Welcome to WOW2!
WOW2 is a thrice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from July 23 through July 31.
The next WOW2, for Early August,
will post on Saturday, August 8.
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.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN
will post shortly, so be sure to go there and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
Late July’s Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
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- July 23, 1721 – Anna Dorothea Therbusch born in Germany, Polish Rococo painter; elected to the Stuttgart Academy of the Arts, the Bologna Academy, the Académie Royale in Paris, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
- July 23, 1844 – Harriet Williams Russell Strong born, American agriculturist, inventor, and conservation activist; pioneer of innovations in water storage and flood control; music composer; a leader of the West Coast woman suffrage movement; first woman member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.
- July 23, 1889 – Anna Akhmatova born, Ukrainian-Russian poet and author; one of the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century.
- July 23, 1892 – Icie Hoobler born, biochemist and physiologist, first woman to head a local section of American Chemical Society and to serve as its national president, Director of the Research Laboratory of the Children’s Fund of Michigan.
- July 23, 1900 – Julia Davis Adams born, American author, social worker, journalist and playwright, known for historical and biographical novels, young adult books, and dramas; used the pen name F. Draco for Murray Hill mystery novels.
- July 23, 1900 – Inger Margrethe Boberg born, Danish folklore researcher and author; first woman in Denmark to earn a Doctor of Philosophy, in folkloristics; worked as an archivist at Dansk Folkemindesamling (Danish Folklore Archive) from 1932-1957, but it didn’t become a full-time position until 1952, so she also took on temporary work as a school teacher. Recipient in 1945 of the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat, awarded to Danish women who make significant contributions in the sciences or arts, which enabled her to travel and further her studies; co-editor with Stith Thompson of the Motif-Index of Folk-Literature.
- July 23, 1907 – Elspeth Grant Huxley born, British writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, and environmentalist; author of 30 books, the best known are based on her childhood on a Kenyan coffee farm; The Flame Trees of Thika.
- July 23, 1916 – Laurel Martyn born, Australian ballerina and choreographer; in 1935, she was the first Australian woman to be accepted into the Vic-Wells (later Sadler’s Wells) Ballet, and became a soloist in 1938. After returning to Australia, she performed with the Borovansky Ballet, taught dance, and created her own dance works inspired by Australian themes. She was a co-founder of the Young Dancers’ Theatre, and Classical Dance Teachers Australia.
- July 23, 1917 – Barbara Deming born, influential nonviolent activist, writer, and poet; she marched for peace, civil and women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights. A number of her essays and poems were collected together in We Are All Part of One Another, published in 1984.
- July 23, 1928 – Vera Rubin born, American astronomer; studied with Maria Mitchell at Vassar; she was the only graduate in astronomy from Vassar in 1948, then was barred from enrolling in the graduate program at Princeton, which didn’t allow women until 1975. Rubin got her Master’s at Cornell, and her PhD at Georgetown, in spite of having to battle sexism at almost every step. When the men at the Palomar Observatory told her, ‘It’s a real problem because we don’t have a ladies room,’ she cut a piece of paper into a skirt and stuck it on the male figure on the door to one of the men’s restrooms. She said, ‘Look, now you have a ladies room.’ Rubin did the pioneering work on galaxy rotation rates, uncovering the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves, which became known as the galaxy rotation problem, work that was compelling evidence of the existence of dark matter. Rubin’s results were met with great skepticism, but over subsequent decades, they were confirmed. She was a strong advocate and mentor of women in science; honored with numerous awards, including the Bruce Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the National Medal of Science, but was never honored with a Nobel Prize.
- July 23, 1928 – Ruth Whitney born, pioneering editor of Glamour magazine for 31 years (1967 – 1998), among first editors to introduce relevant social topics to a woman’s magazine, and she featured the first African American on the magazine’s cover (1968).
- July 23, 1931 – Te Arikinui (Paramount Chief) Dame Te Atairangikaahu born, Māori queen for 40 years, the longest reign of any Māori monarch; Te Atairangikaahu means ‘hawk of the morning sky’; in 1979, first Māori appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire; she was a strong supporter of Māori cultural events, and a spokesperson on indigenous issues.
- July 23, 1940 – Danielle Collobert born, French author, poet and journalist; she worked at the Galerie Hautefeuille, a major art photography gallery, in Paris in the early 1960s while writing what would become her novel, Meurtre (Murder), and her first published book, Chants des Guerres (War Songs). She became involved in 1962 with the Front de libération nationale (FLN), Algeria’s nationalist movement, and wrote for the Algerian magazine Révolution Africaine until it stopped being published in 1964; joined the Writers’ Union in 1968, and traveled in Czechoslovakia, writing about the Prague Spring and its aftermath; committed suicide on her 38th birthday; her last work, Survie (Survival), which was published just three months before her death.
- July 23, 1942 – Sallyanne Atkinson born, Australian Liberal Party politician and journalist; Lord Mayor of Brisbane (1985-1991), the first woman to be elected to the position; worked for the Brisbane Telegraph (1960-1962) and the Courier Mail (1963-1964); Alderman on the Brisbane City Council (1979-1985); since 2017, she has been the Chair of the Museum of Brisbane, and Council President of the Women’s College at the University of Queensland.
- July 23, 1957 – Jo Brand born, English comedian, writer and presenter, former psychiatric nurse, who began her comedy career doing stand-up at alternative comedy clubs in the mid-1980s billed as ‘Sea Monster.’ In 1993, she became a resident panelist on the BBC show, The Brain Drain. In 2010, she was one of the performers in Channel 4’s Comedy Gala, a benefit for the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. She has written several books, including the novel The More You Ignore Me, which she adapted as a feature-film script. She was the presenter of The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice (2014-2017).
- July 23, 1959 – Nancy Savoca born, American film director, producer and screenwriter; noted for True Love (which won the Sundance Film Festival 1989 Grand Jury Prize), If These Walls Could Talk, and The 24-Hour Woman.
- July 23, 1970 – Thea Dorn born, German novelist and playwright; since 2004, also the TV host of Literatur im Foyer, a show featuring interviews with authors and book reviews.
- July 23, 1976 – Judit Polgár born, Hungarian Grandmaster in chess, considered the strongest woman player of all time; achieved the Grandmaster title at 15 years, 4 months, breaking the Youngest Grandmaster record previously held by World Champion Bobby Fischer; she was also the youngest player to break into the FIDE Top 100 players rating list, ranking #55 in the world at the age of 12; in 2005, she became the first, and to date, only woman to qualify for a World Championship Tournament, to surpass a 2700 Elo, reaching a career peak of 2735, and to reach a world ranking of #8; she held the title of #1 ranked woman in the world from 1989 to 2014, when she was briefly overtaken by Chinese player Hou Yifan, but she regained her #1 ranking in 2015, shortly after announcing retirement from competitive chess; Polgár is the only woman so far to win a game against a reigning men’s World Champion, and she also defeated eleven current or former World Champions in at least one game.
- July 23, 1978 – Lauren Groff born, American novelist and short story writer; known for The Monsters of Templeton, Delicate Edible Birds, and Arcadia.
- July 23, 1999 – Colonel Eileen Collins becomes first woman to command a US spacecraft, Space Shuttle mission STS-93. In 1995, she was the first woman shuttle pilot.
- July 23, 2001 – Megawati Sukarnoputri becomes first female president of Indonesia after the President Abdurrahman Wahid is removed from office. She is given day-to-day control of the government beginning in August 2000 and serves as President from July 2001 to October 2004, but loses in the 2004 election.
- July 23, 2014 — International Women in Engineering Day was launched for the first time in the UK by the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) to celebrate its 95th anniversary. Since that launch the day has grown enormously, and it received UNESCO patronage in 2016. In 2017, National Women in Engineering Day officially became international.
- July 23, 2018 — Someone in the Fox News booking department mistakenly booked Massachusetts state Senator Barbara L’Italien on Fox & Friends First, instead of former Arizona Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, to talk about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and L’Italien didn’t correct their error until she was on the air. “Good morning, I’m actually here to speak directly to Donald Trump. I’m a mother of four, and I believe that separating kids from their parents is illegal and inhumane.” She continued, “I’m actually Barbara L’Italien. I’m a state senator representing a large immigrant community and running for Congress in Massachusetts. We have to stop abducting children and ripping them from their parents’ arms, stop putting kids in cages, and stop making 3-year-olds defend themselves in court.” She rolled right over attempts by the confused hosts to point out that Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy had been stopped, but she was then cut off. Host Rob Schmitt told the audience, “That didn’t go as planned.” L’Italien finished her message on Twitter, “I've always fought for vulnerable people, and in Congress I will use every opportunity I have to make sure powerful people like @realDonaldTrump hear their voices. Here's the full statement I would've given @FoxNews if I hadn't been cut off. Stop hurting Latino children to score political points with your base,” she said. “Please reunite these families before you cause more trauma. I refuse to believe that our only two options are open borders or traumatizing children, and shame on you for pretending that they are.” L’Italien had decided to take advantage of the Fox News’ error in contacting her office, and use the opportunity to speak her mind to Donald Trump, who was known to be a regular viewer of Fox & Friends.
- July 23, 2018 — Jess Wade, a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London’s Blackett Laboratory, is adding biographical entries on women in science to Wikipedia every day. “I’ve done about 270 in the past year,” Wade said. “I kind of realized we can only really change things from the inside. Wikipedia is a really great way to engage people in this mission because the more you read about these sensational women, the more you get so motivated and inspired by their personal stories.” It was only as a PhD student that she was struck by how being in a minority can shape day-to-day experiences. “Being isolated is hard – this goes for all underrepresented groups,” she says. “Then there are all those challenges during your PhD that amplify that isolation. If you don’t have anyone you can really get on with around you it’s so, so hard.”
- July 23, 2020 – Sixty years after the first women were ordained as priests in the Church of Sweden, women are now 50.1% of the church’s priests, but they are paid less than their male colleagues. According to the church newspaper Kyrkans Tidning, the gender wage gap averages 2,200 Swedish kronor (£196 per month, about $250 USD). Cristina Grenholm, the secretary for the Church of Sweden, claimed the gap was due to more men being in senior positions. The Church of Sweden maintains its historic threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, and has approximately 5,000 ordained clergy in total. There are thirteen dioceses, each headed by a bishop, who is elected by priests, deacons and some laity within the diocese. In 1982, Swedish legislators scrapped a “conscience clause” allowing members of the clergy to refuse to cooperate with a female colleague. The church separated from the Swedish state in 2000, and is the largest Lutheran denomination in Europe, with over 6 million members, but regular church attendance is down. The first woman bishop wasn’t elected until 1997, and Antje Jacklén became the church’s first woman archbishop in 2013. In 2017, the church urged clergy to use gender-neutral language, saying that God was “beyond our gender determinations.”
- July 23, 2020 – The House Hispanic Caucus called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to publicly censure Representative Ted Yoho of Florida for his verbal assault of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on the steps of the nation’s capitol on July 20, and his denial on July 21, in an “apology” to her on the House floor, that he had called her a “f*cking bitch” even though it was said in front of a member of the press. Representative Ocasio-Cortez made her own powerful speech on July 23, “I am someone’s daughter too” – pointing out that verbal abuse and disrespect of women is a daily occurrence in America, and part of a much larger problem than this single incident.
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- July 24, 1868 — Marie Goegg-Pouchoulin founds the Association Internationale des Femmes, the first women’s organization in Switzerland, advocating for women’s rights and peace; she later leads a successful campaign for women’s admission to the University of Geneva in 1872.
- July 24, 1889 – Agnes Meyer Driscoll born, American cryptanalyst, mathematician and physicist, who was fluent in French, German, Latin, Japanese and English; she enlisted in the U.S. Navy during WWI as a chief yeoman (highest rank available to women then) in the Postal Cable and Censorship Office, then was reassigned to the Code and Signal section of the Director of Naval Communications, where she became a leading cryptanalyst, and stayed on as a civilian, except for a two year stint working for the Hebern Electric Code Company on developing an early cipher machine. She returned to the Navy in 1924, where she was an early supporter of machine support for code cracking. Driscoll was a major player in breaking the Japanese Navy manual codes – the Red Book Code in 1926, and the Blue Book Code in 1930; early in 1935, she was a leading member of the team cracking the Japanese M-1 cipher machine used by the Japanese Navy for encrypting messages to their naval attachés in embassies around the world. In 1940, she was doing critical preliminary work on JN-25, the Japanese fleet’s operational code, before she was transferred to a U.S. team working on the German Enigma cipher, but their approach proved fruitless. She was reassigned in 1943 to a team already working on the Japanese Coral cipher; however, the code was broken by others shortly after her arrival. Driscoll was in the U.S. Navy contingent which joined the Armed Forces Security Agency in 1949, and then the National Security Agency in 1952. She retired in 1959.
- July 24, 1892 – Alice Ball born, African American chemist who developed the first successful treatment for Hansen's disease (leprosy). Ball was also the first African American and the first woman to graduate with a M.S. degree in chemistry from the College of Hawaii (now the University of Hawaii). She died at age 24, after being exposed to chlorine while teaching. At the time, fume hoods were not mandatory in laboratories. She was not fully credited for her discoveries until decades after her death.
- July 24, 1897 – Amelia Earhart born, American aviator; first woman pilot to fly solo across the American continent (1928) and across the Atlantic (1932); in 1931, became an official of the National Aeronautic Association, promoted the establishment of separate women’s records; member of the Ninety-Nines (named for the number of charter members), a women pilots organization which promoted women in aviation; her plane went missing in the Pacific en route to Howland Island during an attempt to fly around the world in 1937; there have been numerous searches and theories about what happened, but no trace of the plane, Earhart or her navigator Fred Noonan has been found.
- July 24, 1900 – Zelda Fitzgerald born, American author, poet, and socialite; she and her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald became symbols of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. Her only published novel, the semi-autobiographical Save Me the Waltz (1932), was poorly received, but F. Scott Fitzgerald had insisted she make major alternations prior to publication, as much of what she had written overlapped events he was using in his as-yet unfinished novel Tender is the Night. It has since been reevaluated somewhat more favorably. She spent much of her life from the mid-1930s until her death in and out of sanitoriums. In 1948, she was locked in a room awaiting electroshock therapy when a fire engulfed the Highland Hospital’s main building in Asheville NC, killing her and eight other women.
- July 24, 1914 – Frances Oldham Kelsey born in Canada, Canadian-American pharmacologist and physician. She was hired in 1960 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, one of only seven full-time and four part-time physicians reviewing drugs for the FDA. One of her first assignments was to review an application by Richardson Merrell for the drug thalidomide (under the tradename Kevadon) as a tranquilizer and painkiller with specific indications to prescribe the drug to pregnant women for morning sickness. Even though it had already been approved in Canada and over 20 European and African countries, she refused to authorize thalidomide for market, and requested further studies. She resisted pressure from the drug manufacturer to approve the drug, because of an unexplained nervous system side effect in an English study, and she insisted on a full testing of thalidomide. Her concerns proved justified when thalidomide began to be linked to serious birth defects in Europe. Kelsey’s insistence on full testing, backed by her FDA superiors, made headlines and helped to pass the 1962 Kefauver Harris Amendment to strengthen drug regulation, the same year she was honored with the President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service by President John F. Kennedy. She was appointed by the FDA as deputy for scientific and medical affairs in 1995. In 2000, Kelsey was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She retired from the FDA in 2005, at the age of 90, after 45 years of service. In 2010, Dr. Kelsey was presented by the FDA with the inaugural ‘Dr. Frances O. Kelsey Drug Safety Excellence Award.’
- July 24, 1920 – Bella Abzug born, politician, lawyer, and outspoken feminist; Congresswoman (Democrat -New York, 1971-1977); co-founder in 1971 of the National Women’s Political Caucus, and in 1991, co-founder with Mimi Kleber of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO). She was also a notable wearer of hats.
- July 24, 1922 – Madeleine Ferron born, French Canadian author and radio show host; noted for her novels Le chemin des dames (The Way of the Ladies) and Le Grand théâtre (The Grand Theatre).
- July 24, 1927 – Zara Mints born, Russian-Estonian literary scientist, Slavic philologist and lecturer at the University of Tartu in Estonia. She specialized in the works of Russian lyrical poet Alexander Blok, and Russian literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
- July 24, 1936 – Ruth Buzzi born, American comedian, voice actress and actress, best known as a member of the cast of the comedy-variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In (1968-1973), for which she won a Golden Globe, and her voice work as Frou-Frou in the animated feature film The Aristocats. Buzzi supports numerous children’s charities including Make a Wish Foundation, the Special Olympics and a children’s art summer camp. She is also a supporter and fundraiser for the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch.
- July 24, 1953 – Claire McCaskill born, American Democratic politician; regarded as a “moderate,” she frequently voted against her party’s positions, but received a 100% favorable rating from Planned Parenthood on healthcare and abortion rights, and an “F” rating from the National Rifle Association; U.S. Senator from Missouri (2007-2019), she was a ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee (2017-2019); served as Auditor of Missouri (1999-2007), Prosecutor of Jackson County (1993-1998), and in the Missouri House of Representatives (1983-1988); political analyst for MSNBC and NBC since 2019, and a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
- July 24, 1960 – Catherine Destivelle born, French mountaineer; first woman to complete a solo ascent of the Eiger’s north face (1992).
- July 24, 1966 – Aminatou Haidar born, Sahrawi (nomadic tribe of Berber-Arab heritage) human rights activist and advocate for the independence of Western Sahara, noted for non-violent protests; president of the Collective of Sahrawi Human Rights Defenders (CODESA); imprisoned by Moroccan authorities in 1987-1991 and 2005-2006. In 2009, she was returning from a trip to the U.S. when her passport was confiscated, and she was expelled by Morocco for refusing to state her nationality as “Moroccan” which a Moroccan official called an “act of treason.” She staged a hunger strike after being forced back to her previous stop, the airport in the Canary Islands. The UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International all called on Morocco to allow her to return to her home, resulting in global headlines. After over four weeks, she was near death, and Moroccan authorities finally allowed her return, but she was placed under house arrest, and blocked from speaking to journalists. A month later, she returned to Spain for medical treatment, and was found to still be in poor health. Amnesty International reported that Haidar and her family were under constant surveillance by Moroccan security forces and were being harassed and intimidated. She has continued her non-violent struggle for the rights of the Sharawi people in spite of death threats and even physical attacks on herself and members of her family, Recipient of the 2008 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, the 2009 Civil Courage Prize, and the 2019 Right Livelihood Award, “for her steadfast nonviolent action, despite imprisonment and torture, in pursuit of justice and self-determination for the people of Western Sahara.”
- July 24, 1968 – Coleen Doran born, American author, illustrator and cartoonist; noted for her artwork used along with work by others in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman graphic novel series, and for her illustrations of his short story “Troll Bridge,” as well as her own space opera series, A Distant Soil.
- July 24, 1969 – Jennifer Lopez born, American singer, actress and producer; the first Latina actress to earn over $1 million USD for a film. She is involved in political activism and philanthropy, including Amnesty International, the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, Boys and Girls Clubs, the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and the American Red Cross. She endorsed and made appearances for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during their presidential campaigns. In 2017, she donated $1 million for humanitarian aid for Puerto Rico, and launched with her husband Somos Una Voz (We Are One Voice) to continue to raise funds for disaster relief to areas affected by Hurricane Maria. She is also a supporter of LGBT rights, and has raised millions of dollars for HIV/AIDS research.
- July 24, 1971 – Patty Jenkins born, American film and television director and screenwriter; noted for directing Monster, for which Charlize Theron won an Oscar for Best Actress, and Wonder Woman (2017). In 2011, she won the Directors Guild of America award for Outstanding Directing in a Dramatic Series for the pilot episode of the television crime drama The Killing. Variety reported in late 2017 that Patty Jenkins closed a deal to direct Wonder Woman 1984, and her paycheck is rumored to be in the $8 million dollar range, which would make her the highest-paid woman director in history. That is still less than half what A-list male directors make. She would also receive a substantial portion of box office grosses as part of her contract. The sequel's 2020 release date has been postponed due to Covid-19.
- July 24, 1973 – Amanda Stretton born, English racing driver, and broadcast journalist; the first woman driver to compete in the ASCAR Mintex Cup, which she finished in 6th place, and was on the first women’s team in the British GT championships, as well as the first woman to race in the FIA Championships. She was the first British woman to win an international long distance event at Spa-Francorchamps, and competed in the 24 Hours of Les Mans in 2006. She became a presenter on Channel 4’s Motorsport on 4, and went to work for Sky Sports, EuroSport and Silverstone TV.
- July 24, 1987 – Hulda Crooks, 91-years-old, becomes the oldest person to climb Japan’s Mount Fuji.
- July 24, 2018 – Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner, launched a new initiative called Mothers of Invention, to create “a feminist solution for climate change.” It kicked off with a series of podcasts showcasing grassroots climate change activists at the local level, but also global efforts like legal challenges under way to force governments to adhere to the Paris Agreement goals. Scientists and politicians alongside farmers and indigenous community leaders from Europe, the U.S., Australia, India, Kenya, South Africa and Peru are featured.
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- July 25, 1291 – Hawys Gadarn born, “the Hardy” Lady of Powys; Welsh noblewoman whose father had the forethought to insure she was a subject of the crown of England in his will. When her father died in 1293, her brother was the heir, but when he too died in 1309, he designated Hawys as his heir, but she was still 17, so her four uncles became her guardians. They disputed her claim on the grounds that women could not inherit under Welsh law, and sought take the land for themselves, and force Hawys into a nunnery. She went to the Parliament of Shrewsbury to petition King Edward II of England in person, as an English subject loyal to the Crown. He asked her to nominate a champion of her rights, and she named John Charleton, who was one of Edward’s knights. Charleton led a company of English knights escorting her back to Powis Castle. The knights ably defended the lady’s claim, capturing three of her uncles. Hawys and John Charleton were married shortly thereafter, and she became known for her support of monasteries, including the building of the Franciscan monastery in Shrewsbury.
- July 25, 1806 – Maria Weston Chapman born, America abolitionist and editor of the anti-slavery journal Non-Resistant and The Liberty Bell, an annual gift book featuring works donated by notable writers and used as a fundraiser for the cause; served on the executive committee of the American Anti-Slavery Society (1839-1865).
- July 25, 1840 – Flora Adams Darling born, American author and organizer, instrumental in the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), but the DAR does not recognize her as one of its founders. She went on to help found several other patriotic societies, apparently leaving them because of disagreements with other founders. Darling wrote articles and short stories for magazines and newspapers, and several novels.
- July 25, 1871 – Margaret Floy Washburn born, American psychologist, known for her work in animal behavior and motor theory, first woman granted a PhD in psychology in the US, second woman to serve as American Psychological Association President.
- July 25, 1873 – Anne Tracy Morgan born, American philanthropist and author, spearheaded, and supplied funds, for relief efforts to aid France during and after WWI and WWII; Morgan was the first American woman appointed a commander of Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur (French Legion of Honor).
- July 25, 1874 – Rose O’Neill born, American cartoonist, illustrator, writer and feminist; the first published American woman cartoonist (True magazine, 1896); creator of the popular comic strip Kewpies (debut 1909); she was the highest-paid woman illustrator of her day. Kewpies also became dolls, in several versions, first manufactured in 1912.
- July 25, 1881 – Crystal Eastman born, American lawyer, suffragist, socialist and writer. Co-founder and co-editor with her brother Max of the radical arts and politics magazine, The Liberator. She was a founding member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and of the American Civil Liberties Union. She managed the hard-fought but unsuccessful 1912 Wisconsin suffrage campaign, when the Wisconsin Federation of Women's Clubs and teachers (80% of the state’s teachers were women) lobbied the state legislature for a statewide referendum on woman suffrage. They had already gained the right to vote in school board elections, and they were pushing to extend the vote to all offices. Eastman then joined with Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others in founding the militant Congressional Union, which became the National Women’s Party. Though most socialists at the time opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, she endorsed it, and warned that “protective” legislation for women would be used to discriminate against women. Eastman said you could judge the importance of the E.R.A. by the intensity of the opposition to it.
- July 25, 1896 – Josephine Tey born, Scottish author of mystery novels; also wrote historical plays under the name Gordon Daviot like Richard of Bordeaux; noted for her novel The Daughter of Time, and other books in her Alan Grant detective series.
- July 25, 1898 – Kay Sage born, American Surrealist artist and poet.
- July 25, 1900 – Zinaïda Aksentieva born, Ukrainian-Soviet astronomer, worked on mapping gravity and tidal deformation of the earth; Director of the Poltava Observatory (1951-1969).
- July 25, 1901 – Ruth Krauss born, American author, known for children’s book such as The Carrot Seed and poems for adults, and for her collaboration with Maurice Sendak on I’ll Be You and You Be Me.
- July 25, 1901 – Welfare campaigner Emily Hobhouse begins addressing public meetings across Britain to raise money to improve the appalling conditions which were causing thousands of deaths in the segregated concentration camps during the second Anglo-Boer War, where the British held Boer women and children, and black African non-combatants. South Africa made her an honorary citizen for her humanitarian work there. When she died in Kensington in 1926, her death went unreported in the local press, but her ashes were ensconced in a niche in the National Women’s Memorial Monument at Bloemfontein, South Africa.
- July 25, 1918 – Jane Frank born, American painter and sculptor, also known for her work in mixed media and textile art.
- July 25, 1920 – Rosalind Franklin born, British physical chemist and X-ray crystallographer; she made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structure of DNA which was foundational for the work of Watson and Crick, co-recipients of the Nobel Prize for their studies of DNA’s double helix form. She didn’t receive the recognition her independent work deserved, but she had died of cancer four years before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Crick and Watson. The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.
- July 25, 1923 – Maria Gripe, Swedish author children’s and young adult books, recipient of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal.
- July 25, 1925 – Jutta Zilliacus born in Finland, Swedish-language Estonian author, journalist, and politician. Member of the Finnish Parliament for the Swedish People’s Party (1975-1986) and member of the Helsinki City Council (1968-1984). Among her books are Vägskäl (Crossroads), and Gå över gränser (Across Borders).
- July 25, 1930 – Alice Parizeau born in Poland to Jewish parents who died in the Holocaust; French Canadian author, journalist, criminologist, and essayist; associated with the sovereignty movement in Quebec.
- July 25, 1944 – Sally Beauman born, English journalist and novelist; worked for New York magazine, and was an editor at Queen magazine and The Sunday Telegraph magazine; also worked as an investigative journalist for several leading British publications; author of eight best-selling novels, including The Visitors.
- July 25, 1954 – Sheena McDonald born, Scottish journalist and broadcaster; producer and presenter for BBC Radio Scotland (1978-1981), then worked for STV (a Scottish television channel – 1981-1986), then worked on several different programmes until she was struck by a police van responding to an emergency, and seriously injured in 1999. She was out of broadcasting for almost five years while painfully recovering; currently, she presents a news programme for the cable channel Teachers’ TV.
- July 25, 1955 – Iman born as Zara Abdulmajid, Somali fashion model, founder of an ethnic cosmetics company, and philanthropist; a Supermodel active from 1976 to 1990, she went on to start her own cosmetics firm in 1994, specializing in difficult-to-find foundation shades for women, and expanding into the home shopping fashion market in 2007. She is actively involved with several children’s charities, including Keep a Child Alive, Children’s Defense Fund, and Save the Children’s East African programs. She played a key part in the Enough Project’s campaign against blood diamonds, including terminating her contract with the De Beers diamond conglomerate over ethics conflicts.
- July 25, 1964 – Anne Applebaum born, American-Polish journalist and author; 2004 Pulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) for Gulag: A History; 2012 National Book Award Nonfiction finalist for Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at The Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
- July 25, 1965 – Illeana Douglas born, American actress, producer, director and screenwriter; noted for writing and directing the comedy short The Perfect Woman, the documentary Everybody Just Stay Calm—Stories in Independent Filmmaking, and Boy Crazy, Girl Crazier. She also produced several projects for the Sundance Channel, including Illeanarama, for which she also has writing and acting credits.
- July 25, 1966 – Diana Johnson born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Kingston Upon Hull North since 2005, Hull’s first woman MP; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (2009-2010); Member of the London Assembly for the Labour Party (2003-2004); in 2014, she proposed a Bill that would require sex and relationships education, including discussions around issues such as consent, to be made a compulsory part of the National Curriculum.
- July 25, 1967 – Ruth Peetoom born, Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) politician, CDA Party Chair since 2011.
- July 25, 1969 – Annastacia Palaszczuk born, Australian Labor politician; Premier of Queensland since 2015; Labor member of the Legislative Assembly of Queensland since 2006; as Leader of the Opposition of Queensland (2012-2015), the first woman Premier of a state from an Opposition party; first Australian premier to have a majority of women ministers (8 out of 14); served as Minister for Disabilities (2009-2011), and for Multicultural Affairs (2009-2012).
- July 25, 1970 – Ariel Gore born, American author, editor-publisher of Hip Mama, alternative press publication covering the culture and politics of motherhood.
- July 25, 1974 – Lauren Faust born, American animator, director, producer and screenwriter; known for creating the animated series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
- July 25, 1974 – Nisha Ganatra born in Canada of Indian subcontinent ancestry, film director, producer, screenwriter and actress, best known for her films Chutney Popcorn and Cosmopolitan.
- July 25, 1978 – Louise Joy Brown, first in-vitro fertilization test-tube baby, is born in England.
- July 25, 1984 – Svetlana Savitskaya becomes first woman to perform a spacewalk as a cosmonaut aboard Salyut 7.
- July 25, 2007 – Pratibha Patil sworn in as India’s first woman president (Indira Gandhi was India’s first woman Prime Minister).
- July 25, 2018 – Elin Ersson, a 21-year-old Swedish student activist, was on board a Turkish airline flight at Gothenburg airport when she prevented the deportation from her country of an Afghan asylum seeker by refusing to sit down until the man was removed from the flight. She livestreamed the standoff after learning that the man would be dispatched on arrival in Istanbul to another plane bound for war-torn Afghanistan. The footage went viral and got over half a million hits. Struggling to maintain her composure, Ersson said, “I don’t want a man’s life to be taken away just because you don’t want to miss your flight. I am not going to sit down until the person is off the plane.” When asked by a steward to stop filming, she said emphatically, “I am doing what I can to save a person’s life. As long as a person is standing up the pilot cannot take off. All I want to do is stop the deportation and then I will comply with the rules here. This is all perfectly legal and I have not committed a crime.” Replying to an irate English-speaking man who attempted tried to snatch her phone, she said: “What is more important, a life, or your time? . . . He is not safe in Afghanistan. I am trying to change my country’s rules, I don’t like them. It is not right to send people to hell.” Some passengers applauded when the asylum seeker was taken off the plane. Ersson was also escorted off. The German international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, reported that the man was still in custody. He was later deported. In Sweden, opinion was been split on the issue of giving asylum to an increasing number of asylum seekers, with the government taking a harder line on expelling them as the numbers have risen. Ersson was fined 3,000 krona ($324 USD) for failing to comply with the instructions of the flight crew.
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- July 26, 1745 – First record of a women’s cricket match takes place near Guildford, England. It was a match “between eleven maids of Bramley and eleven maids of Hambledon, all dressed in white,” according to The Reading Mercury.
- July 26, 1869 – Donaldina Cameron born, social justice advocate in San Francisco. At age 25, she became head of the Presbyterian Mission Home for Girls, and began her battle to end the illegal smuggling of Chinese girls and young women by the Tongs to be used as prostitutes or slave labor. She rescued over 3,000 Chinese women held by the traffickers, developing a network of informers to discover the brothels and opium dens where they were held, then leading police to raid them, sometimes carrying an axe and chopping down doors or panels hiding the victims herself. The traffickers called her Fahn Gwai, “white devil.” Enlisting support from church and civil groups, as well as working with lawyers and legislators, she is credited with breaking the back of the early 20th century Chinese slave trade in the city.
- July 26, 1895 – Gracie Allen born, American comedian and vaudevillian, best known as part of the comic duo Burns and Allen, with her husband George Burns, on stage, radio, film and television. She always wore sleeves long enough to cover scars from a severe scalding accident in her childhood. Burns downplayed his own comic brilliance, crediting Allen with their success, “All I had to do was say, 'Gracie, how's your brother?' and she talked for 38 years.”
- July 26, 1900 – Sarah Kafrit born in the Russian Empire, Israeli teacher and politician; member for Mapai of the Knesset (Israeli legislature) between 1951 and 1959; a founding member in 1927 of the moshav (farmers’ collective) Kfar Yehoshua; member of the secretariat of Women’s Councils.
- July 26, 1906 – Irena Morzycka-Iłłakowicz born in Berlin, Polish 2nd Lieutenant of the National Armed forces, and an intelligence agent working with the Polish resistance movement during WWII. She lived separately from her husband under assumed names to make it more difficult for the Gestapo to find either one of them. She was fluent in seven languages: Polish, French, English, Persian, Finnish, German and Russian. Between 1941 and 1942, her section was systematically destroyed by the Nazis, and numerous other underground activists were arrested. She was arrested in 1942, undergoing harsh interrogations without revealing anything. Her husband arranged for a guard to be bribed to put her in a group of non-political prisoners being transported to the Majdanek concentration camp. A group of fighters dressed in Gestapo uniforms presented a falsified document claiming her for further interrogation in Warsaw. She moved from Lublin to Klarysek-Janówek, then returned to Warsaw to work with the Soviet intelligence network in Poland, while her husband was sent to London in 1943 as a representative of the National Armed Forces. He wanted her to come with him, but command decided she should go separately later. Nine days before she was to leave, she was summoned to a meeting, but was murdered in unknown circumstances. Her husband eventually found her body, and she was buried under an alias, as Barbara Zawisza. To prevent the Gestapo from capturing them, her husband was at the funeral disguised as a gravedigger, and her mother posed as a cemetery helper. She was posthumously decorated with the Krzyż Narodowego Czynu Zbrojnego, one of Poland’s highest honors.
- July 26, 1918 – Emmy Noether's paper, which became known as Noether's theorem, is presented by a colleague at a meeting the Royal Society of Sciences (because she was not a member of the society), at Göttingen, Germany. Her theorem, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy, is regarded by many physicists as one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved, which guided the development of modern physics. Even though the importance of her paper was recognized, Noether was not appointed to a paid position, as a lecturer, until 1923. Before that, her family had to support her while she worked as an untenured professor without being paid.
- July 26, 1923 – Jan Berenstain born, author and illustrator, co-author with her husband Stan of children’s book series The Berenstain Bears, and cartoons for magazines.
- July 26, 1923 – Bernice Rubens born, Welsh novelist; noted for Madame Sousatzka, and The Elected Member, which won the 1970 Booker Prize for Fiction.
- July 26, 1925 – Ana María Matute born, Spanish author and member of the Real Academia Española; honored with the prestigious Miguel de Cervantes Prize for lifetime achievement Spanish letters in 2010; Fiesta al noroeste (Celebration in the Northwest) won the 1952 Café Gijón Prize.
- July 26, 1939 – Jun Henmi born as Mayumi Shimizu, Japanese author and poet; known for her fiction and nonfiction works about people affected by WWII. She won the Nitta Jirō Culture Prize in 1984 for her book Otoko-tachi no Yamato (published in English as Yamato: The Last Battle).
- July 26, 1945 – Dame Helen Mirren born, notable English actress, began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1967; one of the few actors to achieve acting’s ‘Triple Crown’ – a 2007 Oscar and an Olivier Award for Best Actress as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen; and a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, for the same role in the play The Audience, which inspired the film. In 2017, Mirren narrated Cries from Syria, a documentary film about the Syrian Civil War, directed by Evgeny Afineevsky. She has publicly stated that she is an atheist, and a naturalist, and is “happiest on a nude beach with people of all ages and races.”
- July 26, 1950 – Anne Rafferty born, Lady Justice Rafferty, British justice; Lady Justice of Appeal of England and Wales since 2011, member of the Privy Council; first woman Chair of the Criminal Bar Association of England and Wales; also Chancellor of the University of Sheffield since 2015; High Court Justice 2000-2011; Deputy High Court Justice (1999-2000) Recorder (1991-1999), and Queen’s Counsel (1990-1991).
- July 26, 1952 – Dame Glynis Breakwell, British social psychologist and an active public policy adviser and researcher specialising in leadership, risk management and identity process. She has been a Fellow of the British Psychological Society since 1987 and an Honorary Fellow since 2006. Appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012, and is also a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Somerset.
- July 26, 1964 – Anne Provoost born in Belgium, Flemish author of novels for young adults, and essays; noted for her novels My Aunt is a Pilot Whale, which deals with sexual abuse, and Falling, which examines the allure of Neo-Nazi rhetoric, and has won Belgian, Dutch and French literary awards.
- July 26, 1964 – Sandra Bullock born, American actress, producer and philanthropist; she was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for The Blind Side and Gravity, and won the Oscar for The Blind Side. She is the founder of Fortis Films, and was an executive producer on the sitcom George Lopez (2002-2007). Fortis Films produced the movie All About Steve in 2009. Bullock is a supporter of the American Red Cross, donating $1 million USD each for least five different disasters, including the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquakes and tsunamis, the Haiti earthquake, and Hurricane Harvey in Texas. She did a public service announcement urging people to sign a petition for clean-up efforts after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Bullock made a large donation to Warren Easton High School in New Orleans, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina. She is also a supporter of the Texas non-profit The Kindred Life Foundation, which assists struggling teen parents and their children.
- July 26, 1969 – Tanni Grey-Thompson born, Baroness Grey-Thompson of Eaglescliff, British Life Peer in the House of Lords since 2010, and academic. She was born with spina bifida, she was a successful wheelchair racer (1984-2007), winning many gold and silver medals in the Paralympic Games and World Championships; after a stint as a BBC television presenter, she became Chancellor of Northumbria University (2015 to present); created a Life Peer in 2010, she took her oath of office for the House of Lords in English and Welsh.
- July 26, 1980 – Jacinda Ardern born, New Zealand Labour politician; Prime Minister of New Zealand and leader of the NZ Labour Party since 2017; Member of the New Zealand Parliament for Mount Albert since 2017, and Leader of the Labour Party since 2017; Member of Parliament for the Labour Party List (2008-2017). When Arden took office as Prime Minister, she was 37 years old, New Zealand’s youngest PM since Edward Stafford in 1856. She is also New Zealand's first prime minister to be pregnant in office; when her daughter was born in June, 2018, she became the second head of state after Benazir Bhutto to give birth while in office. Ardren has drawn international praise for her response to the deadly terrorist attacks on two Christchurch mosques in 2019, and her leadership of New Zealand during the coronavirus pandemic, rated one of the most effective responses in the world, with 1,504 cases, and only 22 deaths out of a population of 4.886 million. Compare this with the death toll of 8,202 to date in San Diego County in California, with a population of 4 million.
- July 26, 2016 – Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman nominee for U.S. President by a major political party at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
- July 26, 2017 – An investigation by USA Today reveals that the U.S. is the most dangerous developed county in which to give birth. Every year, over 50,000 American women are severely injured giving birth, and about 700 women die. An estimated 50% of these injuries and deaths can be presented if hospitals would provide better care. There is no tracking system for doctors to record childbirth issues, while doctors and hospitals alike regularly miss or ignore obvious signs of both pre-natal and post-natal complications. The negligence has resulted in a sharp increase in maternal mortality rates, up from 17 deaths in 100,000 births in 1990 to 26.4 deaths per 100,000 in 2015. The rest of the developed world saw steady or improved death rates, with many below 10 deaths per 100,000 births, according to statistics kept by the World Health Organization (WHO). The average cost of delivering a baby without complications in the U.S. is also much higher than many other countries – almost $11,000, compared to about $3,200 in Canada, or just over $2,500 in Germany or France.
- July 26, 2018 – Ahmed Alit Dahir, attorney general of Somalia, announced the nation’s first prosecution for female genital mutilation after a 10-year-old girl bled to death following begin cut the previous week. The announcement was described as a “defining moment” in a nation where 98% of all women and girls undergo FGM, the highest rate anywhere in the world. Speaking at a conference on FGM in the capital, Mogadishu, Dahir said he had sent a team of 10 investigators to interview Deeqa Dahir Nuur’s parents and the village cutter who performed the fatal operation. “We are ready to take it to court,” Dahir told an audience of officials, journalists, and religious leaders. Deputy prime minister Mahdi Mohamed Gulaid, who was also at the event co- hosted by the Global Media Campaign to End FGM and the Ifrah Foundation, said: “It is not acceptable that in the 21st century FGM is continuing in Somalia. It should not be part of our culture. It is definitely not part of the Islamic religion.” The announcement has been welcomed by campaigners all over the world. FGM survivor and activist Ifrah Ahmed, 26, said the declaration “had taken everyone by surprise.” Ahmed added, “It shows just how quickly things can move when there is political will.” Most girls in Somalia undergo the most severe form of circumcision between the ages of five and nine, during which external genitalia are removed or repositioned and the vaginal opening is sewn up, leaving only a small hole through which to pass menstrual blood. The operation is often performed by untrained midwives or healers using knives, razors or broken glass.
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- July 27, 1202 – Battle of Basiani: during the Georgian-Seljuk Wars, the army of Tamar, Queen regnant (1184-1213) of the Kingdom of Georgia wins a decisive victory over the army of Süleymanshah II, Sultan of Rum (Selijuqid ruler of Anatolia), north of Erzurum in what is now Turkey.
- July 27, 1768 – Charlotte Corday born, Girondin assassin of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat; Marat was a key figure in the mass execution of the Girondins, who tried to stem the Reign of Terror.
- July 27, 1841 – Linda Richards born, American nurse and educator, one of the first nurses professionally trained in the U.S.; establishes training programs in the U.S. and Japan, creates system for hospital medical records.
- July 27, 1853 – Elizabeth Plankinton born, American philanthropist who inherited a fortune and a tradition of giving from her father, businessman John Plankinton; she never married because her engagement was broken when her fiancé ran off with a dancer whom he married instead; she gave $100,000 (equivalent to over $2.5 million USD today) for the building of the first YWCA hotel in Milwaukee Wisconsin, to provide affordable housing to single working women.
- July 27, 1853 – Lucy Maynard Salmon born, American historian and educator; pioneered the use of artifacts from everyday life – laundry lists, advertisements, bulletin-board notices, architectural plans, ledgers, packing slips – in historical research and in the teaching of history; first woman member of the executive committee of the American Historical Association; professor and founder of the history department at Vassar College. She was active in the National College Equal Suffrage League and on the Executive Advisory Council of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, and led the suffrage movement at Vassar, despite disapproval of the trustees and the college’s male president, James Monroe Taylor (1886-1914). His goals for Vassar’s graduates were characterized by his successor, Henry Noble MacCracken, as: “to be cultured . . . not leaders but good wives and mothers, truly liberal in things intellectual but conservative in matters social.” MacCracken continued, “Throughout Taylor’s term Vassar was a college for women developed by men.” Vassar students were finally given permission to form an on-campus suffrage club in 1914.
- July 27, 1875 – Mary Olszewski Kryszak born, American educator and politician, Polish newspaper editor, librarian, and bookkeeper; served seven times as a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly; in spite of her impressive list of accomplishments, when running for office, the national press stated that “Mrs. Kryszak ‘takes in’ hemstitching work at home when not engaged in lawmaking.”
- July 27, 1889 – Vera Karalli born, Russian ballerina, choreographer, and silent film performer.
- July 27, 1891 – Myrtle Lawrence born, sharecropper and labor organizer, worked within biracial Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union from 1936 to 1943, honored on the 1976 Bicentennial Freedom Train Exhibition.
- July 27, 1904 – Lyudmila Rudenko born in the Russian Empire, Soviet chess player, second Women’s World Chess Champion (1950-1953), the first woman awarded a FIDE International Master title, and Woman Grandmaster (1976). During WWII, she organized a train to evacuate children from the siege of Leningrad.
- July 27, 1906 – Helen Wolff born, editor and publisher, published many acclaimed translations under the imprint “A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book” at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, founded Pantheon Books with husband in 1942.
- July 27, 1907 – Irene Fischer born in Austria, American mathematician and geodesist; she and her family fled Nazi Austria in 1939; she worked on stereoscopic projective geometry trajectories for John Rule at MIT; she then began her career (1951-1976) in the Geodesy Branch of the Army Map Service working on what became the World Geodetic System, rising through the ranks to branch chief; her contributions to geodetic science gave scientists a more accurate picture of the size and shape of the earth, and helped determine the parallax of the moon, crucial information for NASA’s Mercury and Apollo moon missions; National Academy of Engineering Member; Fellow of the International Geophysical Union, Inductee of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Hall of Fame, and the third woman to be honored with the 1967 Distinguished Civilian Service Award, given by the U.S. Army to civilians for outstanding public service which aids the accomplishment of the Army’s mission.
- July 27, 1916 – Elizabeth Hardwick born, American author and literary critic, co-founder of The New York Review of Books; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; noted for her novel The Simple Truth, and four collections of her criticism.
- July 27, 1930 – Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby born, British politician and scholar, one of the “Gang of Four” founders of the Social Democratic Party in 1981, served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords from 2001 to 2004, still active in the House of Lords and Professor Emerita at Harvard University.
- July 27, 1930 – Joy Whitby born, English radio and television producer, director and writer of innovative children’s programmes for the BBC (1956-1967), including Play School and Jackanory; produced dramas for London Weekend Television (1967-1969); founded her own company, Grasshopper Productions (1970-1975); Head of Children’s Programmes for Yorkshire Television (1975-1985); since 1985, has produced animated films based on quality picture books; first TV producer to win the Eleanor Farjeon Award for contributions to children’s literature.
- July 27, 1940 – Pina Bausch born, German dancer and choreographer, leading influence in modern dance, creator of the company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.
- July 27, 1948 – Betty Thomas born, American actress, director and producer of television and motion pictures. Known for her work on the television series Hill Street Blues (1981-1987), for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy for the 1984-1985 season. She directed several episodes of TV series like Hooperman, Doogie Howser MD, and Arresting Behavior, then won a Best Director Emmy for her work on the series Dream On. Her feature film debut as a director was 1992’s Only You. Her second feature, The Brady Bunch Movie, was a domestic box office hit, grossing almost $47 million USD, one of the highest grossing movies directed by a woman up to that time. She followed that with other successes, including Dr. Dolittle (starring Eddie Murphy), 28 Days, and 2009's Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.
- July 27, 1951 – Roseanna Cunningham born, Scottish National Party politician, Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform since 2016; Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs (2011-2014); Depute (deputy) Leader of the Scottish National Party (2000-2004); Member of the Scottish Parliament for Perthshire South and Kinross-shire Perth (1999-2011).
- July 27, 1955 – Cat Bauer born, American novelist; known for Harley, Like a Person (2002), which won an American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults award.
- July 27, 1960 – Emily Thornberry born, British Labour politician and barrister who specialized in human rights law (1985-2005); Member of Parliament for Islington South and Finsbury since 2005; vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Choice and Sexual Health Group; advocate for affordable housing, the environment and gender equality, and an opponent of detention of terrorist subjects without charge for 90 days, and renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons programme.
- July 27, 1968 – Sabina Jeschke born in Sweden, German academic and mechanical engineer; professor at the RWTH Aachen University; member of the management board of Deutschen Bahn AG, a railway company, for digitalization and technology since 2017, and involved with building the think tank “Strong Artificial Intelligence” at the Volvo Car Corporation in Göteborg.
- July 27, 1973 – Cassandra Clare born as Judith Lewis, American author of Young Adult Fiction, best known for her series, The Mortal Instruments. Her book, City of Ashes, was a awarded a 2009 ALA Teens Top Ten Title.
- July 27, 1977 – Foo Swee Chin born, Singaporean comic book artist and illustrator; she is noted for A Lost Stock of Children, and Flush, a comic about social inequality and environmental issues
- July 27, 1979 – Marielle Franco born, Brazilian PSOL (socialist party) politician, feminist, human rights activist, and an outspoken critic of police brutality and extrajudicial killings. She ran in 2016 as a black bisexual woman and single mother from the favelas (slums), and won a seat on the city council of Rio de Janiero (2017-2018), where she fought against gender violence, for reproductive rights, and for the rights of favela residents. Franco chaired the Women's Defense Commission, and worked with the Rio de Janeiro Lesbian Front. She and her driver were shot to death in March, 2018. Franco was 38 years old. In 2019, two former police officers were charged with her murder, and convicted, but they have continued to deny they were the shooters. Paramilitary gangs – mafias made up of serving and former police officers who control vast swathes of Rio state – are widely believed to have been involved in her murder. This is a documentary about Franco’s murder:
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- July 27, 2006 – In Peru, president-elect Alan Garcia makes good on his campaign pledge to draw talent for his cabinet from across the political spectrum by appointing five women, including Mercedes Cabanillas Bustamante as the first woman Minister of Education, and Labor Minister Susana Pinilla. He also appointed Rosario Fernández as a justice.
- July 27, 2019 – Romania's prime minister Viorica Dancila has called for a referendum on harsher penalties for crimes like murder, rape and pedophilia in the wake of the rape and killing of Alexandra Macesanu, a 15-year-old girl, that has shocked the country. She also called for reducing the authorities' reaction time in similar cases. On July 25th, Police took 19 hours to respond after the victim's first call saying she had been beaten and raped by a man who picked her up in his car as she was hitchhiking. They waited for a search warrant, even though it wasn’t legally required in a life-threatening emergency. She made three separate phone calls for help to the country's emergency hotline. The girl’s uncle released a transcript of one of her desperate calls in which the responder tells the schoolgirl to get off the line because she is blocking it for other emergency calls. Romania's national police chief was fired over the handling of the case. Thousands of people took part in protests, blaming Romanian officials for negligence, incompetence and a lack of empathy. Protesters in Bucharest marched from Victoria Palace, the government headquarters, to Revolution Square, where they lit candles outside the Interior Ministry. Some taunted police officers with shouts of "Hide, your hands are stained with blood!" while holding up placards saying "I am Alexandra" and "Hello 112, I am Romania. Save me." Authorities have detained the suspect in the case on suspicion of trafficking minors and rape. After his arrest, he confessed to the rape and killing, and also to abducting and murdering 18-year-old Luiza Melencu in April, 2019.
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- July 28, 1347 – Margaret of Durazzo born, married at age 22 to the quarrelsome Charles III of Naples; when her husband was killed in 1386, she became regent (1386-1393) for her son, Ladislaus of Naples, who was 9 years old. Charles was assassinated on orders from Elizabeth of Bosnia, whose daughter, Queen Mary of Hungary, he had deposed, in spite of Margaret being much against toppling Queen Mary. During her regency, Margaret was able to make peace with Pope Boniface IX, who had excommunicated Charles (and Margaret too, just for being married to Charles) for plotting against the papacy.
- July 28, 1609 – Judith Leyster born, Dutch painter during the ‘Golden Age’ of Dutch painting. She was one of the first women members of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke, the local guild for artists. Within two years of her entry into the Guild, she had taken on three male apprentices. Ironically, her work received more recognition after she filed a lawsuit against the much better-known painter Franz Hals, who accepted a student who left her workshop without Guild permission. Hals settled by paying the fine, and keeping the student. Though her work was highly regarded during her lifetime, it was largely forgotten until 1893, when the Louvre purchased a much-admired painting, The Jolly Companions, purported for over a century to be a ‘Frans Hals’ which turned out to a Judith Leyster painting when the Louvre discovered Leyster’s distinctive monogram under the faked Hals signature.
- July 28, 1819 – Louise A. Knapp Smith Clappe born, American teacher and author, came to California in 1849; her letters to her sister giving her impressions of life in the gold-mining camps, were published as a serial in The Pioneer periodical, from January 1854 to December 1855; taught in San Francisco public schools (1854-1878).
- July 28, 1855 – Louisine Waldron Elder Havemeyer, American philanthropist, art collector and patron, feminist and advocate for women’s suffrage, supporter of Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party, and a patron of Edgar Degas.
- July 28, 1866 – Beatrix Potter born, beloved English author-illustrator of Peter Rabbit, and a total of 23 children’s storybooks. She was also naturalist, especially noted for her studies and watercolours of fungi, and contributions to the understanding of fungi spore germination and hybridisation. Potter used the money earned by her books to purchase Hill Top Farm in the Lake District. She was also a pioneer in land conservation, buying hundreds of acres of farmland to preserve the unique landscape of the English Lake District, which she left in her will to the National Trust. The land she preserved is now a large portion of the Lake District National Park.
- July 28, 1866 – By a vote of Congress, Vinnie Ream receives a commission from the U.S. government for a statue of Abraham Lincoln. She was only 18 at the time, making her the first and youngest woman to receive an artistic commission from the U.S. federal government.
- July 28, 1874 – Alice Duer Miller, American author and poet, suffragist, known for satirical poems in her collection Are Women People? and the novel Come Out of the Kitchen.
- July 28, 1877 – Florence Thorne born, American labor researcher and editor. She earned her PhB from University of Chicago in 1909, taught liberal arts (1899-1912); she worked for the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as researcher, writer and executive assistant to president Samuel Gompers (1912-1917), and became the principal writer and editor of the AFL’s publication, the American Federationist. She left the AFL during WWI to work on the Subcommittee on Women in Industry of the Advisory Committee of the Council of National Defense (1917), then transferred to assistant director of the Working Conditions Service, War Labor Administration, U.S. Department of Labor (1918). At the end of WWI, she returned as director of research at the AFL (1933-1953); and served as a delegate to the Federal Advisory Commission for Employment Security during WWII. She was also an adviser to the International Labor Organization (ILO). She wrote Samuel Gompers, American Statesman (1957).
- July 28, 1879 – Lucy Burns born, American suffragist and women’s rights advocate, who formed the National Woman’s Party with Alice Paul; she attended Columbia University, Vassar College and Yale before becoming an English teacher at Brooklyn’s Erasmus High School (1904-1906), then, supported by her father, she continued her language studies in Germany at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin (1906-1909), and enrolled at Oxford to study English. It was during this time that she became involved with the woman’s suffrage movement after meeting the Pankhursts. She went to work for the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU – 1910-1912), and participated in organizing parades and demonstrations. She made numerous court appearances, charged with “disorderly conduct.” During one of her arrests in 1912, she met Alice Paul, also under arrest, at a London Police Station, and they decided to return to the U.S. and apply the tactics they had learned in England to the suffrage cause in America. Their partnership over the next eight years would make woman’s suffrage a national issue in the U.S., and pushed forward passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. Burns would endure more time behind bars and harsher treatment than any other American suffragist, including repeated violent forced feeding, and being chained overnight to her cell bars by her raised arms. She was one of the first people to define the term "political prisoner." By the time Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the Amendment, she was completely exhausted: “I don't want to do anything more. I think we have done all this for women, and we have sacrificed everything we possessed for them, and now let them fight for it . . . I am not going to fight anymore." She retired from political life, and devoted herself to Catholic charities and raising her orphaned niece.
- July 28, 1896 – Barbara La Marr born as Reatha Watson, American silent film star and screenwriter. She appeared as an actress in 27 films between 1920 and 1926. She was originally hired as a screenplay writer for Fox Film, where she wrote several scripts which became successful movies before she was “discovered” by Douglas Fairbanks, who cast her in his 1921 film, The Nut, and then as Milady de Winter in his version of The Three Musketeers. But as La Marr ‘s fame and success grew, so did her partying and drinking. She was playing the vamp off-screen as well as on. In 1924, after a series of crash diets damaged her health, her attempts at restoring her career failed, and she died of pulmonary tuberculosis and nephritis in 1926, at age 29.
- July 28, 1908 – Dame Annabelle Rankin, Australian politician, second woman member of the Australian Senate, first woman from Queensland to sit in the Parliament, first woman appointed as Opposition Whip in the Senate, first Australian woman to have a federal portfolio (cabinet position) and first to head a foreign mission, to New Zealand.
- July 28, 1909 – Aenne Burda born, German publisher of the Burda Group, her family’s media company, which expanded into women’s magazines under her direction, including Burda Moden, which was launched in 1950, and is still being published. In 1977, she started Burda CARINA, a fashion and lifestyle magazine targeting younger women. She also started two charitable foundations, to support young academics and senior citizens.
- July 28, 1929 – Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis born, American cultural icon; First Lady (1961-1963), started White House Historical Association; widow of John F. Kennedy, then married to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis; book editor for Doubleday; advocate for historic buildings preservation.
- July 28, 1929 – Shirley Ann Grau born, American novelist and short story writer; her multi-generational novel, The Keepers of the House, won the 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
- July 28, 1932 – Natalie Babbit born, American author-illustrator of children’s and YA books; Tuck Everlasting and The Eyes of the Amaryllis.
- July 28, 1942 – Tonia Marketaki born, Greek film director and screenwriter; her first short film in 1967 resulted in her imprisonment by the Greek Military Junta (1964-1974); when released, she left Greece, and worked as an assistant editor in the UK, and director of educational films for farmers in Algeria. She came back to Greece in 1971, made three full-length films, Ioannis o Viaios (John the Violent), Krystallines Nyhtes (Crystal Nights), and I timi tis agapis (The Price of Love). She also directed a number of theatrical productions, and the TV series Lemonodasos. She died in 1994 at age 51.
- July 28, 1946 – Fahmida Riaz born, Pakistani Urdu-language writer, poet, human rights activist, part of the progressive writers movement, and a feminist; she has published over 15 books of fiction and poetry, most considered controversial at the time, especially her second verse collection Badan Dareeda, regarded as too shockingly erotic and sensual for a woman poet. Founder and publisher of Awaz, a liberal and politically charged Urdu magazine, for which she was arrested and Awaz shut down. She was bailed out by a fan of her work, and sought asylum in India with her children and sister, where her husband, who had also been arrested, was able to join them after his release. They were in exile in India for seven years (1980-1987), before returning to Pakistan.
- July 28, 1966 – Sossina M. Haile born in Ethiopia, Ethiopian-American chemist, whose family fled to America seeking asylum during the 1974 coup in Ethiopia, after her historian father was nearly killed. She is known for developing the first solid acid fuel cells, working in the field of sustainable energy technologies. Currently a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University and an editor for the Journal of Materials Research; previously at Caltech (1996-2015). NSF National Young Investigator Award (1994–99), Humboldt Fellowship (1992-1993), Fulbright Fellowship(1991-1992), AT&T Cooperative Research Fellowship (1986-1992), 2001 J.B. Wagner Award of the High Temperature Materials Division of the Electrochemical Society, 2000 Coble Award from the American Ceramic Society, and 1997 TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award.
- July 28, 1971 – Ludmilla Lacueva Canut born, Andorran author of fiction and nonfiction, columnist for the Catalan-language newspaper Bondia; her first published book, Los pioneros de la hoteleria andorrana, a history of the hotel industry of Andorra, won the Research Prize from the General Council of Andorra, and became a local best-seller for Saint George’s Day, when it is traditional for Andorran women to give the men in their lives a book.
- July 28, 2009 – Tanzania Women's Bank, under the leadership of Margaret Chaca, opens in Dar es Salaam. The idea started during the Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair in 1999. Women participants petitioned Tanzanian President H.E Benjamin Mkapa, asking that the government facilitate establishment of a women’s bank, so women could open checking and savings accounts, and apply for loans, more easily than at traditional banks, which were not geared for small accounts and microloans. It took eight years to get the bank listed as a Registered Financial Institution with the Tanzania Central Bank, and two more years before it opened its first office. It now has three more branches.
- July 28, 2018 – In China, out of over 50 million court verdicts from 2010 to 2017 available publicly, only 34 focused on sexual harassment, according to a study by the Beijing Yuanzhong Gender Development Center. Only two of the 34 cases involving sexual harassment were brought by victims suing alleged harassers, and both of those cases were dismissed for lack of evidence. In fact, the majority of the 34 cases were brought by alleged harassers themselves, claiming breach of contract after they were dismissed by employers for sexual harassment, or for defamation-related reasons after accusations were made public by victims or employers. It’s not that sexual harassment isn’t a problem in China, as nearly 40% of women in China say they have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. The absence of court cases indicates instead the difficulties women face seeking legal redress for abuse. But the #MeToo movement is having some effect. In 2018, several university professors were accused on Chinese social media of sexually harassing female students, and a woman accused prominent anti-discrimination activist Lei Chuang of sexual assault. A slew of prominent journalists, intellectuals, and activists have since been accused on social media of sexual misconduct. Some of the accused made public apologies. One journalist, Shangguan Luan, wrote “given the lack of systemic redress,” China’s #MeToo movement is more about “easing depression” than “seeking accountability.” In a telling case, a woman said on July 25 after she reported to the police that prominent TV host Zhu Jun had sexually harassed her, police forced her to withdraw the complaint, claiming that Zhu, as host of the annual Spring Festive gala at the state media, had “enormous ‘positive influence’ on the society.” Soon after the exposé, posts about the case began to be removed from Chinese social media. Chinese law banning sexual harassment of women in the workplace doesn’t clearly define what is meant by sexual harassment, or make provisions creating a specific cause of action against harassment.
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- July 29, 1742 – Isabella Graham born in Scotland, American philanthropist and educator, leader in founding the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows, the Orphan Asylum Society, and the Society for Promoting Industry among the Poor.
- July 29, 1846 – Sophie Menter born, German pianist and composer; one of Franz Liszt’s favorite students, she was a piano virtuoso noted for her electrifying playing style.
- July 29, 1862 – Belle Boyd, Confederate spy, the ‘Siren of the Shenandoah,’ arrested after the Union officer that she had been vamping for information reported her. She aided General Stonewall Jackson the previous May by eavesdropping on the plans of Union General James Shield, and discovering the number of his troops, then riding through the night to deliver the news. After her arrest in July, she was taken to the Old Capitol Prison in Washington DC, held for a month, then released in a prisoner exchange. Boyd was arrested again in June 1863, but released after contracting typhoid fever. In 1864, she attempted to go to England, but her ship was intercepted by a Union blockade, and she was sent to Canada. There, she met a Union naval officer, and they were married in England. After his death in 1866, she became an actress on the English stage to support their daughter, but returned to the U.S. in 1869, she settled in New Orleans, married and divorced, and then married again. In 1886, she began touring the country giving highly colored dramatic lectures on her life as a Civil War spy. She died in 1900 while on tour, of a heart attack in Wisconsin, at the age of 56.
- July 29, 1884 – Eunice Tietjens born, American author, poet, lecturer, WWI correspondent for the Chicago Daily News; she was also an editor at Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.
- July 29, 1896 – Maria L. de Hernandez born, Latina activist, first Mexican woman radio announcer. Co-founder of Asociación Protectora de Madres in 1933, which helped expecting mothers, including providing financial aid if needed. She was a vocal opponent against injustice and inequality, speaking out for both the Mexican American and African American communities.
- July 29, 1900 – Mary V. Austin born, Australian community worker and political activist; Regional Commandant of the Red Cross Society; National Vice President of the Australian Liberal Party (1947-1976); life member of the Victoria League for Commonwealth Friendship.
- July 29, 1900 – Teresa Noce born, Italian labor leader, founding member of the Italian Communist Party, politician, journalist, and feminist. Noce was editor of Il Grido del Popolo (The Cry of the People), where she called for better working conditions and the abolition of the Special Tribunals used to imprison anti-Fascists. In the 1950s, she served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, where she was aligned with Unione Donne Italiane (Italian Women's Union), advocating for broad social legislation benefiting working women. Their efforts won the passage of a law in 1950 which protected the jobs of working mothers and gave five months of paid leave to working pregnant women.
- July 29, 1903 – Diana Vreeland born, fashion icon, born in Paris, started as a columnist (1936), then was fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar until 1962, when she became editor-in-chief at Vogue (1962-1971).
- July 29, 1905 – Clara Bow born, American silent film star known as “The It Girl” for her role as the spunky shopgirl in the 1927 film It, but also appeared in Wings the same year, which won the first Academy Award for Best Picture. Her films were consistent box office hits, and she successfully made the transition to talking pictures, but in 1931, she married, retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada. She began to suffer from chronic insomnia and became socially withdrawn. In 1944, her husband was running the U.S. House of Representatives, and she tried to commit suicide, writing a note that she preferred death to a public life. She complained of abdominal pains, which were written off as delusional, underwent shock treatment and a battery of psychological tests, and was labeled schizophrenic, even though she had no auditory or visual hallucinations, considered a major symptom of the disease at the time. She checked herself out, and moved into a bungalow in Culver City, with a full-time nurse to care for her. In 1965, she died at age 60 of a heart attack. Atherosclerosis was discovered in an autopsy, a narrowing of the arteries caused by plaque buildup, which in later stages can cause kidney problems, chest pains, nausea, and arrhythmias.
- July 29, 1905 – Mary Roebling born, first woman president of a major bank (1937), first woman American Stock Exchange governor (1958-1962); Roebling helped establish the first nationally-chartered bank founded by women (1978).
- July 29, 1918 – Mary Lee Settle born, American author; won 1978 National Book Award for her novel Blood Tie; co-founder of the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
- July 29, 1932 – Nancy Landon Kassebaum born, Republican Senator from Kansas (1978-1997), the first woman to represent Kansas in the U.S. Senate, instrumental in creation of Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve; noted for co-sponsoring the bi-partisan Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy; was a strong supporter of anti-apartheid measures against South Africa in 1980s, and traveled to Nicaragua as an election observer.
- July 29, 1936 – Elizabeth H. Dole born, American conservative Republican politician; first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from North Carolina (2003-2009), first woman to serve as U.S. Secretary of Transportation (1983-1987), also served as U.S. Secretary of Labor (1989-1990), becoming the first woman to hold two different cabinet positions, each under a different president. She was president of the American Red Cross (1991-1999).
- July 29, 1940 – Betty W. Harris born, African American chemist, noted for work on the chemistry of explosives at the Los Alamos National Laboratory; patented a spot test for detecting 1, 3, 5-triamino-2, 4, 6-trinitrobenzene (TATB) in the field. Harris was chief of chemical technology for Solar Turbine Inc., where she managed the technical laboratories and investigated cold-end corrosion of super alloys, which was caused by sulfuric acid and soot in gas turbine engines. She also worked on hazardous waste treatment and environmental remediation; American Chemical Society member.
- July 29, 1940 – Solita Collas-Monsod born, aka “Mareng Winnie,” Filipina broadcaster, economist, academic, and writer; Director General of the National Economic Development Authority (1986-1989); Professor Emeritus at the University of the Philippines School of Economics, where she has taught since 1963; member of the UN Committee for Development Planning (UNCDP – 1987-2000).
- July 29, 1945 – Sharon Creech born, American author of children’s novels; first person to win both the American Newbery Medal, in 1996 for Walk Two Moons, and the British 2002 Carnegie Medal, for Ruby Holler; first American to win the Carnegie Medal.
- July 29, 1946 – Ximena Armas born, Chilean painter, who lives in Paris; notable for the symbolism and mysterious quality of her artwork.
- July 29, 1950 – Jenny Holzer born, American painter and author; she is noted as a neo-conceptual feminist artist, who works primarily on large-scale installations designed for public spaces. In 1990, Holzer won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, and in 1982, she won the Art Institute of Chicago’s Blair Award. In 2018, she was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
- July 29, 1951 – Susan Blackmore born, British writer, lecturer and broadcaster, whose fields of research include memes, evolutionary theory, psychology, parapsychology, and consciousness; best known for her book, The Meme Machine; PhD in parapsychology – her thesis was titled “Extrasensory Perception as a Cognitive Process,” but after years of experiments, she has become a skeptic.
- July 29, 1952 – Marie Panayotopoulos-Cassiotou born, Greek politician; Member of the European Parliament (2004-2009) with the New Democracy, part of the conservative-centrist European People’s Party coalition; was Vice Chair of the EP’s Committee on Petitions, and seated on the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs, and the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality.
- July 29, 1958 – Gail Dines born in Britain, radical feminist and academic; Professor Emerita of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Boston’s Wheelock College; an outspoken leader of the anti-pornography campaign, founding member of Stop Porn Culture, and author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality.
- July 29, 1963 – Julie Elliott born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Sunderland Central since 2010; vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on State Pension Inequality for Women; previously a regional organiser for the Labour Party (1993-1998) and for the National Asthma Campaign and the GMB Trade Union.
- July 29, 1970 – Adele Griffin born, American young adult author; she is noted for The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone; Sons of Liberty; and Where I Want to Be.
- July 29, 1974 – “Philadelphia Eleven” deacons (Merrill Bittner, Alla Bozarth-Campbell, Alison Cheek, Emily Hewitt, Carter Heyward, Suzanne Hiatt, Marie Moorefield, Jeannette Piccard, Betty Schiess, Katrina Swanson, and Nancy Wittig) are ordained as the first women Episcopal priests.
- July 29, 1978 – Bidisha, born as Bidisha Bandyopadhyay, the daughter of Indian emigrants; British filmmaker, broadcaster and journalist, covering international affairs, social justice issues, arts and culture, and international human rights; she’s been a contributor to The Guardian and The Huffington Post, a presenter for the BBC on Woman’s Hour, The Word, and several other programmes; author of Beyond the Wall and other nonfiction; she does outreach work in UK detention centres and prisons for the English affiliate of PEN International; in 2017, she launched her filmmaking career, directing the short, An Impossible Poison.
- July 29, 2018 – A midwife training centre in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, was attacked by militants, who killed two guards and a driver, and wounded at least eight others. The attackers set off explosives and fired gunshots at the centre. One of the attackers was killed while detonating a bomb, and a second attacker was killed by Afghan security forces, who gained control after a gunfight lasting over six hours. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Islamic State extremists have carried out numerous attacks in the area, and the Taliban has also caused some incidents. Both groups oppose women working outside the home, and some individual midwives have been attacked before. Afghanistan has one of the highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world, and a number of centres have been opened to train midwives in recent years.
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- July 30, 1751 – Maria Anna Mozart born, nicknamed “Nanneril,” older sister of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, she was trained from the age of seven by their father Leopold to play the harpsichord and the fortepiano. She and her brother were taken on tour. She was a talented player, and sometimes received top billing in the early days, but her career was cut short when she reached the age of 18, the age her parents considered her marriageable, at which point she was no longer permitted to perform in public. Dominated by her father, she was forced to turn down a marriage proposal from the man she loved, and was married instead to a magistrate, already twice a widower, with five children from his previous marriages. She returned to her family’s home to give birth to her first child in 1785. Her father Leopold, for whom the boy had been named, took over the infant, raising him in the Mozart household until the elder Leopold died in 1787, and the boy was finally returned to his mother. After her husband died in 1821, she returned to Salzburg, with her two children and four of her stepchildren, to work as a music teacher. In 1825, she became blind, and died in 1829 at the age of 78. Though she and her brother had been very close in childhood, their last visit was in 1783, and she received his last letter to her in 1788, three years before he died.
- July 30, 1818 – Emily Brontë born in Yorkshire, English novelist and poet, best known for Wuthering Heights. She and her sisters Charlotte and Anne had their first book published, a volume of their poetry, using male pennames, calling it Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, to slip past the prejudice against female writers. It only sold two copies, so they switched to writing novels.
- July 30, 1852 – Emma Gillett born, American lawyer and women’s rights activist, co-founder of the Washington College of Law, the first law school founded by women.
- July 30, 1893 – Fatima Jinnah born in British India, dental surgeon, biographer, stateswoman and one of the founders of Pakistan; she was a close advisor of her older brother Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who would become the first Governor General (1947-1948) of the new nation, and was a leading member of the All-India Muslim League; after independence in 1947, she co-founded the Pakistan Women’s Association which did much to help the resettlement of women migrants. But after her brother’s death in 1948, she was banned from speaking on the radio until 1951, and her radio address to the nation then was heavily censored by Liaquat Ali Khan’s administration. She wrote a biography of her brother in 1956, but it wasn’t published until 1987 because of censorship, and accusations that she had written ‘anti-nationalist material.’ Even when it was finally published, several pages were left out. She came out of political retirement in 1965, to run for president against the military dictator Ayub Khan, but the military rigged the election. When she died in 1967, rumors spread that it was not a natural death, and her family demanded an inquiry, but the government quashed any inquiry. Honored by the people for her support of civil rights, her funeral was attended by almost half a million people. She is often referred to as Māder-e Millat (Mother of the Nation).
- July 30, 1939 – Eleanor “Ellie” Smeal born, women’s rights activist, co-founder and president of the Feminist Majority Foundation (1987) and publisher of Ms. Magazine, president of National Organization for Women (1977-1982 and 1985-1987).
- July 30, 1940 – Pat Schroeder born, Democratic politician, U.S. Representative from Colorado (1973-1997), first woman to serve in U.S. Congress from Colorado; first woman on the House Armed Services Committee. She was a prime mover behind the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, and the 1985 Military Family Act. She briefly ran for U.S. President after Gary Hart dropped out of the 1987 race, but was derailed when she teared-up during a speech, instantly branding her as “weak,” even though male candidates doing the same thing were praised for showing their feelings. She was an advocate of stronger copyright laws, and after leaving the House of Representatives, she became President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (1997-2008). Now retired in Florida, she is on the board of the League of Women Voters of Florida. Schroeder was named to the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995.
- July 30, 1942 – Pollyanna Pickering born, English wildlife artist and environmentalist ; conservation partner to the government of Bhutan; she went on expeditions to study animals in their natural habitat; founder of the Pollyanna Pickering Foundation, which fundraises and campaigns for animal welfare and conservation.
- July 30, 1942 – President Franklin Roosevelt signs bill creating a women's auxiliary agency in the Navy known as Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (W.A.V.E.S.).
- July 30, 1947 – Françoise Barré-Sinoussi born, French virologist and Director of Unité de Régulation des Infections Rétrovirales (The Regulation of the Retroviral Infections Division), and a Professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Best known for her pioneering work identifying the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS. She and Luc Montagnier jointly received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in the discovery of HIV. She has served a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UNAIDS-HIV, and initiated collaborations with developing countries and multidisciplinary networks to pool resources and share information. In 2012, she became president of the International AIDS Society.
- July 30, 1948 – Julia Tsenova born, Bulgarian composer and pianist. Noted for symphonic and chamber music, as well as choral works. Her interest in ancient Eastern philosophies, particularly Indian philosophies, has been an influence on her compositions. She died of cancer in 2010.
- July 30, 1949 – Dame Sonia Proudman born, judge of the High Court of England and Wales in the Chancery Division (2008-2017); Deputy High Court Judge (2001-2008); became a Bencher in 1996, and was a Recorder in 2000. Proudman was called to the Bar in 1972, after being one of the first women to win an Eldon Law Scholarship to study for the English Bar, awarded to University of Oxford students who earned either a first class honours degree in the Final Honours School, or a distinction on the BCL or MJur (academic degrees in law).
- July 30, 1950 – Harriet Harman born, British solicitor and Labour Party politician; Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham since 1982; Harman holds the current record for the longest continuously-serving woman MP in the House of Commons. She was Deputy Leader and Chair of the Labour Party (2007-2015); Acting Leader of the Opposition in 2015.
- July 30, 1956 – Anita Hill born, American lawyer and academic, professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She became a national figure during the 1991 U.S. Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas when she testified that he had sexually harassed her as her supervisor at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Though initially pilloried for her testimony, public opinion began to shift in her favor as time passed. Congress passed a bill later in 1991 that gave harassment victims the right to seek federal damage awards, back pay, and reinstatement, signed into law by President George H W Bush. By 1992, harassment complaints to the EEOC were up by 50%. Private companies started training programs to deter sexual harassment. The manner in which the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee challenged and dismissed Hill's accusations of sexual harassment angered female politicians, lawyers and feminists. According to D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Hill's treatment by the panel was a contributing factor to the large number of women elected to Congress in 1992. "Women clearly went to the polls with the notion in mind that you had to have more women in Congress," she said. In their anthology, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave, editors Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith described black feminists mobilizing "a remarkable national response to the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy.”
- July 30, 1956 – Soraida Martinez born, American abstract expressionist painter and designer of Puerto Rican descent; she is the creator of the art movement, Verdadism, which juxtaposes figurative abstract paintings with written social commentaries.
- July 30, 1960 – Jennifer C. Barnes born, American-English musicologist, university administrator, opera singer and a leading authority on composers Gian Carlo Menotti, Thea Musgrave and Ethel Smyth. In 1999 Barnes established a Leverhulme research partnership between Imperial College, Manchester University and the Royal College of Music. Seeing the potential in wireless EEG biofeedback, she designed a program to analyze the role of alpha, beta and theta waves in musicians and dancers under performance stress. Subsequent findings have been integrated into the curricula of performing arts institutions worldwide.
- July 30, 1964 – Laine Randjärv born, Estonian Reform Party politician; Minister of Culture (2007-2011); Vice-President of the Riigikogu (Parliament) since 2011; Mayor of Tartu (2004-2007); Deputy Mayor (2002-2004).
- July 30, 2018 – Sexual abuse of vulnerable women and girls by international aid workers is "endemic" and has been happening for years, with perpetrators easily moving around the sector undetected, according to a scathing report by the UK House of Commons International Development Committee. Alleged abuses included sexual harassment, withholding food and supplies sent as aid to extort sex, and rape. The inquiry heard "horrifying" stories of aid staff sexually exploiting the very people they were meant to be helping, including a homeless girl in Haiti who was given $1 by a worker for a nongovernmental organization (NGO) and then raped. Several top NGOs were implicated in the growing scandal, including Save the Children and Oxfam. United Nations workers have also been accused of sexual exploitation.
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- July 31, 1811 – Jane Currie Blaikie Hoge born, American nurse, welfare worker; fundraiser for the Union war effort; Chicago Home for the Friendless founder; Chicago Sanitary Commission co-administrator during U.S. Civil War; her Civil War memoir is The Boys in Blue.
- July 31, 1816 – Lydia Moss Bradley born, businesswoman and philanthropist, managed her own fortune after the death of her husband, successful in real estate and banking, endowed the Bradley Polytechnic Institute, first woman member of a national banking board; she was the first American woman known to have drawn up a prenuptial agreement to protect her assets.
- July 31, 1831 – Sarah J. Thompson Garnet, American suffragist and educator, first African American woman school principal in the New York City public schools, founder of the Equal Suffrage League in Brooklyn.
- July 31, 1833 – Amelia Stone Quinton born, American social activist, advocate for Native American rights, a founding member of the Women’s National Indian Association.
- July 31, 1858 – Marion Talbot born; when she had difficulty gaining admission to Boston University in spite of her father being the dean of its School of Medicine, she became a tenacious supporter of higher learning for women, and campaigned against efforts to restrict equal educational opportunities. She was Dean of Women at the University of Chicago (1895-1925); established the first Midwestern regional meetings of college deans in 1902, and then Midwestern regional meetings for deans of women, beginning in 1911; co-founder of what became the American Association of University Women, and served as the organization’s president (1895-1897).
- July 31, 1860 – Mary Vaux Walcott born, American painter and naturalist, known for her watercolors of wildflowers, president of the Society of Women Geographers; her illustrations were often published by the Smithsonian.
- July 31, 1879 – Margarete Bieber born, art historian and professor of art and archaeology, second female university professor in Germany (1919) before immigrating to the U.S., taught at Barnard College and Columbia University, published numerous academic texts, named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971.
- July 31, 1923 – Stephanie Kwolek born, American chemist whose career at the Dupont company lasted over forty years; best known as the inventor of Kevlar, for which she was awarded the company’s Lavoisier Medal for outstanding technical achievement, the first woman employee to receive this honor; also won numerous awards for her work in polymer chemistry, including the National Medal of Technology, and the Perkin Medal, given by the Society of Chemical Industry “for innovation in applied chemistry resulting in outstanding commercial development.”
- July 31, 1924 – Geraldine Hoff Doyle born, possibly the model for WWII “We Can Do It” poster which came to symbolize Rosie the Riveters, women who became factory workers to support the war effort.
- July 31, 1929 – Lynne Reid Banks born, British author of The L-Shaped Room, The Indian in the Cupboard, Dark Quartet, and Path to the Silent Country: Charlotte Brontë's years of fame.
- July 31, 1940 – Carol J. Clover born, American academic and author, authority on gender in films; author of Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.
- July 31, 1944 – Sherry Lansing born, American film studio executive; she went from mathematics teacher to actress (in two films) to script reader, then head script reader, at MGM, where she worked on The China Syndrome and Kramer vs. Kramer; she moved to Columbia Pictures; became a partner with Stanley R. Jaffe in 1979 in Jaffe/Lansing Productions; in 1980, Lansing was appointed as the first woman president of 20th Century Fox; in 1992, she became chair of Paramount Pictures Motion Picture Group, but left in 2004 when Viacom, after taking over Paramount, decided to split the company into two parts.
- July 31, 1952 – Faye Kellerman born, American author of mystery novels; noted for her Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series, especially its first book, The Ritual Bath, which won the 1987 Macavity Award for Best First Novel.
- July 31, 1956 – Lynne Rae Perkins born, American author and illustrator of books for children and young adults; her novel Criss Cross won the 2006 Newberry Medal.
- July 31, 1958 – Suzanne Giraud born, French contemporary music composer and academic; she was the recipient of the Prix Georges Enesco, and the Prix Georges Bizet; her work has often been inspired by poetry, paintings, or architecture.
- July 31, 1965 – J.K. Rowling born as Joanne Rowling, British author of the best-selling book series in publishing history, the Harry Potter fantasy series; film and television producer; and philanthropist; in 1990, she was a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International, and the Harry Potter concept was born while she was stuck on a train which was delayed for four hours; during the next seven years, she persisted in writing through the death of her mother, birth of her first child, divorce from her first husband, and surviving on state benefits, before the runaway success of the first Harry Potter book in 1997; the series made her the world’s first billionaire author, a status she quickly gave up, donating much of her fortune to charity, including Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, the Shannon Trust, the English PEN Charity auction, and her own charity, the Lumos Foundation, which rescues children in orphanages separated from a living parent because of poverty or discrimination, and enables them to be reunited.
- July 31, 1981 – Arnette Hubbard is installed as the first woman president of the National Bar Association.
- July 31, 1991 – U.S. Senate votes to allow women to fly combat aircraft. In 1993, the United States Armed Forces lifted the Combat Exclusion Policy, a 45-year-old practice prohibiting women from serving in combat roles, and Jeannie Marie Leavitt became the first woman fighter pilot in the USAF, and later the first woman to command a USAF combat fighter wing.. The change only applied to aviation positions until 2013, when the ban on women was lifted from all assignments.
- July 31, 2018 – The percentage of women on Fortune 500 health care executive teams and boards has been nearly flat since 2015, hovering around 22 percent. Another number that hasn’t budged: Only one-third of hospital executives are women. There’s also been little change in the startup world, with women accounting for less than 12 percent of digital health CEOs and venture capital partners.
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Sources
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