying the prisoner bail reduction so she is unable to leave the jail and obtain an abortion. While the US has only about 4% of the world’s population of women, it is home to over 30% of the world’s total population of incarcerated women, and 80% of them are, or are about to become, mothers.
- January 30, 2017 – Donald Trump fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover, for refusing to defend his executive order on immigration in court. Trump's order temporarily banned entry into the U.S. by people from seven predominantly Muslim nations. Yates said it was probably unlawful. Sally Yates was the Deputy Attorney General in the Obama administration, and worked for 27 years in Georgia Department of Justice before that. Trump appointed Dana Boente, a Virginia federal prosecutor, to replace her until his nominee for attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, could be confirmed. In another gesture of defiance, 100 State Department officials signed a dissent memo warning that barring millions of refugees to find a small number of would-be terrorists could increase the terrorist threat, instead of diminishing it. The White House told the diplomats to "get with the program" or leave.
_________________________________
- January 31, 1675 – Cornelia Olfaarts was found not guilty of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials.
- January 31, 1785 – Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová born, Czech writer, and activist in the Czech National Revival movement; also helped to found a school for girls; best known for her cookbook, Domácí kuchařka aneb Pojednání o masitých a postních pokrmech pro dcerky české a moravské (Household Cookery Book, or A Treatise on Meat and Fasting Dishes for Bohemian and Moravian Lasses).
- January 31, 1881 – Anna Pavlova born, Russian prima ballerina and choreographer. She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev. Pavlova is most recognized for her creation of the role of The Dying Swan. With her own company, she became the first ballerina to tour around the world, including South America, India and Australia.
- January 31, 1896 – Sofya Yanovskaya born, Russian mathematician and historian, best known for her efforts in revivifying research in mathematical logic in the Soviet Union, influencing studies of non-standard analysis, as well as editing and publishing the mathematical works of Karl Marx. She was honored with the Order of Lenin.
- January 31, 1900 – Betty Parsons born, American artist, art dealer and pioneering modern art gallery owner; she opened The Betty Parsons Gallery in 1946, one of the few galleries that exhibited work by Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne and Judith Godwin; she later exhibited shows of Agnes Martin, Jasper Johns, and Olive Steindecker, and many others. Her own paintings were exhibited in solo shows at a number of important New York galleries.
- January 31, 1902 – Tallulah Bankhead born, American actress, known for her flamboyant style, husky voice and razor wit; supporter of liberal causes, from helping Spanish Civil War and WWII refugees, to the Civil Rights Movement, putting her at frequent odds with her prominent Alabama family, which boasted two U.S. Senators and a Speaker of the House.
- January 31, 1902 – Alva Myrdal born, Swedish sociologist, politician, disarmament movement leader; co-recipient of the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize; Swedish delegate to 1962 UN disarmament conference in Geneva; UNESCO Social Science chair (1950-1955); she helped create the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
- January 31, 1928 – Irma M. Wyman born, pioneer in computer engineering; first woman Vice President, and first woman CIO, of Honeywell Inc.
- January 31, 1940 – Sabrina Paluga Jackintell born, American women’s record holder; in 1965, the first woman to drive a land vehicle over 300 miles per hour, and in 1979, the women’s world altitude record for gliders, 41,460 feet (12,637 meters); she logged over 4,000 hours in gliders.
- January 31, 1944 – Connie Booth born in the U.S.; after her marriage to John Cleese in 1968, she moved to Great Britain; co-author and co-star with Cleese of the British TV series Fawlty Towers. They divorced in 1978. In 1995, she ended her acting career, and spent five years studying psychology at London University, then became a psychotherapist, registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council.
- January 31, 1945 – Brenda M. Hale born, Baroness Hale of Richmond, British judge; since 2017, President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom; the first woman appointed as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary when she joined the House of Lords in 2004.
- January 31, 1950 – Denise Fleming born, American children’s picture book author- illustrator; best known for In the Small, Small Pond, which was a runner-up for the 1994 Caldecott Medal, and also for the Phoenix Picture Book Award.
- January 31, 1950 – Janice Rebibo born in the U.S., Israeli poet, short story writer and translator who began writing in Hebrew while studying the language in college, and later immigrated to Israel.
- January 31, 1961 – Elizabeth Barker born, Baroness Barker, British Liberal Democrat politician; became a Life Peer in 1999; Liberal Democrat spokesperson on the Voluntary Sector and Social Enterprise, and a Patron of Opening Doors London, a charity providing support for older LGBT people; she is also a campaigner for LGBTQ rights and abortion rights.
- January 31, 1963 – Gwen Graham born, American Democratic politician; U.S. Representative from Florida’s 2nd District (2015-2017); lost to Republican Neal Dunn after redistricting reassigned most of her African American constituents to another district.
- January 31, 1964 – Dawn Prince-Hughes born, American primatologist, anthropologist, and ethologist; associated with ApeNet Inc, the Institute Cognitive Archaeological Research, and the Jane Goodall Institute. Author of Songs of the Gorilla Nation: My Journey Through Autism; Gorillas Among Us: A Primate Ethnographer's Book of Days; Expecting Teryk: An Exceptional Path to Parenthood; The Archetype of the Ape-man: The Phenomenological Archaeology of a Relic Hominid Ancestor; and Adam.
- January 31, 1968 – Ulrica Messing born, Swedish Social Democratic politician; Minister for Communications and Regional Policy (2000-2006); member of the Riksdag (Swedish Parliament, 1991-2007), chair of the Riksdag Committee for Defence (2006-2007).
- January 31, 1986 – Megan Ellison born, American film producer, and founder in 2011 of Anapurna Pictures; producer of Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Her (2013), American Hustle (2013), and Phantom Thread (2017), all of which have earned Oscar nominations.
- January 31, 1986 – Zubeia Jaffer, South African journalist, author and former reporter for the Cape Times, is detained by the security police, with her husband. 335 other people, including her attorney, were also being detained under the ‘State of Emergency’ regulations. She was three months pregnant, and held incommunicado, with no access to her doctor or her lawyer. Shortly after she joined the Cape Times daily newspaper, she wrote an article exposing police brutality on the Cape Flats in July, 1980. The security police picked her up. She was detained, tortured and poisoned by the notorious ‘Spyker’ van Wyk, known for his involvement in torture over a 30-year period beginning in the early 1960s. She was held in police custody again between August and October in 1980, in solitary confinement, charged with possession of banned books. After she was released on bail, she was acquitted of the charge in February 1981. She left the Cape Times later in 1981, due to her frustration with the constant political interference in her work. In 1988, she was charged and convicted for obstructing the police, but was acquitted on appeal. In 1994, she was honored with the Percy Qoboza Foreign Journalist Award presented by the US-based National Association of Black Journalists, the first woman on the African continent to receive the award. Her recent book, Beauty of the Heart, is a biography of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke.
- January 31, 2007 – In Tampa, Florida, police are facing a major controversy for jailing a 21-year-old pre-med college student after she reported she was raped. The unidentified woman was kept behind bars for two days. She was also denied a second dose of the morning-after contraceptive pill because of a prison worker’s religious beliefs, according to Vic Moore, the woman’s attorney. She was released from jail only after Moore reported her plight to local media. Police say they made the arrest after discovering a four-year-old warrant for failure to pay restitution for a 2003 theft arrest when the woman was a juvenile. The warrant was discovered as police were accompanying the woman to the crime scene. They immediately stopped the investigation and put her in handcuffs. Tampa police announced they were changing their policy to give officers “more discretion” on when to arrest a crime victim who has an outstanding warrant. "Obviously, any policy that allows a sexual battery victim to spend a night in jail is a flawed policy,'' police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said. "So our city attorney is writing a new policy right now."
_________________________________
Sources
_________________________________