WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers trailblazing women and events from July 1 through July 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.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN
will post shortly, so be sure to go there next, and
catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many, 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.
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 1, 1725 – Rhoda Delaval born, Lady Astley by marriage, English portrait painter; died at age 32 just after the birth of her fourth child in three years.
- July 1, 1804 – George Sand, born as Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin; French novelist and playwright who scandalized French society by smoking, wearing men’s clothing, and having a series of very public affairs; her lovers included composer Frédéric Chopin and author Alfred de Musset; remembered for her novels, including La Petite Fadette (Little Fadette), Consuelo, and La Mare au Diable (The Devil’s Pool).
- July 1, 1826 – Ellen Clark Sargent born in Massachusetts, American suffragist and friend of Susan B. Anthony, who moved to California in 1852, where she established the Nevada County Women’s Suffrage Association, the first in the state. Her husband, Aaron Sargent, elected as a U.S. Senator (Republican-CA, 1873-1879) was the first Senator to speak for woman’s suffrage on the Senate floor, and introduced in 1878 the bill with the twenty-nine words that would become the 19th Amendment, a bill that would be introduced unsuccessfully in every Senate session for the next 40 years. Ellen Clark Sargent was a founder of the Century Club, which helped elect women to local school boards, and she served on the boards of the California Equal Suffrage Association (CESA) and the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She worked tirelessly for women’s rights, and died just days after a hard-fought CESA campaign triumphantly won the vote for California women in 1911. On the day of her memorial service, for the first time in the state, flags were flown at half mast for a woman.
- July 1, 1834 – Deotyma born as Jadwiga Łuszczewska, Polish poet and novelist; noted for Sobieski pod Wiedniem (Sobieski Near Vienna).
- July 1, 1850 – Florence Earle Coates born, American poet; her work appeared in major periodicals of her day; several poems were also set to music by composers Amy Beach, Clayton Johns, and Charles Gilbert Spross. Matthew Arnold met her on a lecture tour of America, and encouraged her to write, becoming a long-time friend and mentor. In 1886, she was a founder of the Contemporary Club in Philadelphia, and was twice president of Philadelphia’s Browning Society (1895-1903 and 1907-1908); published several poetry collections, including Lyrics of Life, and The Unconquered Air.
- July 1, 1858 – Alice Barber Stephens born, American painter, engraver, and illustrator.
‘Christmas on Fifth Avenue’ (1896) — by Alice Barber Stephens
- July 1, 1858 – Velma Caldwell Melville born, American editor, poet, sketch and serial writer; editor of the Home Circle and the Youths’ Department of The Practical Farmer, and of the Hearth and Home Department of The Wisconsin Farmer; noted for her intensely patriotic writing, and for her book, White Dandy, Or Master And I: A Horse’s Story, a variation on the more famous Black Beauty, which also swayed public opinion on protecting animals.
- July 1, 1873 – Alice Guy-Blaché born, French filmmaker, pioneer in early cinema and narrative fiction films, one of the first women directors; founder and director of Solax Studios; her film A Fool and His Money, made in 1912, had an all-black cast.
- July 1, 1876 – Susan Glaspell born, American playwright whose play, Alison’s House, won the 1931 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; also an actress, director, novelist, biographer, poet, and journalist; co-founder of the Provincetown Playhouse, where Eugene O’Neill’s early plays were first produced; also noted for her plays Trifles and Inheritors.
- July 1, 1885 – Dorothea Mackellar born, Australian author and poet; best-known for her poem “My Country.” Four volumes of her collected verse were published: The Closed Door; The Witch Maid and Other Verses; Fancy Dress; and Dreamharbour.
- July 1, 1887 – Amber Reeves born in New Zealand — British author, socialist, and feminist; chose getting an education at Cambridge over a Court Presentation as a debutante; wrote four novels and four works of non-fiction with socialist and feminist themes; member of the Labour Party, and edited Women’s Leader, a party publication.
- July 1, 1895 – Lucy Somerville Howorth born, attorney, U.S. magistrate, legislator, civil servant, and woman suffragist. At age 22, on August 18, 1917, she was a witness in the gallery when the Tennessee state legislature cast the deciding vote to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a long fight for the right to vote that women finally won. This inspired her lifelong fight for the civil rights of minorities and women. She practiced law and served as a judge in Mississippi, then represented Hinds County in the Mississippi House of Representatives (1932-1936). She is also known for her New Deal legislative efforts in Washington D.C., including serving on the U.S. Board of Veterans Appeals (1936-1943), and on the War Claims Commission (1949-1954) as associate general counsel, deputy general counsel, and general counsel. She returned to Mississippi and practiced law until she retired in 1975 at age 80. Howorth then became a co-editor of her grandfather’s Civil War letters to her grandmother, which were published as My Dear Nellie in 1978.
- July 1, 1901 – Irna Phillips born, American scriptwriter, casting agent, and actress, dubbed the “Queen of the Soaps” for creating, producing, and writing several of the first daytime radio and television soap operas, including radio’s Woman in White, and TV’s Guiding Light, As the World Turns, and Another World; she was a mentor to Agnes Nixon, another pioneer in daytime television.
- July 1, 1903 – Amy Johnson born, early British woman pilot, set numerous long-distance records, including first woman to fly alone from England to Australia in six days; member of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) during WWII, she was killed during an ATA delivery flight in bad weather in 1941.
- July 1, 1903 – Beatrix Lehmann born, British actress, theatre director, and author; she appeared on the stage, in films, on television, and won Britain’s Radio Actress of the Year in 1977. In 1946, she became director and producer of the Arts Council Midland Theatre Company. Lehmann also wrote short stories and two novels. Her novel Rumour of Heaven was reissued by Virago Press in 1987. She died at age 76 in 1979.
- July 1, 1904 – Mary Steichen Calderone born, physician and sex educator, Medical Director of Planned Parenthood (1953-1964); she was the principal founder and president of SIECUS (Sex Information and Education Council of the United States) in 1964.
- July 1, 1906 – Estée Lauder, originally Josephine Esther Mentzer, born cosmetics pioneer, co-founder Estée Lauder Companies, originated ‘free gift with purchase,’ became one of the richest self-made women in the world, recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom. As a philanthropist, funded playgrounds in New York’s Central Park and contributed to the restoration of Versailles in the 1970s.
- July 1, 1912 – Sally Kirkland born as Sarah Phinney, American fashion editor; started in 1939 as an assistant editor at Vogue magazine, and by 1946, had risen to be the magazine’s fashion editor. Kirkland was the only fashion editor at LIFE magazine (1947-1969); she was the first person to hire an African American at LIFE, when she hired Gordon Parks as a staff photographer and writer in 1948.
- July 1, 1916 – Olivia de Havilland born in Tokyo to English parents, where her father was an English professor at the Imperial University, but her parents split up, and she grew up in California. In 1934, de Havilland was seen in a community theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which led to her casting by Max Reinhardt in his film version of the play for Warner Brothers, and a five-year contract with the studio for de Havilland. When she co-starred with Errol Flynn in the 1938 hit film The Adventures of Robin Hood, it raised her status, and brought her a new seven-year contract for more money, but the roles she was assigned varied widely in quality, and she was often frustrated. By early 1940, she refused to play some of the roles she was assigned, leading to a series of suspensions. In 1940, she missed the premiere of Santa Fe Trail, because she was rushed to the hospital for an emergency surgery for appendicitis. During her convalescence, she rejected more scripts, and was once more suspended. At what should have been the end of her seven-year contact, she was told she still owed Warner Brothers six months to make up the time she had been suspended. Bette Davis had unsuccessfully sued Warner Brothers over this issue in the 1930s, but de Havilland filed her own suit in 1943, and won, both the original suit, and when the studio appealed to a higher court. The section of the California Labor Code that applied is still called the ‘De Havilland Law.’ But Warner Brothers sent letters to other studios which resulted in her blacklisting by the studios for almost two years. During WWII, she went on a tour of the country to sell war bonds, volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen, and went on a USO tour of the South Pacific. Her career spanned 53 years, from 1935 to 1988, and she made 49 feature films. She won two Academy Awards for Best Actress for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She lived to the age of 104, and died in Paris in 2020.
- July 1, 1921 – Michalina Wisłocka born, Polish gynecologist, sexologist, and author of Sztuka kochania (The Art of Loving, published in English as A Practical Guide to Marital Bliss in 1978), the first guide to sexual intimacy published in a Communist country. Wisłocka was a co-founder of the Society of Sensible Maternity, and worked on infertility treatment and birth control.
- July 1, 1922 – Toshi Ohta Seeger born in Germany, American documentary filmmaker, producer, and environmental and civil rights activist; noted for Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison and the Emmy Award-winning documentary Pete Seeger: The Power of Song. She was one of the founders of the Newport Folk Festival, and took part in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama. Married to Pete Seeger for over 69 years, she was the producer on his public television show Rainbow Quest (1965-1966).
Toshi Ohta Seeger with husband Pete Seeger
- July 1, 1930 – Carol Chomsky born, American linguist and education specialist, noted for her studies of language acquisition in children; married to Noam Chomsky.
- July 1, 1934 – Jean Marsh born, British actress and writer; co-creator and star of the BBC television series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975).
- July 1, 1940 – Ela Gandhi born, South African peace activist; Member of the South African Parliament (1994-2004) aligned with the ANC (African National Congress); granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi.
- July 1, 1941 – Twyla Tharp born, American dancer-choreographer; founder of the Twyla Tharp Dance Company; noted for combining ballet with contemporary music, such as Little Deuce Coupe, which she choreographed for the Joffrey Ballet in 1973.
- July 1, 1942 – Dame Julia Higgins born, British polymer scientist; Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London; noted for work on inelastic scattering of neutrons and polymers; Chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (2003-2007).
- July 1, 1945 – Deborah Harry born, American singer with Blondie; she was inspired by Elton John to become involved with charities, especially those in fighting cancer and endometriosis.
Debirah Harry — Blondie 1977
- July 1, 1946 – Mireya Moscoso born, first woman elected President of Panama, presiding during the handover of the Panama Canal and the Canal Zone by the U.S.
- July 1, 1949 – Néjia Ben Mabrouk born, Tunisian director and screenwriter, known for her work writing and directing the full-length feature film Sama, which won the Caligari Prize at the 1989 Berlin International Film Festival, and a segment for the documentary The Gulf War ... What Next?
- July 1, 1951 – Anne Feeney born, American folk singer-songwriter, anti-war activist, and civil rights advocate. In 1972, she helped found Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, which campaigned for a rape crisis center in Pittsburgh. She is the only woman to be elected as president of the Pittsburgh Musicians’ Union (1997-1998), and is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World.
- July 1, 1951 – Julia Goodfellow born, English physicist and academic; first woman president of the academic organization, Universities UK (2015-2017). In 2011, she served on both the Council for Science and Technology and the Science and Technology Facilities Council. In 2018, she became president of the Royal Society of Biology. Noted for her work on structural studies of the corneal stroma.
- July 1, 1953 – Jadranka Kosor born, Croatian journalist and moderate conservative politician; Member of the Croatian Parliament (2011-2015); the first woman Prime Minister of Croatia (2009-2011).
- July 1, 1955 – Lisa Scottoline born, American lawyer and author of legal thrillers and nonfiction.
- July 1, 1963 – Linda L. Fagan born, first woman Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, since June 1, 2022; she became the Coast Guard’s first woman four-star admiral when she was appointed by President Joe Biden in June 2021 as Vice Commandant of the Coast Guard. Previously, she was Commander of the Coast Guard Pacific Area. She is also the first recipient of the Coast Guard’s Gold Ancient Trident, as the officer with the longest service record in the Marine Safety field.
- July 1, 1977 – Jessica Meir born, American-Swedish NASA astronaut, marine biologist, and physiologist. She was previously an assistant professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, following postdoctoral research in comparative physiology at the University of British Columbia. She studied the diving physiology and behavior of emperor penguins in Antarctica, and the physiology of bar-headed geese, which are able to migrate over the Himalayas. In September 2002, Meir served as an aquanaut on the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations 4 (NEEMO 4) crew. In 2013, she was part of Astronaut Group 21, one of 8 chosen out of over 6,300 applicants. In 2016, Meir participated in ESA CAVES, a training course in which international astronauts train in a space-analogue cave environment. Meir launched in September, 2019, to the ISS onboard Soyuz MS-15, where she served as a flight Engineer during Expeditions 61 and 62. On October 18, 2019, Meir and Christina Koch were the first women to participate in an all-female spacewalk.
Jessica Meir (left) — with Chritina Koch
- July 1, 1981 – Nell Dunn’s play, Steaming, with an all-female cast, premieres in London.
- July 1, 1991 – President George H.W. Bush nominates federal appeals court judge and accused sexual harasser Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court; Anita Hill will get thrown under the bus; Thomas was confirmed by 52-48 vote, the narrowest approval margin in more than a century.
- July 1, 2000 – Vermont's civil unions law goes into effect, granting gay couples most of the rights, benefits, and responsibilities of a civil marriage.
- July 1, 2014 – Vice Admiral Michelle J. Howard is promoted to 4-star Admiral, the first woman to achieve the U.S. Navy’s highest rank.
- July 1, 2019 – Several high-profile Democrats who toured migrant detention facilities in Texas called for firing Customs and Border Patrol agents who reportedly joked about migrant deaths in a secret Facebook group. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, led by Representative Joaquin Castro (Democrat-Texas), also condemned vulgar images agents allegedly posted of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Democrat-N.Y.) and called for a full investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. The lawmakers described conditions in the detention centers as "appalling," particularly for migrant women. Ocasio-Cortez said that she saw Customs and Border Protection officers telling migrant women to drink water out of the toilets, and said that one woman told her that officers would wake them at odd hours and call them "whores." Representative Judy Chu (Democrat-Calif.) corroborated this account, and said "changes must be made."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Judy Chu
- July 1, 2020 – Barbara Simons, computer scientist, was honored with the 2019 ACM Policy Award for long-standing, high-impact leadership as president (1998-2000) of the Association for Computing Machinery, and as the founding chair of ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee. She has long been an advocate for technology regulation, and for safeguarding elections in the digital age, and has advanced technology policy by leading organizations, writing influential publications, and effecting change through lobbying and public education.
- July 1, 2020 – Nadeen Ashraf ignites the #MeToo movement in Egypt. The 22-year-old philosophy major was up late studying for an exam when she was distracted by wondering what happened to the Facebook post by another American University (Cairo) student warning about a man who allegedly was harassing or assaulting women on campus, then blackmailing them into silence. The post had been deleted with no explanation. Angry, Ashraf created an Instagram page, using the pseudonym @assaultpolice, to identify the man as Ahmed Bassam Zaki, with his photo and a list of accusations of his sexual misconduct against women. “This guy had been getting away with stuff since the 10th grade,” she said. “Every time a woman opened her mouth, someone taped it shut. I wanted to stop that.” After creating the page, she fell asleep and slept through her exam. She woke up to hundreds of comments applauding her post, and over two dozen messages from women who confided that they had also been assaulted by Zaki, including some who revealed they had been raped. Within a week, Zaki was under arrest, her @assaultpolice account had 70,000 followers and there was an outpouring of testimonies from other Egyptian women fed up with being humiliated and violated. Sexual assault is a huge problem in Egypt — a United Nations study in 2013 found that 99 percent of women had experienced harassment or violence — but reporting it is notoriously difficult. Police officials are reluctant to register assault cases. Powerful institutions prefer to sweep accusations under the rug. Even the families of victims, afraid of scandal or feeling a misplaced sense of shame, tend to hush it up. On September 1, authorities charged Zaki, age 21, with three counts of sexually assaulting underage women, and multiple counts of blackmail and harassment. He was sentenced to three years in prison for online sexual harassment charges in December 2020.
- July 1, 2021 – In the UK, five police officers have been under investigation for misconduct over their involvement in the traffic stop where British sprinter Bianca Williams, a gold medal winner at the Commonwealth Games and her partner, Ricardo dos Santos, a Portuguese sprinter, were searched and handcuffed on suspicion of having weapons and drugs, while their three-month-old son was in the back seat. Three of the officers are now under investigation for gross misconduct over alleged racism and dishonesty, after new evidence was unearthed by investigators. The incident lasted an hour and dos Santos said, “The officer dragged me out of the car with a raised baton and handcuffed me, he falsely alleged that he could smell cannabis on me and recorded this as the justification for the search on the stop and search form. Discrimination and a lack of honesty was at the heart of the officers’ behaviour that day and now at last it is what they are actually being investigated for.” The case was one of a series of videos surfacing in summer 2020 on social media that raised concerns about alleged discrimination, police tactics, and policies. The Met denies that it is discriminatory and says it is reviewing the use of handcuffs on those stopped and searched. None of the officers have been suspended or subject to restricted duties during the ongoing investigation.
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- July 2, 1363 – Maria, Queen of Sicily and Duchess of Athens and Neopatria, born; her father died in 1377, when she was 13, and Artale Alagona was made regent as her father wished, but three other heads of baronial families forced him to form a four-way regency. In 1379, 16-year-old Maria was to be married to Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, but she was kidnapped by William Raymond of Montcada, to prevent the marriage, and imprisoned for two years, a move approved by her grandfather King Peter IV of Aragon. But in 1382, she was rescued by a fleet from Aragon. In 1384, Maria was married to Martin the Younger, King Peter’s grandson. Maria and Martin led a military campaign in 1392 to take back her throne, and they became co-rulers. In 1400, she gave birth to a son, Peter, but he died just before his second birthday. Maria also died in 1401, which set off a succession crisis because Martin only ruled by right of his wife, but he remarried and managed to hold on to the throne until his death in 1409, when Sicily passed into the hands of the rulers of Aragon.
- July 2, 1575 – Elizabeth de Vere born, Countess of Derby; she served as Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth I of England, until her marriage in 1595 to William Stanley, 6th Earl of Derby. Upon his death in 1642, she took over his position as Lord of Mann (1614-1627), the first woman to rule as head of state of the Isle of Mann (also spelled Man).
- July 2, 1865 – Lily Braun born as Amalie von Kretschmann, German feminist writer, journalist, and a leader of the German feminists who believed in more gradual societal change. Braun was a member of the Social Democratic Party. She worked for the feminist newspaper Die Frauenbewegung (The Women’s Movement); advocate for women’s economic freedom and for replacing traditional and legal marriage with new types of personal relationships.
- July 2, 1876 – Harriet Brooks born, the first Canadian woman nuclear physicist, noted for her research on nuclear transmutations and radioactivity. One of the first people to discover radon, she did pioneering work in determining its atomic mass. She entered McGill University in 1894, shortly after McGill’s first women students graduated in 1888 with Bachelor of Arts degrees, but she was ineligible for a scholarship her first two years because she was a woman. Brooks graduated with first-class honours, and a B.A. in mathematics and natural philosophy in 1898. She went on to be the first woman to earn a master’s degree, in electromagnetism, from McGill. Her series of experiments to determine the nature of the radioactive emissions from thorium became one of the foundations for the development of nuclear science. In 1905, she accepted a position on the faculty of Barnard College in the U.S. In 1906, she became engaged, but broke it off when the college trustees insisted, over her objections and those of Margaret Maltby, head of the Barnard physics department, that a married woman could not remain on the faculty. She met Marie Curie later that year, and went to work as a member of Curie’s staff at the Institut du Radium in Paris. Though none of her research was published under her name, she was cited in articles published under the aegis of the Curie Institute. In 1907, she married McGill physics instructor Frank Pitcher, and ended both her career in physics and as an academic. She died in 1933 at the age of 57, of a ‘blood disorder’ – probably leukaemia caused by radiation exposure. The New York Times published her obituary, crediting her as the “discoverer of the recoil of a radioactive atom.”
- July 2, 1879 – Genevieve Cline born, American lawyer and judge, first woman named to the federal judiciary, advocate for consumer protection, women’s rights, and suffrage.
- July 2, 1896 – Lydia Mei born, Estonian painter, known for watercolors and still-life paintings.
Lydia Mei paintings: Woman with a Cigarette, and Still Life
- July 2, 1900 – Sophie Harris born, English theatre set and costume designer, a co-founder of the Motley Theatre Design Group, which frequently worked on productions for John Gielgud, director Michel Saint-Denis (founder of the London Theatre Studio), and Lawrence Olivier, as well as the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, English National Opera and Royal Court Theatre; Harris also designed costumes for films, including A Taste of Honey, The Innocents, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and This Sporting Life.
Captain Hook costume — Sophie Harris
- July 2, 1902 – Germaine Thyssens-Valentin born, Dutch classical pianist, received her training and spent much of her life in France; she made her debut at the age of eight. After a long absence from performing while she raised her five children, she made a notable series of recordings of works by Gabriel Fauré, who had been her teacher and mentor at the Conservatoire de Paris.
- July 2, 1916 – Zélia Gattai born, Brazilian photographer, memoirist, author of novels and children’s books; member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters; honored with the 1980 Prêmio Dante Alighieri (Dante Alighieri Award).
- July 2, 1918 – Indumati Bhattacharya born, Indian Politician; she was elected to the Lok Sabha (India’s lower house of Parliament) representing Hooghly, West Bengal (1984-1989).
- July 2, 1918 – Frances Reed Elliot becomes the first African American woman accepted into the American Red Cross Nursing Service.
- July 2, 1919 – Jean Craighead George born, prolific children’s and Young Adult author, 1973 Newbery Award for Julie of the Wolves; also wrote two guides to cooking with wild foods and an autobiography.
- July 2, 1922 – Eleanor Leacock born, cultural anthropologist, studied Native North Americans, and issues of gender and class, racism, and poverty. Her essay “Interpreting the Origins of Gender Inequality: Conceptual and Historical Problems" has been very influential.
- July 2, 1923 – Wisława Szymborska born, Polish poet, essayist, and translator; won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, the 1995 Herder Prize, and the 1991 Goethe Prize; called the “Mozart of Poetry” and the woman “who mixed elegance of language with the fury of Beethoven ...” Some of her poetry collections have been translated into English, including View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems, and Monologue of a Dog.
- July 2, 1937 – Amelia Earhart’s plane went missing over the Pacific Ocean while it was believed to be somewhere near Howland Island.
- July 2, 1943 – Ivi Eenmaa born, Estonian librarian and politician; head of the Estonian National Library (1993-1997); the first woman mayor of Tallinn (1997-1999); mayor of Võru (2005-2007); elected to the Riigikogu (Estonian Parliament) in 2007.
- July 2, 1947 – Ann Taylor born, Baroness Taylor of Bolton, British Labour politician; Minister of State for International Defence and Security (2008-2010); Chief Whip in the Commons and Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (1998-2001); first woman Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Privy Council; Member of Parliament (1974-2005); became a Life Peer in 2005.
- July 2, 1950 – Dame Lynne Brindley born, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, since 2013; first woman Chief Executive of the British Library, the UK’s national library (2000-2012); Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
- July 2, 1951 – Sylvia Rivera born, American gay liberation and transgender rights activist of Venezuelan-Puerto Rican heritage; member of the Gay Activists Alliance, and co-founder with Marsha P. Johnson of the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless gay youth, trans women, drag queens, and later AIDS patients who lost their homes. She struggled with substance abuse, and sometimes lived on the streets herself, especially after Marsha Johnson’s body was found floating in the Hudson River in 1992, ruled a suicide by police, but believed by Rivera and others to be a murder. Rivera died in 2002 from liver cancer.
- July 2, 1960 – Maria Lourdes Sereno born, Filipina lawyer and judge; appointed by Benigno Aquino III as de facto Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines (2012-2018), the first woman and second youngest person to head the judiciary. She was removed from office in an 8-6 decision over a quo warranto petition (demand for one to show one’s right to authority) voiding her appointment in 2018, believed to be politically motivated as she has been a critic of Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines since 2016.
- July 2, 1964 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act; Title VII prohibits sex discrimination in employment.
- July 2, 1971 – Evelyn Lau born to Chinese-Canadian parents from Hong Kong, Canadian poet and writer; her parents demanded she study to become a doctor, she felt the pressure was unbearable, ran away from home, and was homeless for over two years, which she chronicled in Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid; she has since published short stories and essays, six collections of poetry, and a novel, Other Women.
- July 2, 1979 – U.S. Mint releases an ill-conceived dollar coin meant to honor Susan B. Anthony.
- July 2, 1985 – Ashley Tisdale born, American actress-singer, best known for her role as Sharpay in the High School Musical series (2006-2008). She founded her own production company, Blondie Girl Productions, in 2008, and she produced the TV show Miss Advised in 2012. She has supported the Make a Wish Foundation by fundraising and visiting children in hospitals, and worked on Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief, a charity telethon held in January 2010 after the devastating Haitian earthquake.
- July 2, 1990 – Margot Robbie born, Australian actress, and co-founder of the production company LuckyChap Entertainment, producing films and the Hulu streaming television series Dollface, which premiered in 2019. She is best known for her performance in The Wolf of Wall Street, and as Harley Quinn in the superhero films Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey. Her portrayal of disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in the 2017 film I, Tonya was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She is a vocal supporter of human rights, women’s rights, gender equality, and LGBT rights. Her production company seeks out stories by women writers, and looks for talented women directors and producers for their projects. She has done fundraising for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, and worked on projects for the UN Refugee Agency, UNICEF, and Oxfam, as well as supporting the campaign for legalization of same-sex marriage in Australia.
- July 2, 1994 – Fallon Sherrock born, English professional darts player; in 2019, she became the first woman to win a match at the PDC World Championships, and subsequently, two consecutive additional matches, before losing in the third round. She was dubbed “Queen of the Palace” as the event took place at the Alexandra Palace.
- July 2, 2019 – British-based media and newspaper company, Guardian News & Media, issued a report that the company’s gender pay gap, calculated by median hourly pay, has fallen from 8.4% in 2018 to 4.9% in 2019. On a mean basis – which takes the total paid to each gender and divides it by the number of employees of that gender – the GNM pay gap is 11%, down from 11.7% last year. But among those who received bonuses, the median gap was 2.8% – widening from a zero gap last year. The top half of the organization is now 41% female, compared with 36% in 2017, but 63% of staff within the lowest-paid quartile were women, up from 61% in 2018. GNM has said it is aiming to achieve a 50:50 gender balance in the top half of the organization by 2022. GNM is publishing the data under the government’s compulsory gender pay gap initiative, which was introduced in 2017 and requires all private and public sector organizations and charities with more than 250 employees to submit annual figures.
- July 2, 2020 – The U.S. Supreme Court left abortion protest zones in place in Chicago, Illinois, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The justices declined to hear two appeals by anti-abortion groups of lower court rulings upholding the cities’ ordinances. The Chicago policy bars anti-abortion activists from getting within eight feet of a person who is within 50 feet of a health-care facility if their intention is to offer the person counseling or anti-abortion leaflets. The Harrisburg policy bars people from gathering within 20 feet of a clinic's entrance or exit. The rules were enacted to prevent protesters from harassing women seeking services in abortion clinics. Anti-abortion groups and activists said the protest zone rules violated their free speech rights, while women's health-care providers said the activists posed a threat to public safety, and cited the history of violent acts committed against abortion providers and women’s healthcare facilities.
- July 2, 2021 – Over 60,000 women and children who poured out of Isis’s last Syrian stronghold when the so-called caliphate fell in March 2019 are now detained in al-Hawl detention camp run by the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Their imprisonment is a rallying cry for Isis supporters across the world, and “marrying” one of the imprisoned women – in a long-distance, online relationship – has become a badge of honour on the jihadists’ social media networks. Hundreds of foreign women with links to Islamic State in Syria’s sprawling detention camp have “married” men they met online and several hundred have been smuggled out of the facility using cash bribes gifted by their new husbands. The “marriages” are conducted over the phone. Usually it isn’t necessary for the woman to be on the call: a mediating sheikh says a few verses and then pronounces the groom as her new wali, or guardian, and the bride then receives cash or a new mobile phone as a dowry. The camp’s inhabitants have received wire payments totaling upwards of $500,000 (£360,000 UK), according women inside and outside al-Hawl, local Kurdish officials, a former Isis member in eastern Europe with knowledge of the money transfer network, and a foreign fighter in Idlib province involved in smuggling. The practice is a significant security risk inside Syria and for foreign governments who refuse to take their nationals home. Most prospective husbands appear to have roots in Muslim countries but live in western Europe, where they are relatively well-off. For the camp’s women, it is a way of securing an income that can make life in al-Hawl more bearable: money for daily necessities such as nappies, food, medicine, and phone credit. Some even get enough funds to pay other women to cook and clean.
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- July 3, 1790 – Nicolas de Condorcet, marquis de Condorcet, publishes “De l’admission des femmes au droit de cité“ (For the Admission to the Rights of Citizenship For Women) in which he strongly advocates for women’s suffrage in the new Republic as well as enlargement of basic political and social rights to include women; Condorcet identifies gender as a social construction based on perceived differences in sex and rejected biological determinism as an explanation of gender relations in society. He denounces patriarchal norms of oppression, present at every institutional level, and continuously subjugating and marginalizing women, identifying education as crucial to the emancipation of individuals: ″I believe that all other differences between men and women are simply the result of education.″
- July 3, 1860 – Charlotte Perkins Gilman born, American feminist leader, sociologist, author, poet, and social reform lecturer; best known for her subtly terrifying short-story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” but her non-fiction works, like Women and Economics, and The Home: Its Work and Influence, contributed much to feminist thought; from 1909-1916, Gilman single-handedly wrote and edited The Forerunner, a monthly magazine where many of her ideas first appeared. She produced 86 issues, each 28 pages long, for nearly 1,500 subscribers, from 1909 through 1916.
- July 3, 1881 – Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova born, influential Russian avant-garde painter, costume designer, illustrator, set designer, and writer; founding member of the Jack of Diamonds (1909-1911) Moscow’s first radical independent exhibiting group. With her life partner (and later husband), fellow artist Michail Larionov, she invented Rayonism (1912-1914), a Russian style of abstract art. She was also a member of the German-based art movement Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), whose members included Franz Marc, Wassily Kandinsky, Marianne von Werefkin and Albert Bloch. She designed costumes for the Ballets Russes, and worked in Moscow for the noted designer Nadejda Lamonava, and in Paris for the House of Myrbor. In 2007, her painting Picking Apples set a new record at auction for a work by a woman painter, selling for $9.8 million USD.
- July 3, 1885 – Anna Dickie Olesen born, American Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator from Minnesota in 1922, the first woman nominated by a major party to run for the office. She was also the first woman to serve on the Democratic National Committee (1917–1924). In the late 1930s, Olesen served on the Minnesota State Planning Board, the Minnesota Resources Committee, and she was active with the General Federation of Women's Clubs, as well as the League of Women Voters.
- July 3, 1901 – Ruth Crawford Seeger born, American modernist composer and folk music expert. She earned her master’s degree at Chicago’s American Conservatory of Music in 1929, and studied composition with Charles Seeger, who would later become her husband. In 1930, she was the first woman composer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and traveled to Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and Budapest. She and Seeger married in 1932, and they moved to Washington DC, where he worked for the music division of the Resettlement Administration, and she worked at the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song. Her children Mike Seeger and Peggy Seeger both became folksingers, and Pete Seeger was her stepson. Crawford Singer’s most well-known work is String Quarter 1931. She died at age 52 from cancer in 1953.
- July 3, 1908 – M.F.K. Fisher born as Mary Frances Kennedy, influential American food writer, author of 26 books, and a translation of The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin; founder of the Napa Valley Wine Library; her books Serve It Forth, Consider the Oyster, and How to Cook a Wolf are among her most popular works.
- July 3, 1913 – Dorothy Kilgallen born, American newspaper reporter and columnist; although best remembered for being a panelist on the TV game show What’s My Line?, and for her syndicated column and radio program, The Voice of Broadway, she began her career as a reporter for The New York Evening Journal. She covered both the 1954 Sam Sheppard murder trial and the John F. Kennedy assassination. Years after the guilty verdict in the Sheppard case, after the presiding judge had died, she revealed that the judge had told her off the record before the start of jury selection that Sheppard was “guilty as hell.” Her statement, and a corroborating statement from the court clerk, helped Attorney F. Lee Bailey’s 1964 habeas corpus petition secure Sheppard’s release, as well as a new trial, in which Sheppard was acquitted.
- July 3, 1926 – Rae Allen born as Raffaella Abruzzo, American actress and theatre director; won the 1971 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play as Fleur Stein in And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little. She played the mother of sisters Dottie and Kit (Geena Davis and Lori Petty) in A League of Their Own.
- July 3, 1928 – Evelyn Ward-Thomas born, British historical and spy thriller novelist; used the more masculine-sounding pen name ‘Evelyn Anthony’ because of the difficulty for women authors in getting published; best known for Far Flies the Eagle, All the Queen’s Men and The Tamarind Seed.
- July 3, 1929 – Joanne King Herring born, American socialite and political activist; used her political associations with President of Pakistan Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988) and U.S. Representative Charlie Wilson (D-TX 1973-1997) to sway the U.S. government to train and arm the Mujahideen resistance fighters to fight in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, codename ‘Operation Cyclone,’ which inspired the book Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, and the 2007 movie Charlie Wilson’s War.
- July 3, 1938 – Jean Aitchison born, English linguist and academic; Professor of Language and Communication in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford; noted for Socio-historical linguistics, and the relationship of language to the mind and to media.
- July 3, 1939 – Brigette Fassbaender born, German mezzo-soprano and opera director (1995-1997) at the Staatstheater Braunschweig, and the managing director (1999-2012) of the Tiroler Landestheater (Tyrolean State Theatre) in Innsbruck. In 2010, Fassbaender wrote the book and text for musicals, collaborating with composer Stephen Kanya on Lulu – das Musical, and Shylock!
- July 3, 1940 – Fontella Bass born, American R& B and soul singer-songwriter; best known for “Rescue Me” (1965).
- July 3, 1941 – Gloria Allred born, American women’s and civil rights attorney noted for taking high-profile and controversial cases, especially cases involving employment discrimination and sexual harassment.
- July 3, 1952 – Laura Branigan born, American singer-songwriter; best-known for her cover of “Gloria” by Umberto Tozzi, which was a platinum 1982 single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for 36 weeks, peaking at #2. She wrote the songs “I Wish We Could be Alone” and “When,” and co-wrote “Sweet Life,” “Over You” and “Tenderness.” She won the Billboard Year-End Top Pop Female Artist award in 1983.
- July 3, 1963 – Tracey Emin born, English contemporary artist, known for her autobiographical and confessional work, in a variety of media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text, and sewn appliqué.
- July 3, 1964 – Joanne Harris born, English author; best known for her novel Chocolat, which won the 2000 Creative Freedom Award and the 2001 Whittaker Gold Award.
- July 3, 1967 – Katy Sloan Clark born, British Labour politician; political secretary of Labour since 2015; Member of Parliament for North Ayrshire and Arran (2005-2015); she campaigns for human rights, refugee rights, LGBTQ rights, and against nuclear proliferation, and is a supporter of trade unions.
- July 3, 1970 – Audra McDonald born, American Broadway stage actress and singer; winner of six Tony Awards, more wins than any other actor, and the only one to win in all four acting categories. She has performed in musicals, operas, and dramas. She also won two Grammy Awards for classical and opera recordings, was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 2016, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2017.
- July 3, 1983 – Dorota Masłowska born, Polish writer, playwright, columnist, and journalist; author of Wojna polsko-ruska pod flagą biało-czerwoną (Polish-Russian War under White-Red Flag) and Paw królowej (The Queen’s Peacock), which won the 2006 NIKE Literary Award.
- July 3, 1984 – Roberts v. United States Jaycees: the U.S. Supreme Court rules 7-0 that chapters of the Jaycees, an organization for young business leaders, lacked “the distinctive characteristics that might afford constitutional protection to the decision of its members to exclude women.” Originally the Jaycees accepted only men as members, but by the early 1970s it was admitting women as associate members with no voting privileges. Two Minnesota chapters sought to admit women as full members, and when the national Jaycees threatened to revoke their charters, the chapters sued under Minnesota’s public accommodations law, which banned discrimination against women by membership organizations.
- July 3, 1996 – Women’s Day in Myanmar: The Myanmar National Committee for Women’s Affairs was formed, to ensure the security and development of all Myanmar women.
- July 3, 2017 – Fox Sports abruptly fired its president of national networks, Jamie Horowitz, as the company investigated sexual harassment allegations. "Everyone at Fox Sports, no matter what role we play, or what business, function or show we contribute to — should act with respect and adhere to professional conduct at all times," Fox Sports President Eric Shanks said in an email to employees. "These values are non-negotiable." He was terminated “for cause” according to Daniel Petrocelli, the litigator representing Fox Sports, who said, “We are confident that Mr. Horowitz knows why his employment was terminated, and we presume that he would prefer that the matter not publicly be discussed.” This follows closely behind sexual harassment claims and lawsuits which brought down former Fox News co-founder Roger Ailes and commentator Bill O'Reilly of The O’Reilly Factor. Jamie Horowitz is now a VP of Development & Digital at WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). Roger Ailes died in May, 2017, but Bill O’Reilly has been the host of No Spin News since 2017, at the First TV network, a right-wing digital TV network.
- July 3, 2019 – U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett blocked the implementation of Ohio's new law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, pending the result of a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. Judge Barrett wrote in his ruling that the law would violate a Supreme Court precedent by imposing an "undue burden" on a woman's right to choose an abortion before the fetus is viable. Many women don't know they are pregnant until after six weeks. The law includes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest, making it one of the strictest anti-abortion measures in the nation. Five other states have approved so-called “heartbeat” abortion bills in 2019, and one in Mississippi has already been blocked. The law remains unenforceable unless the U.S. Supreme Court rules otherwise. In November, the Ohio Senate passed a bill promoting the unproven practice of “abortion reversal.” State Senator Peggy Lehner (R-Kettering) claims that women can reverse a two-step medication abortion by taking progesterone instead of the second abortion-inducing pill, and her bill requires doctors to tell women about the procedure. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it has not been scientifically tested and thinks it could have dangerous side effects. An attempted study of the procedure at the University of California, Davis was cut short in December 2019 due to safety concerns, after three of the 12 women enrolled in the study required ambulance transport to a hospital for treatment of severe vaginal bleeding. The research up to that point was unable to show, what, if any, effectiveness progesterone has in reversing a medical abortion. Even though the number of women involved in the study was very small, the results raise serious concerns about the safety of using mifepristone without taking misoprostol, the second step in the medication-based abortion regimen.
- July 3, 2020 – Programs created for the market in India by streaming services like Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hotstar, have set off a coordinated backlash over their content, which is not subject to the regulations that control Bollywood films and traditional Indian television. Swara Bhasker, a Bollywood actress know for her outspoken criticism of the Indian government, and star of Amazon Prime’s Rasbhari, has been the victim of a hate campaign online, and even been publicly criticized by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. Bhasker believes her dissenting political views, even more than the content of the show, have made her a target. Rasbhari, about a teacher arriving in the small Uttar Pradesh city of Meerut, does address issues of teen sexuality, sexual repression, and the societal double standards for Indian men and women, but no nudity or graphic scenes are shown. Yet within 24 hours of its debut, thousand of tweets and threats accused the show of being obscene, vulgar, and both anti-Indian and anti-Hindu. Coordinated reviews on IMDb rated the show a one, the lowest possible score, in 80% of the voting. The Netflix futuristic series Leila, starring Huma Quershi, shows an oppressive regime segregating society, based on a novel by Prayaag Akbar. It was also hit by a fierce backlash. Paatal Lok, another Amazon Prime drama, starring and co-produced by Anushka Sharma, one of Bollywood’s best known actresses, has been hit with relentless complaints and vicious comments about its portrayal of police brutality, how minorities are treated, and rape and other attacks on Muslims. In May, 2020, the series was sent a legal notice by the Nepali organization that the use of the word “caste” by a police officer interrogating a Nepali character insulted the entire Nepali community in India. The streaming services are very popular among India’s millions of young people under age 25, but the current ruling political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is right-wing and Hindu nationalist, opposes western influences on India, and has called for strict laws against web series that “hurt the fabric of Indian society.” Prasoon Joshi, chair of the Central Board of Film Certification, criticized Rasbhari’s “irresponsible content” and said “creators and audiences need to seriously rethink freedom of expression.”
Swara Bhasker — Huma Quershi — Anushka Sharma
- July 3, 2021 – Ukraine was preparing to stage a military parade in August to mark 30 years of independence following the Soviet Union’s breakup when authorities became buried in controversy after an official photograph was released showing women soldiers practicing for the parade marching in black mid-heel pumps. “Today, for the first time, training takes place in heeled shoes,” cadet Ivanna Medvid was quoted as saying by the defence ministry’s information site ArmiaInform. “It is slightly harder than in army boots but we are trying.” Several Ukrainian lawmakers close to Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko showed up in parliament with pairs of shoes and encouraged the defence minister to wear high heels to the parade. “It is hard to imagine a more idiotic, harmful idea,” said Inna Sovsun, a member of the Golos party, pointing to health risks. She added that Ukraine’s women soldiers – like men – were risking their lives and “do not deserve to be mocked.” Over 3,500 women had fought in the current conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the country’s industrial east. More than 31,000 women serve in the Ukrainian armed forces, and over 4,000 of them are officers.
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- July 4, 68 CE – Salonia Matidia born; her maternal uncle was Trajan, who thought highly of her intelligence and listened to her opinions; her daughter married Hadrian, who became Roman Emperor after Trajan; when Matidia died in 119, Hadrian delivered her funeral oration, deified her, and granted her a temple and altar in Rome itself, making her the first divinized Roman woman with a full-scale temple of her own, not shared with her husband.
- July 4, 414 – Emperor Theodosius II, age 13, yields power to his older sister Aelia Pulcheria, who had vowed perpetual virginity, and acted as the guardian of her brother. She was proclaimed Augusta, the Roman honorific given to empresses and honored women of imperial families. She continued to wield some power even after Theodosius reached his majority, until his marriage in 421 to Aelia Eudocia.
- July 4, 1862 – In a rowing boat during a picnic outing, 10-year-old Alice Liddell asked Charles Dodgson for a story. He tells Alice and her sisters Edith and Lorina the story of a girl named Alice who fell down a rabbit-hole. Alice Liddell asked him to write the story down for her, and in 1864, he presented to her the manuscript of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Dodgson decided to rewrite the story to see if he could get it published, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, under the pen name ‘Lewis Carroll’ was published in 1865, with illustrations by John Tenniel, and became a publishing sensation.
Alice Liddell, age 7 — photographed by Lewis Carroll
- July 4, 1868 – Henrietta Swan Leavitt born, American astronomer; she discovered the relationship between luminosity and variables associated with Cepheid stars, stars which vary regularly in brightness in periods ranging from a few days to several months, during her study of hundreds of variable stars in the Magellanic Clouds. The Period-Luminosity relation is used by astronomers to calculate the distance between Earth and other galaxies.
- July 4, 1876 – Suffragists crash the Centennial Celebration in Independence Hall to present Vice President Richard Henry Lee with the “Declaration of the Rights of Women” co-written by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. “... Our faith is firm and unwavering in the broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as abstract truths, but as the cornerstones of a republic. Yet we cannot forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every race, and clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of citizenship under our hospitable flag, all women still suffer the degradation of disfranchisement ...”
Susan B. Anthony — Elizabeth Cady Stanton — Matilda Joslyn Gage
- July 4, 1898 – Dr. Pilar Barbosa de Rosario born, Puerto Rican historian, educator, and political activist; daughter of Puerto Rican Senator Jose Barbosa, often called “the Father of the Puerto Rican Statehood Movement.” She got her Doctorate in History at Clark University in Massachusetts, and returned home to become the first woman hired as a professor at University of Puerto Rico’s College of Liberal Arts. In 1929, she established the Department of History and Social Sciences, and was its director until 1943, but continued to teach until her retirement in 1967; she was very active in the statehood movement, following in her father’s footsteps, and served as a political advisor to members of the New Progressive Party, including Resident Commissioner and Governor Luis Fortuño (2009-2013); named by the Legislative Assembly as Official Historian of Puerto Rico in 1993; she lived to be 98 years old.
- July 4, 1898 – Gertrude Lawrence born, British actress, singer and dancer, international theatrical and film star; during WWII, she traveled under grueling conditions to entertain troops in both Europe and the Pacific.
- July 4, 1900 – Belinda Boyd Dann, Australian, born as Quinlyn Warrakoo to a Nykina mother and an Irish cattle station manager; one of the “stolen generations,” taken away from her mother when she was 8 years old, and sent to Beagle Bay Mission in Western Australia, where her name was changed to Belinda Boyd. She married Mathias Dann in 1918. Although she remembered Warrakoo was her name, she did not know who she was or where she came from. After one of her grandsons told her story and her original name to a friend connected to the Nykina people, in 2007 Warrakoo met her 97-year-old brother for the first time, just weeks before he died, speaking the Nykina language again after almost a century. She died a few months later at age 107.
- July 4, 1900 – Nellie Mae Rowe born, Africa-American self-taught artist, now considered an important folk artist; her home and yard were her primary canvas, which she referred to as her ‘playhouse’; it was dismantled and torn down after her death in 1982, replaced by a hotel, which has a plaque identifying the site’s previous inhabitant.
‘Happy Days’ (1981) — by Nellie Mae Rowe
- July 4, 1903 – Dorothy Levitt becomes first English woman to compete in a 'motor race.' She was also the holder of world's first water speed record and the women's world land speed record. She popularized motoring for women by teaching Queen Alexandra and the Royal Princesses how to drive. In 1908, she published The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for All Women Who Motor or Want to Motor; in the book, she said women should "carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place when driving" so they may "hold the mirror aloft from time to time in order to see behind while driving in traffic," introducing “rear view mirrors” before manufacturers added them in 1914.
- July 4, 1910 – “America the Beautiful” is published; lyrics from the poem “America” (title changed from “Pikes Peak” for publication) by Katherine Lee Bates, and music by Samuel A. Ward, which he originally wrote for a hymn called “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem” published in 1895.
- July 4, 1910 – Gloria Stuart born, American film and stage actress, visual artist, political and environmental activist; she made her first movie appearance in 1932, and played her last role in 2004, with a gap from 1945 to 1975, in which she left acting to become an artist working in several mediums, including painting, making fine prints and miniature books, and shaping Bonsai. In 1975, she started doing small parts on television and in movies, then was cast in 1996 as the older Rose in Titanic, five days after her 86th birthday. She was nominated for the 1997 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Stuart campaigned for an actors’ union, and was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. She helped form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, and was co-founder with Dorothy Parker of the League to Support the Spanish War Orphans. Became a long-time environmentalist: “I belong to every organization that has to do with saving the environment.” She lived to the age of 100.
Gloria Stuart — ‘Idiots Bouquet’
- July 4, 1911 – Susanna Kok born in the Free State province of South Africa, medical missionary of the Dutch Reformed Church and authority on leprosy. Dr. Kok worked mainly in Mkar, Nigeria. She was the first to describe and study what came to be called Mkar disease (granuloma multiforme), a skin disease which is similar to leprosy, but doesn’t respond to treatment as leprosy does. She also worked on a study of nerve conduction in leprosy patients, and made nerve biopsies the standard procedure for diagnosing leprosy, replacing the less successful skin analysis that was used previously.
- July 4, 1916 – Sisters Adelina and Augusta Van Buren begin a successful transcontinental motorcycle tour. Addie and Gussie leave Brooklyn NY, and will arrive in Los Angeles CA, on September 8, 1916. America was on the brink of entering WWI, and they proved that women could ride as well as men, so could serve as military dispatch riders, freeing up men for other tasks. They also hoped women serving in a military capacity would remove a primary argument against giving women the vote. They defied convention in dress, wearing military-style leggings and leather riding breeches, which sometimes caused conflicts with police as they rode across the U.S.
- July 4, 1918 – Esther and Pauline Friedman born, twin sisters better known as Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, American syndicated advice columnists.
- July 4, 1924 – Delia Fiallo born in Cuba, Cuban author, screenwriter, and “mother of the telenovela,” currently living in Miami Florida.
- July 4, 1934 – Yvonne B. Miller born, American Democratic politician, civil rights activist, and teacher; first African American woman to serve in both houses of the Virginia state legislature; first woman to chair a Virginia Senate committee; she died while in office as the longest-serving woman in the Virginia Senate at that time.
- July 4, 1936 – Zdzisława Donat born, Polish coloratura soprano, notable as the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte; Professor Emeritus at Frédéric Chopin University of Music.
- July 4, 1937 – Queen Sonja of Norway born as a commoner; noted as a humanitarian activist, involved in Princess Märtha Louise’s Fund, which provides assistance to disabled children in Norway, and active in large-scale initiatives to raise funds for international refugees. Served as Vice President (1987-1990) of the Norwegian Red Cross, traveling with delegations to Botswana and Zimbabwe in 1989; Queen Sonja’s School Award, started in 2006, honors schools demonstrating “excellence in efforts to promote inclusion and equality.”
- July 4, 1940 – Karolyn Grimes born, American actress, best known for her portrayal of Zuzu Bailey in the perennial holiday favorite, 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life. She also played Debbie in the 1947 film The Bishop Wife. Her mother, who managed her career, died when she was 14, and her father was killed in a car accident the next year. She was sent to live with relatives in rural Missouri, then went to college to become a medical technologist. She married, had two children, divorced, then married a man with three children, and they had two more children. There was financial hardship, her youngest child died, then her second husband died of cancer. However, renewed interest in It’s a Wonderful Life in the early 1980s led Jimmy Stewart to wonder what had happened to the little girl who played Zuzu. Grimes was 39 years old when Stewart's secretary tracked her down. She had never seen the film. She was hired to introduce the film at screenings, fans asked for her autograph, and she began getting fan mail. The “Bailey kids” were reunited for a national tour at Christmas in the 1990s. Grimes said. "It was fabulous. I had the best time ever. I didn't realize how much people loved this film. They seemed to just embrace us so much and put us in their hearts." She met a psychologist who worked at a homeless shelter in Seattle, they got married, and she moved to Washington. She still appears at screenings of It’s a Wonderful Life, especially at an annual event in Seneca Falls, NY, the inspiration for the film’s fictional town, “Bedford Falls.”
- July 4, 1951 – Kathleen Kennedy Townsend born, American attorney, Democratic politician; since 2010, chair of American Bridge, a non-profit which raises funds for Democratic candidates and causes; Lieutenant Governor of Maryland (1995-2003).
- July 4, 1958 – Vera Leth born, Greenlandic civil servant, County Council Ombudsman for the Parliament of Greenland since 1997.
- July 4, 1963 – Sonia Pierre born, Dominican human rights advocate, worked to end Antihaitianismo, discrimination against persons of Haitian origin in the Dominican Republic; recipient of Amnesty International’s 2003 Human Rights Ginetta Sagan Fund Award and the 2006 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award; she grew up in a migrant workers’ camp, one of 12 children, whose father was an undocumented worker from Haiti. Her mother came with a temporary work permit in 1957. Pierre’s nationality was disputed by the Junta Central Electoral, which said her birth certificate was forged. She began her political activism at age 14, organizing a five-day protest by sugar cane workers for better living conditions and wages. She was arrested, but the workers’ demands were met. She became director of the Movement for Dominican Women of Haitian Descent (MUDHA). In 2005, she petitioned the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to hear the case of two ethnic Haitian children who were denied Dominican birth certificates, Yean and Bosico v. Dominican Republic, “upheld human rights laws prohibiting racial discrimination in access to nationality and citizenship.” The court also ordered the Dominican government to provide the birth certificates, but the Dominican Supreme Court later ruled that “Haitian workers were considered ‘in transit,’ and that their children were therefore not entitled to citizenship.”
Sonia Pierre (center) with Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama (2010)
- July 4, 1973 – Keiko Ihara born, Japanese race car driver, who has been racing internationally since 2000.
- July 4, 2019 – Utah State’s Museum of Anthropology hosted an exhibit highlighting works by key cartoonist and women’s rights activist Nina Allender, whose cartoons regularly appeared between 1913 and 1920 in The Suffragist, the weekly newspaper published by the National Women’s Party in Washington DC. The exhibit, “Women Speaking to Women: The Political Art of Nina Allender” ran from July through August 30.
Jailed for Freedom pin — Sept 1, 1920 Suffragist cartoon — Nina Allender at work
- July 4, 2020 – The Covid-19 lockdown in Palestine left many women with no legal backing to secure child visitation and custody rights. Former partners took advantage of the legal paralysis to prevent mothers from seeing their children, or to stop sending alimony. Family law in Palestine is based on Islamic Family Law, which regulates Muslims’ marriage, divorce, custody, and alimony rights. But the economic situation is dire: in a survey, 68 per cent of all Palestinian women reported increased unpaid care work since COVID-19 confinement measures took effect, and many of them have lost their income from outside work. Few women can afford lawyers to file custody or alimony cases. Maryse Guimond, UN Women Special Representative for Palestine, said, “We have seen how COVID-19 has negatively impacted Palestinian women in so many different ways, including its impact on their child custody rights. In times of crisis, no effort should be spared to help women access justice and reclaim their rights.” The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) is a joint programme by UN women, the UN Development Programme, and UNICEF, has trained lawyers and provided free legal aid for 371 Palestinian women. Mona al-Shawa, Director of PCHR’s Women’s Unit, says, “Most of the women who come to us cannot even afford transportation. The most urgent cases were alimony cases. The other cases were about children visitation and custody rights.”
- July 4, 2021 – In Paris, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced multiple commitments to drive change for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls in all their diversity after the Generation Equality Forum. The WHO commitments focus on ending gender-based violence; advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights; and supporting health workers as well as feminist movements and leadership. These commitments shape a progressive and transformative blueprint for advancing gender equality, health equity, human rights and the empowerment of women and girls globally. The Generation Equality Forum, held 25 years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action on Women, came at a critical time, as COVID-19 continues to exacerbate existing gender inequalities. WHO led in two key areas of the Forum: the Action Coalition on Gender-Based Violence (co-led with UN Women and other partners) and the Gender Equal Health and Care Workforce Initiative between France, Women in Global Health and WHO. WHO will also partner with Wellspring, Ford Foundation, UN Women and the Government of the United Kingdom, in launching the Shared Agenda Advocacy Accelerator (the Accelerator) advocating for increasing resources for preventing violence against women and girls.
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- July 5, 1755 – Sarah Siddons born into the noted British theatrical Kemble family; the English actress was the most famous and admired English actress of her generation, “The Queen of Drury Lane” (London’s theatre district) known for her portrayal of tragic roles, especially Lady Macbeth. She was one of the first actresses to play the title role of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. In 1812, during her farewell performance as Lady Macbeth, the audience applause and shouts at the end of the sleep-walking scene were so tumultuous that the curtain was brought down, then raised several minutes later to reveal Siddons, no longer dressed as Lady Macbeth. She made her farewell speech to the audience without finishing the play.
Sarah Siddons as The Tragic Muse — by Joshua Reynolds
- July 5, 1857 – Clara Zetkin born, German Marxist theorist and activist, women’s rights advocate. Went into exile in Paris when Bismarck banned socialist activity in Germany, and was part of organizing the Socialist International in 1889; she was a key organizer of the 1910 International Socialist Women’s Conference in Copenhagen, which endorsed the idea of an international day of action for women’s suffrage, now International Women’s Day; the Clara Zetkin Medal is awarded to honor women active in women’s rights.
- July 5, 1879 – Wanda Landowska born, Polish harpsichordist, first person to record Bach’s Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord; she was a major figure in reviving the harpsichord’s popularity in the 20th century.
- July 5, 1888 – Louise Freeland Jenkins born, American astronomer; compiles a catalogue of stars within 10 parsecs of the sun; editor, 3rd edition of the Yale Bright Star Catalogue; pursued research on trigonometric parallax of nearby stars, and variable stars.
- July 5, 1899 – Anna Arnold Hedgeman born, American civil rights leader, politician, and writer; first African American woman to hold a mayoral cabinet post in New York, YWCA executive director, executive secretary of the National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), assistant dean of women at Howard University.
- July 5, 1905 – Madeleine Sylvain-Bouchereau born, pioneering Haitian sociologist, a principal founder of the Ligue Féminine d’Action Sociale (Women’s Social Action League), the first feminist organization in Haiti, and a regular contributor to La Voix des Femmes, the organization’s journal. After graduating in law at the University of Haiti (1933), she studied education and sociology at the University of Puerto Rico (1936-1938), and got her doctorate in sociology at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania (1941). Published Haïti et ses femmes: Une étude d’évolution culturelle (Haiti and its Women: A Study of Cultural Evolution) in 1957. Taught at Haiti’s Ethnology Institute (1941-1945), then at Fisk University. Haitian delegate to the Third Inter-American Conference on Education in 1937, and was part of a UN effort to arrange social services for Polish political prisoners in 1944; advisor to the government of Togo on community development (1966-1968).
- July 5, 1914 – Annie Fischer born, Hungarian classical pianist and composer. In 1933, at age 19, she won the International Franz Liszt Piano Competition in Budapest. Fischer and her husband fled to Sweden in 1940, where they remained until 1946, when they returned to Hungary. She made many live concert recordings, and an in-studio complete set of the Beethoven piano sonatas. She died at age 80 in 1995 in Budapest.
- July 5, 1920 – Mary Louise Hancock born, American politician and activist; New Hampshire state senator and the state’s first woman Planning Director, who later worked for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. Known as the “Grand Dame” of New Hampshire politics, she was the recipient of a Robert Frost Award and the Susan B. Anthony Award. One of her many obituaries said, “... More than a Senator and a glass-ceiling shattering woman, she was the embodiment of what it meant to be a New Hampshire Democrat.” New Hampshire’s governor proclaimed July 5 as Mary Louise Hancock Day in 2000.
Hillary Clinton with Mary Louise Hancock
- July 5, 1922 – Dutch women vote for the first time.
Dutch women campaigning for suffrage
- July 5, 1922 – Mitsuye Yamada born as Mitsuye Yasutake in Fukuoka, Japan; Japanese-American activist, feminist, fiction author, poet, essayist, editor, and professor of English. Her parents had been living in the U.S. but were visiting Japan when she was born. Her father was arrested by the FBI for espionage after Pearl Harbor, so she and her family were interned at Mindoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. She was allowed to leave to attend college after she renounced loyalty to the Emperor of Japan. Her first book, Camp Notes and Other Poems, was written during the war, but was not published until 1976. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1955, five years after her marriage to Yoshikasu Yamada, who was born in Hawaii, and served as a medic and a translator in the U.S. Army during WWII. Her other works include Lighthouse, her essay "Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster," and Desert Run: Poems and stories.
- July 5, 1937 – Nita Meinikoff Lowey born, American Democratic politician; member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York (1989-2021), Chair of the House Appropriations Committee (2019-2021); New York Assistant Secretary of State (1975-1988); worked on Mario Cuomo’s 1974 campaign for New York lieutenant governor.
- July 5, 1944 – Leni Björklund born, Swedish politician, the first woman Minister of Defence for Sweden (2002-2006); Secretary-General of the Church of Sweden (1999-2002).
- July 5, 1953 – Caryn Linda Navy born, American mathematician and computer scientist. Blind from retinopathy of prematurity; known for her work in set-theoretic topology and Braille technology; graduate of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), honored with the AMITA Senior Academic Award from the Association of MIT Alumnae.
- July 5, 1958 – Veronica Guerin born, Irish journalist; switched careers in 1990 from accountancy, public relations, and political campaign agent, to work as a reporter for the Sunday Business Post and Sunday Tribune; in 1994, she began writing about crime for the Sunday Independent, focusing on using her accounting skills to trace money from illegal drug transactions. She received death threats, including shots fired into her home in 1994, and a gunman who rang her doorbell, then as she opened the door, pushed his way in and shot her in the leg. She was beaten by drug kingpin John Gilligan when she confronted him about his lavish lifestyle with no source of income. She continued her investigations, and was honored with the 1995 International Press Freedom Award. In June, 1996, John Traynor, one of Gilligan’s lieutenants, was seeking a High Court order to prevent her from publishing a book about his involvement in organized crime, and she was scheduled to speak at a Freedom Forum conference in London on the topic of “Dying to Tell the Truth: Journalists at Risk.” Two days before she was to speak at the conference, Guerin was shot and killed while stopped at a traffic light by two men on a motorcycle, causing national outrage in Ireland. The investigation into her death identified the killers as members of Gilligan’s drug organization. Labour unions across Ireland called for a moment of silence in her memory, and Taoiseach (Ireland’s head of state) John Bruton attended her funeral. Within a week of her murder, the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) enacted the Proceeds of Crime Act 1996 and the Criminal Assets Bureau Act 1996, so that assets purchased with money obtained through crime could be seized by the government.
- July 5, 1968 – Susan Wojcicki born, Polish-American technology executive; CEO of You Tube since 2014; she was Google’s first marketing manager in 1999, then became Senior VP of Advertising & Commerce. She handled Google’s acquisition of You Tube in 2006, and then became You Tube’s CEO.
- July 5, 1969 – Jenji Kohan born, American television writer and producer; creator of the Showtime series Weeds (2005-2012), and the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black (2013-2019).
- July 5, 1973 – Róisín Murphy born, Irish singer-songwriter and record producer; in the 1990s, she partnered with Mark Brydon in the pop duo Moloko, but went solo in the 2000s – her debut solo album Ruby Blue came out in 2005. Noted as co-writer of the songs “Overpowered,” “Let Me Know,” “Simulation” and “Murphy’s Law.”
- July 5, 1996 – Dolly the Sheep born in Scotland, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.
Dolly the sheep and Ian Wilmut
- July 5, 2000 – President Clinton signs two protocols of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child: one to prevent involvement of children in armed conflict as combatants, and another against the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography.
- July 5, 2018 – The First President of Poland's Supreme Court, Małgorzata Gersdorf, who was appointed in 2014 to a six-year term, showed up for work, defiantly refusing to quit in spite of a controversial new law which effectively purged 27 of the court's 72 judges. "My presence here is not about politics; I am here to defend the rule of law and to testify to the truth about the line between the constitution and the violation of the constitution," Gersdorf, holding white roses at the court building's entrance, said to the protesters gathered out front. Gersdorf and other judges aged 65 or older were being forced to retire under the new law. Previously, the retirement age was 70. The measure had taken full effect the day before, in an ongoing effort by Poland's ruling right-wing Law and Justice party to exert control over the courts. It provoked mass street protests and escalated tensions between Poland's government and the European Union over the rule of law.
- July 5, 2020 – Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said that protesters should "clear out" of an area near the Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks was killed by police in June, after Secoriea Turner, an 8-year-old African-American girl, was fatally shot nearby. "Enough is enough," Bottoms said at a news conference. Secoriea was riding with her mother in a car frovrn by a friend who tried to pull into a parking lot that had been barricaded during protests against racial injustice. A group of armed people confronted the driver and someone opened fire. "We understand the frustration of Rayshard Brooks," the girl's mother, Charmaine Turner, said. "My baby didn't mean no harm." "They say Black lives matter," the girl's father, Secoriya Williamson, said. "You killed your own."
- July 5, 2020 – Remains found the previous week in a shallow grave near Fort Hood in Texas were those of Spc. Vanessa Guillen, age 20, members of her family told The Washington Post. Guillen had been missing since April 22, and investigators believe she was bludgeoned to death near where she was last seen that day. After her disappearance, Guillen's car, wallet, and keys were found on the base, but her cell phone was missing. The discovery of the remains touched off a search for suspects that ended when one of them, Spc. Aaron Robinson, killed himself as officers got close to catching him. Robinson's girlfriend was accused of helping him dispose of the body. Guillen's family said she was sexually harassed, including a superior walking in on her in the shower, and another verbally assaulting Vanessa with vulgar remarks in Spanish, but she told her parents she didn't want to report the sexual harassment out of fear of retaliation. Her family also accused the Army of not making the search for Guillen a high enough priority. "Her leadership failed her," family attorney Natalie Khawam said. "The Army failed her."
- July 5, 2021 – Irish DJ Annie Mac (Annie MacManus) had announced in April, 2021, that she would be leaving BBC Radio One after 17 years. In an interview the Radio Times, Mac said during her career she had welcomed seismic shifts in music and broadcasting, particularly the increased number of women occupying prime time slots. But while she’s delighted with her Future Sounds replacement – BBC broadcaster Clara Amfo, who’ll take over in September – the fact she felt appreciative being replaced by another woman illustrated for her how much there was still to be done for women in the industry. “I feel annoyed being grateful that we have a female breakfast show presenter on Radio 2 or 6 Music,” said Mac, 42. “We shouldn’t be grateful. It should be a given, not an anomaly ... But I’m very encouraged at Radio 1 with the commitment they have to women. Clara getting the show that I’m leaving is the most sensible and inspired choice. It’s great, but there’s still a long way to go.” In 2014 Mac wrote an article for Vice entitled “Stop asking me questions about being a woman,” calling out the heavily gendered questions she was asked in interviews compared with male DJs. She said she was often asked if she was just trying to “support women” by recommending female artists. She responded: “Believe it or not, it is possible to talk about two female artists without being tokenistic. There are countless female artists and female DJs who are quietly achieving all their dreams without using their gender as a tool … ” Mac has long been an outspoken critic of sexism and gender imbalance in the music industry, speaking on issues from the lack of female artists in festival line-ups to the “moral conundrum” of playing misogynistic rap on air. While she will be spending more time on writing, she will continue her successful podcast series, Changes with Annie MacManus.
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- July 6, 1387 – Blanche I born, of the House of Évreux in Navarre, Queen consort (1402-1409) of Sicily (1402-1415), and served as regent during her husband’s absence (1404-1405), then as Queen in her own right (1410-1415) after the death of his successor, during the years of unsettled succession, until Ferdinand I of Aragon was victorious, and Sicily was annexed to Aragon. She then returned to Navarre, and was sworn in as heir to the throne, and given allegiance by the lords. She was Queen regnant of Navarre from the death in 1425 of her father King Charles III until her own death in 1441.
- July 6, 1701 – Lady Mary Tufton, daughter of the 6th Earl of Thanet, a notable philanthropist, was named as his executrix and administrator of the trust he established to provide for charities, including a school for poor children. Her first husband, Anthony Grey, Earl of Harold, choked to death just five years after their marriage in 1718. In 1730, Mary, Countess of Harold, was one of the aristocratic women who signed the ‘Ladies’ Petition for the Establishment of the Foundling Hospital’ to King George II, to establish a safe haven for abandoned babies and children. Her second marriage was to the 1st Earl of Gower in 1736. She provided financial support to other charities, including almshouses in Vauxhall for seven poor widows, which she had repaired and for which she purchased shares to provide them with an ongoing income, as well as a school for poor children in Brighton. One hundred and forty years after her death, these charities were still known as 'the Countess of Gower's Charity'. Mary also provided additional income for clergy livings at several churches in Lancashire and Cumbria, for which she was remembered as "that great friend of poor livings." She lived to the age of 83.
- July 6, 1799 – Louisa Caroline Huggins Tuthill born, American author of books for children and young women, as well as non-fiction. Her husband died in 1825, leaving her a 29-year-old widow with four children, and she began to contribute anonymously to literary periodicals. Her writing first appeared under her own name in 1839, as contributor-editor of a collection entitled The Young Ladies’ Reader, which became very popular, and went through several editions. She followed this success with The Young Ladies Home, a collection of tales and essays to complete a young lady’s education after leaving school, which was also frequently reprinted. Her series of books for books and girls between 1844 and 1850 were even more popular at the time. But her most enduring work has been History of Architecture from the Earliest Times (1848), the first history of architecture to be published in the U.S.
- July 6, 1803 – Sophia Willard Dana Ripley born, Transcendentalist, co-founder with husband George of New Brook Farm; she was an educator who employed child-centered methods of teaching.
- July 6, 1823 – Sophie Adlersparre born, a pioneer of the 19th century Swedish women’s rights movement. She was the founder and editor of the first women’s magazine in Scandinavia, Tidskrift för hemmet (Home Review), 1859-1885; co-founder of Handarbetets vänner (Friends of Handicraft), 1874-1887; was editor-in-chief of the magazine Dagne (1886-1888), and founder of the Fredrika-Bremer-förbundet (Fredrika Bremer Association) in 1884. She also wrote under the pen-name Esselde. Adlersparre one of the first two women to be a member of a state committee in Sweden, when she became a member of the Flickskolekommittén (Girls School Committee) in 1885. She was not much concerned with woman suffrage – Swedish women gained partial suffrage, able to vote in municipal elections, in 1862. She campaigned for women’s access to education and the professions, so that they could be financially independent. She wrote: “Women need work, and work needs women.” In 1862, she began organizing evening classes for women to educate them as professionals, and in 1863, established a secretarial bureau which became a successful employment agency. In 1864, she petitioned the Swedish parliament to allow women to study at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts on equal terms with men. At the time, the Academy only allowed a few women to study there, under a special dispensation. Adlersparre’s petition led to a debate in parliament, and a reform later that year, which allowed women to study at the Academy on the same terms as men. In 1866, she co-founded the Stockholms läsesalong (Stockholm Reading Parlor), a free library for women. She was deeply involved in the successful campaigns for women’s access to university education, through legislation passed between 1870 and 1873, and state support for secondary schools for girls (1874).
- July 6, 1840 – German playwright Christian Friedrich Hebbel makes his reputation by writing his misogynistic play Judith, a reinterpretation of the biblical story to reflect the 19th century view of a “woman’s place,” turning Judith into a vengeful femme fatale who beheads Holofernes because he rapes her after her allure “drives him mad.” Hebbel, born in financially uncertain circumstances, had only been able to attend the University of Hamburg because of the patronage of Amailie Schoppe, a popular writer of the day. In 1846, he broke off his long-time relationship with Elise Lensing, who remained faithful to him for the rest of his life, and married instead the wealthy and beautiful actress Christine Enghaus, claiming, “a man's first duty is to the most powerful force within him, that which alone can give him happiness and be of service to the world." As Shakespeare put it: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,/Thou art not so unkind/As man’s ingratitude ...”
Amailie Schoppe and Christine Enghaus
- July 6, 1845 – Ángela Peralta born, Mexican operatic soprano and composer. After touring in Europe and the United States, she formed her own opera company in Mexico City and acted as the impresario. Although best known for her bel canto singing, Peralta adopted a more dramatic style when she played the lead in her company's first Mexican production of Verdi's Aida, a role closely identified with her. She also composed popular songs. Peralta contracted yellow fever in Mazatlán while on tour, and died at age 38.
- July 6, 1887 – Annette Kellerman born, Australian professional swimmer, one of the first women to wear a one-piece bathing suit, inspiring others to follow her example. As she put it, “I can’t swim wearing more stuff than you hang on a clothesline.”
- July 6, 1899 – Susannah Mushatt Jones born, African American daughter of sharecroppers, who worked in the fields with her family, but graduated in 1923 from the Calhoun Boarding High School, and was accepted to the Tuskegee Institute’s Teacher’s Program, but was unable to pay the tuition, so she moved to New York City instead, where she took care of the children of wealthy families for $7 a week. She helped several members of her family get started when they came to New York after she did. She also set aside some of her earnings to establish the Calhoun Club, a college scholarship fund for African-American students at her old high school. She lived to the age of 116 years, 311 days, becoming the world’s oldest living person, and the last living American born in the 19th century.
- July 6, 1900 – Frederica Sagor Maas born as the youngest daughter of Russian immigrants, American screenwriter, memoirist, and author; became a story editor at Universal Pictures’ New York office in 1918, and was head of the department by 1923. In 1924, she moved to Hollywood, and went to work for MGM writing scripts, usually assigned to work with other writers, but her co-authors often took credit for her work, and her contract was not renewed. After that, she and her husband Ernest Maas sometimes worked together and pitched scripts to Fox and Paramount, with hit-or-miss success. After they lost most of their money in the 1929 stock market crash, they moved back to New York, then back out to Hollywood, but their indifferent success combined with some of their best story ideas suddenly re-appearing with other names as the authors, made them change careers. She became an insurance broker, and he was a story editor and ghost writer until he died in 1986. Urged by film historian Kevin Brownlow, she published her autobiography, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood, at age 99, then lived to be 111.
- July 6, 1907 – Frida Kahlo born, Mexican surrealist painter, best-known for her portraits, especially her self-portraits, but also known for works inspired by artifacts considered emblematic of national and indigenous tradition.
- July 6, 1912 – Molly Yard born in China to Methodist missionaries, American feminist and social activist; after graduating from Swarthmore College, she worked on several Democratic candidates’ political campaigns, including Helen Gahagan Douglas’ run for the U.S. Senate against Richard Nixon, who won by savaging Gahagan Douglas as a commie pinko, and later led the Western Pennsylvania presidential campaigns for John F. Kennedy and George McGovern. She co-founded the liberal lobbying organization Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), joined the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1974, and was on its national staff by 1978, lobbying and fundraising for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) ratification campaign in Washington. She a senior staff member on the NOW Political Action Committee (1978-1984), then NOW’s political director (1985-1987), defeating anti-choice referendums in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Oregon. Yard became NOW president (1987- 1991), and was one of the banner-carriers for the March for Women’s Lives in 1989, which drew 600,000 marchers to Washington. She was honored with the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
- July 6, 1926 – Dorothy E. Smith born, Canadian sociologist, whose work covers women’s studies and feminist theory, family relationships, education and methodology; noted for developing institutional ethnology, a study of the social relations of actual people in everyday life (she described it as a “sociology for, not of the people”), and her contributions to the standpoint theory, the idea that hierarchies create ignorance at the top about social problems which those at the bottom understand from direct experience. Her research questioned the methods and theories of sociology up the 1970s, which she found were based on the male-dominated social structure, and overlooked women and minorities.
- July 6, 1927 – Janet Leigh born as Jeanette Helen Morrison, American actress and author; she had a career in Hollywood which spanned five decades, making her film debut at the age of 20, after doing some radio programs. She is best remembered for her role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, but performed in other notable films, including Little Women (1949 version), Scaramouche, Touch of Evil, and The Manchurian Candidate. She was a life-long Democrat, who appeared at the 1960 Democratic Convention in support of John F. Kennedy, and also served on the board of directors of the Motion Picture and Television Foundation, a medical services provider for actors. Leigh was the author of two novels, House of Destiny, and The Dream Factory; a memoir of her acting years entitled There Really Was a Hollywood; and Psycho: Behind the Scenes of the Classic Thriller. She died at age 77 in 2004, after a battle with vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels.
- July 6, 1929 – Hélène Carrère d’Encausse born, French political historian of Georgian ancestry, specializing in Russian history; elected to seat 14 of the Académie française in 1990, and as the Académie’s Perpetual Secretary in 1999; member of the European Parliament (1994-1999) for the right wing Conservative party RPR. She was awarded the Polish Lomonosov Gold Medal in 2008 and Grand Cross with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2011.
- July 6, 1937 – Bessie Emery Head, writer born in South Africa to a wealthy white South African woman and a black servant when interracial relationships were illegal; her mother’s family claimed their daughter was mentally ill, and sent her away to give birth without the neighbors knowing. After her mother killed herself, she was raised by foster parents and later in a mission orphanage. Qualifying as a teacher, she taught briefly, then became a journalist for The Golden City Post and Drum magazine (1958-1959), joined the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1960, and married Harold Head in 1961. In 1964, she left South Africa with her son, and sought asylum in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (which is now Botswana); she settled in Serowe, where she would set most of her novels and short stories; after 15 years, she became a Botswana citizen. Noted for her novels When Rains Cloud Gather, Maru, and A Question of Power. She died from hepatitis at age 48, just as she was starting to be recognized as a writer.
- July 6, 1942 – Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in the “Secret Annexe” above her father’s office in an Amsterdam warehouse.
- July 6, 1951 – Lorna Golding born; Jamaican businesswoman and National Labour Party member; after completing school at New York Business Institute, she worked at the office of British and Africa Affairs, and the United Kingdom and Supply delegation, a subsidiary of the British Consulate. She later worked for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) and with the Sierra Leone Mission to the United Nations. When her husband, Bruce Golding became Prime Minister of Jamaica, she was First Lady of Jamaica (2007-2011).
- July 6, 1952 – Dame Hilary Mantel born, English author of historical fiction, short stories, and memoirs; she won the Booker Prize twice: in 2009 for her novel Wolf Hall, and in 2012 for Bring Up the Bodies. She is the first woman to receive the Booker Prize twice. Her 1983 short story, “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher: 6 August 1983,” was controversial, and allies of Thatcher called for a police investigation, to which Mantel responded, her fictional murder “bringing in the police for an investigation was beyond anything I could have planned or hoped for, because it immediately exposes them to ridicule.”
- July 6, 1957 – Althea Gibson becomes the first African American woman tennis player to win a Wimbledon title in women’s tennis singles.
- July 6, 1960 – Maria Wasiak born, Polish politician and civil servant; a founding member of the Democratic Union, then headed the regional branch of the Freedom Union party (1995-1997); deputy-voivode of the Radom Voivodeship (governmental administrative division); President of Polskie Koleje Państwowe (PKP – the Polish State Railways – 2011-2012); Minister of Infrastucture and Development of Poland (2014-2015).
- July 6, 1970 – California passes the first U.S. “no fault” divorce law.
- July 6, 1976 – Ioana Dumitriu born in Romania, Romanian-American mathematician and academic; her research work includes the theory of random matrices, numerical analysis, scientific computing, and game theory. She was the first woman to become a Putnam Fellow, for making one of the top five scores at the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, and won the Elizabeth Lowell Putnam Award as the top woman in the contest in three successive years – 1995, 1996, and 1997 – a record she alone held for the next ten years, until it was equaled by Alison Miller. In 2012, she was one of the inaugural Fellows of the American Mathematical Society.
- July 6, 1983 – U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, rules in Arizona Governing Comm. v. Norris that the longer life of women as a group compared with men as a group does not permit insurance companies, as part of employer-sponsored retirement plans, to pay lower monthly annuity benefits to women.
- July 6, 2014 – The California Highway Patrol promised a thorough investigation of the videotaped beating of a 51-year-old black woman by a uniformed officer beside a Los Angeles freeway. A CHP spokesman said the officer was trying to restrain the woman after she reportedly walked onto Interstate 10, posing a danger to herself and to motorists. Family members said Marlene Pinnock suffered multiple injuries and that her civil rights were violated in the incident, which was captured on cell phone video by a passing driver. The video shows Pinnock struggling to get up as the officer punches her repeatedly in the face until an off-duty officer arrives and helps him handcuff her. The officer involved was temporarily placed on leave. Her family announced plans to sue. According to a District Attorney’s Office charge-evaluation worksheet, prosecutors decided there was “insufficient evidence” to prove that the officer used unreasonable force, and the office declined to file charges. The officer resigned from the department when the CHP reached a $1.5 million settlement with Marlene Pinnock. Pinnock’s attorney, Caree Harper, said that District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s decision not to file charges was “a cowardly, disgusting decision by a district attorney who has shown no regard for a community of people who have been beaten by bad officers,” Harper told City News Service. “She should be removed ASAP, and an independent counsel should be appointed to investigate whenever there is a police beating of a citizen.”
Video of the beating — Attorney Caree Harper with her client Marlene Pinnock
- July 6, 2020 – Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced that she had tested positive for the coronavirus. "COVID-19 has literally hit home," she posted on Twitter. "I have had NO symptoms and have tested positive." On July 5, Bottoms hosted a news conference in a room with police, three Atlanta City Council members, reporters, and the parents of 8-year-old shooting victim Secoriea Turner. Bottoms wore a mask during the event, but removed it during her remarks on the shooting. Bottoms said she had been diligent about wearing masks and washing her hands, and that she had "no idea when and where" her family was exposed.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms
- July 6, 2020 – Publisher Simon & Schuster announced it would release Mary Trump’s tell-all book about her uncle two weeks ahead of schedule due to “extraordinary interest in this book."Donald Trump's younger brother, Robert, tried but failed to block the book's publication. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man portrays Donald Trump as a "damaged man" who "threatens the world's health, economic security, and social fabric," Simon & Schuster said on its website. The book became the No. 1 best-seller on Amazon.
- July 6, 2021 – Dr. Meena Seshamani was named by the Biden administration as Director of the Center for Medicare, which oversees health benefits for tens of millions of seniors, people with disabilities, and dialysis patients. She has been vice president of clinical care transformation at MedStar Health, a not-for-profit healthcare system, and was director of the Office of Health Reform at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Seshamani is an M.D. and holds a Ph.D. in health economics.
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- July 7, 1456 – Joan d’Arc is retried, and acquitted of heresy – 25 years after she died when she was burned at the stake in 1431.
- July 7, 1528 – Anna of Austria born, member of the Imperial House of Habsburg; she became Duchess consort of Bavaria after her husband became Albert V, Duke of Bavaria in 1550. A notable patron of both painters and musicians, she helped to found several museums in Munich, and with her husband laid the foundations of the Bavarian State Library, founded in 1558, which is now considered one of the best research libraries in the world. Anna also made extensive donations to the Catholic abbey of Vadstena in Sweden, as well as generously supporting the Franciscan Order. She gave birth to seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood. She died in 1590 at age 62.
Anna of Austria, Duchess of Bavaria — by Jakob Seisenegger
- July 7, 1831 – Jane Elizabeth Conklin born, American poet, religious writer, and elocutionist; an early president of the Women’s Relief Corps of the Grand Army of the Republic, a women’s auxiliary group that sought to perpetuate the memory of the service of the Grand Army of the Republic during the American Civil War, and to honor the fallen of the GAR.
- July 7, 1851 – Lillien J. Martin born, American psychologist, author of over 12 books, including Salvaging Old Age, and Sweeping the Cobwebs; graduated from Vassar in 1880; refused admission to the University of Bonn because of her gender, she studied at the University of Göttingen (1894-1898). Martin taught psychology at Stanford University (1899-1916). In 1913, the University of Bonn awarded her an honorary doctorate. After she left Stanford, Martin became a consulting psychologist and psychopathologist in San Francisco, and headed the world’s first mental health clinic specifically for elderly people and non-handicapped children. She was president of the California Society for Mental Hygiene.
- July 7, 1852 – Vera Nikolayevna Figner born, Russian revolutionary, doctor’s assistant; participant in assassination plot against Alexander II, tried and sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted to Siberian penal servitude; wrote Memories of a Revolutionist.
- July 7, 1861 – Nettie Stevens born, early American geneticist; described the XY chromosome system in 1905, correcting and adding to the findings of Edmund Beecher Wilson, showing the significance of Y chromosomes in sex determination. After he made further experiments which confirmed her results, Wilson updated and reissued his earlier 1905 paper, with the new information, and acknowledging her discoveries, but many textbooks only credited Wilson and Thomas Hunt Morgan (her graduate course instructor, who won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to chromosome research) with her discoveries. Wilson and Morgan were invited to speak at a conference to present their theories in 1906, but Stevens was not asked. She published about 40 papers before she died of breast cancer at age 50 in 1912. Thomas Hunt Morgan wrote an extensive obituary for the journal Science, “Her single-mindedness and devotion, combined with keen powers of observation; her thoughtfulness and patience, united to a well-balanced judgment, account, in part, for her remarkable accomplishment.”
- July 7, 1865 – Mary Surratt, a co-conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln is hanged, the first woman to be executed under U.S. law.
- July 7, 1867 – Charlotte Anita Whitney born, American social worker, Communist Labor Party organizer, pacifist and suffragist; defendant in the 1920 Criminal Syndicalism trial, Whitney v. California, charged with being a member of an organization that was illegal under California law because of its association with the international Communist movement – noted for a landmark U.S. Supreme Court concurring opinion by Justice Louis Brandeis that only a "clear and present danger" would be sufficient for the legislative restriction of the right of free speech: “Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that, in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end, and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies, and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones.” Whitney’s conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court, but the Governor of California later pardoned her, and the Court explicitly overruled Whitney v. California in the Brandenburg v. Ohio ruling in 1969.
- July 7, 1869 – Rachel Caroline Eaton born in Flint Creek, Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma, one of the first Native American women to earn a PhD, after attending tribal schools and Cherokee Female Seminary. She went to Drury College in Missouri, then earned her PhD at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation, “John Ross and the Cherokee Indians,” was published in 1921, as a Cherokee history book. She taught in Cherokee Nation public schools, and at Lake Erie College in Ohio, and the Industrial Institute and College in Mississippi. Eaton was Dean of Women at Trinity University in Texas, and served as Superintendent of Public Instruction of Rogers County Oklahoma (1920-1922). She died in 1938 after a battle with breast cancer at age 69.
- July 7, 1889 – Constance Nothard born, South African nursing sister who served with distinction in the South African Military Service during WWI, and was awarded the Croix de Recompense for her service in France. In 1961, Nothard received the first Gold Medal of the South African Nursing Association in recognition of distinguished and exceptional service in times of war and peace, and was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal by the International Red Cross. The Library at the South African Nursing Association headquarters in Pretoria is named the C.A. Nothard Library.
- July 7, 1904 – Simone “Simca” Beck born, French cooking instructor and cookbook author who collaborated with Julia Child on Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
- July 7, 1905 – Marie-Louise Dubreil-Jacotin born, French mathematician; the first woman to become a full professor of mathematics in France; expert in fluid dynamics and abstract algebra; author of textbooks on lattice theory and abstract algebra, and a history, Portraits of women mathematicians.
- July 7, 1908 – Harriette Simpson Arnow born, writer and educator, The Dollmaker, writer with Federal Writer’s Project of the WPA (1934-1939).
- July 7, 1910 – Doris McCarthy born, Canadian painter of landscapes and Arctic icebergs.
‘Antarctica from the Heights’ (1991) — by Doris McCarthy
- July 7, 1915 – Margaret Walker born, African American novelist and poet, part of the Chicago Black Renaissance; noted for her poem For My People, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, making her the first black woman to win a U.S. national literary prize, and for her novel Jubilee.
- July 7, 1924 – Natalia Bekhtereva born, Russian neuroscientist and psychologist; founding director of the Institute for Human Brain, a branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, did studies measuring the impulse activity of human neurons.
- July 7, 1929 – Helen Rodríguez Trías born, pediatrician, educator, Puerto Rican nationalist, and women’s rights activist; joined the student faction of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party at the University of Puerto Rico (BA 1957, Medical Degree 1960). During her residency at University Hospital in San Juan, she established the first newborn care center in Puerto Rico – the death rate for newborns decreased 50% within the first three years. She was the first Hispanic president of the American Public Health Association. In the mid-1960s, when 65% of sterilization procedures in U.S. hospitals were performed on women of color, who were less than 7% of the overall population, she co-founded the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse (CESA), which became the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA). Rodríguez Trías was a founding member of the Women’s Caucus of the American Public Health Association, and a recipient of the Presidential Citizen’s Medal. Her work helped expand the range of public health services for women and children in minority and low-income populations around the world.
- July 7, 1942 – Heinrich Himmler, in a private meeting with Richard Glücks, SS chief of Concentration Camps Inspectorate, and Gynecologist Karl Clauberg, outlines a program of experimentation on Jewish women prisoners at Auschwitz to sterilize them with massive radiation or direct uterine injections.
Jewish women prisoners at Auschwitz
- July 7, 1943 – Sharon Lane born, American nurse who was the only U.S. woman killed by hostile fire during the Vietnam War.
- July 7, 1944 – Glenys Kinnock born, Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead, British teacher, Labour politician and human rights advocate; Lord Temporal Member of the House of Lords since 2009; Minister of State for Africa and the United Nations (2009-2010); Minister of State for Europe (2009); Member of the European Parliament for Wales (1999-2009); Member of the European Parliament for South Wales East (1994-1999). Patron and/or board member of a number of charitable organizations, including Womankind Worldwide, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Freedom from Torture, and Snap Cymru, a Welsh children’s charity. Kinnock is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
- July 7, 1945 – Adele Goldberg born, American computer scientist, a member of the team that developed the programming language Smalltalk-80; she was also a developer of various object-oriented programming concepts and graphically-based user interfaces; president of the Association for Computing Machinery (1984-1986), and co-recipient of the 1987 ACM Software Systems Award.
- July 7, 1948 – Kay Langdon, Wilma Marchal, Edna Young, Frances Devaney, Doris Robertson, and Ruth Flora became first six enlisted women sworn into regular U.S. Navy, after the signing of the Women’s Armed Services Integration Act in June. Prior the act, U.S. women could only serve in the armed forces during times of war.
- July 7, 1949 – Shelley Duvall born, American actress, writer, and producer; noted for producing and starring in Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre (1982-1987); supporter of animal welfare.
- July 7, 1958 – Michala Petri born, Danish recorder virtuoso; she began playing the recorder at age three, and made her debut as a soloist in 1969. In 2000, she was the recipient of the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark’s highest musical honor.
- July 7, 1965 – Mo Collins born as Maureen Collins, American comedian; noted for her work on Mad TV (1998-2004), and her work as a voice actress. She was diagnosed in 2011 with gastrointestinal stromal tumor, a rare form of cancer, and is currently in remission. She relates her story to raise awareness of the disease.
- July 7, 1965 – Carly Phillips born as Karen Drogin, American novelist; a former attorney who was unhappy practicing law. Noted for the Simply series, and the Costas Sisters series.
- July 7, 1972 – Susan Lynn Roley and Joanne E. Pierce, the first two women FBI special agents, are sworn in. (The first woman agent was Emma Hotchkiss Jentzer, hired by the FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation, in 1911.) J. Edgar Hoover became director of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924, and initiated a policy of not hiring women, firing the women who already working as agents. He went on to be the first and longest-serving director of the FBI (1935-1972).
- July 7, 1976 – The first women cadets are enrolled at West Point.
- July 7, 1980 – Sharia Law is instituted in Iran; women judges were removed first, but by early 1982, the entire pre-Revolutionary judiciary had been purged, their duties replaced by “Revolutionary Tribunals” set up in every town, but overseen by inexperienced and often incompetent judges, with no appeals. In 1982, a more regular court system was reinstated, but with male judges trained in Islamic law, and Revolutionary Tribunals handling cases of “national security” and “anti-revolutionary” crimes. In 1978, 22 women were members of Iran’s parliament and 333 women had been elected to local councils, but all women were purged from government positions, and advances in women’s rights in divorce and child custody were scraped. The marriage age for girls was reduced from 18 to puberty, which is age 9 under Islamic law. In 1981, parliament approved the Islamic Law of Retribution, legalizing flogging, stoning, and payment of blood money for crimes ranging from adultery to violation of Islamic dress codes. As of 2021, the legal age for marriage of girls is 13, but fathers could obtain judicial permission for daughters to be married at a younger age.
- July 7, 1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor nominated to be first woman on U.S. Supreme Court.
- July 7, 1983 – Samantha Smith, 11-year-old American, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov after she writes a letter to him. She travels as a Goodwill Ambassador making a plea for peace. In 1985, she died in a plane crash.
- July 7, 1986 – Anahit “Ana” Kasparian born, American political pundit, university lecturer and author; Raw Story columnist; best known for co-hosting and producing the online news show The Young Turks, and as a host on The Point at the TYT Network; outspoken critic of private and for-profit prisons; advocate for campaign finance reform, affordable housing, public education, and free speech.
- July 7, 1992 – New York Court of Appeals overturns a conviction of two women for exposing their breasts in public; the court rules women have the same right as men to go topless in public.
- July 7, 2015 – A study by the Women Donors Network, a networking group for women’s advocacy fundraisers, found that 95% of state and local prosecutors are white, and 79% of them are men. "They have to see someone that looks like them," the president of the National Black Prosecutors Association, Melba V. Pearson, referring to the long-held mistrust by minority groups of the legal system: "When you walk into a courtroom and no one looks like you, do you think you are going to get a fair shake?"
- July 7, 2019 – Vera Baird, QC, the UK’s new Victims’ Commissioner, says the Crown Prosecution Service and police are requesting far too much – and often irrelevant – personal information in controversial “digital consent forms” that they give to those who report rapes. Complainants are not being “unreasonable” if they resist intrusive demands that breach their privacy, the former Labour MP and solicitor general said. The police have threatened to drop investigations if complainants do not cooperate with such requests. The criminal justice system is struggling to cope with the volume of evidence generated by mobile phones and digital technology. There has been a 173% rise since 2015 in the number of rapes reported to police in England and Wales, yet the number of cases going to court has fallen by 44%. Baird said: “Practice both before and since this form was published has been to demand this material and abandon cases if there is hesitation. This is so even where the allegation is that the complainant was raped by a stranger and there will be no relevant material.” She said that investigators asked for access to school notes, mental health reports or counselling records, and the CPS will often come back to the police after receiving a file and say they “want all the digital download.” In one case, a young woman was accused of being a liar during a sexual exploitation trial because lawyers had found a letter she wrote when she was a pupil in which she forged her mother’s signature to get a day off school. There has been a rapid increase in what police call an “outcome 16” – where a suspect is identified but the victim does not support further action – which also worries Baird. Any inquiry is an “interactive process”, she said, and it can be easy for police to discourage complainants. Of her new role as victims’ commissioner, Baird said: “It’s totally under-resourced. It’s very challenging. I’m very committed to making things better.” Her office in central London has only five and a half full-time equivalent members of staff. She wants to raise the public profile of her office. “We will be asking the government for more powers so that we can report to parliament rather than the Ministry of Justice,” she said. “If we report to the MoJ and they ask how the Victims’ Code is working, they are marking their own homework.”
- July 7, 2020 – In the UK, a government-ordered inquiry found that an arrogant culture in which serious medical complications were dismissed as “women’s problems” contributed to a string of healthcare scandals over several decades. The Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review was ordered by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt in 2018, amid concerns about vaginal mesh operations. The implants were marketed as a less invasive treatment for urinary incontinence and prolapse – conditions that are commonly linked to childbirth – but an article in the Guardian newspaper revealed that many women were left with traumatic complications following the surgery. The review also focused on Primodos, a hormone pregnancy test taken by women between the 1950s and 1978, associated with damage to children born to mothers who took it, and sodium valproate, a treatment for epilepsy known to cause harm to babies if taken during pregnancy. A damning picture emerged of a medical establishment that failed to acknowledge problems even in the face of mounting safety concerns, leading to avoidable harm to patients. Instead, women routinely had symptoms attributed to psychological issues or it being “that time of life”, with “anything and everything women suffer perceived as a natural precursor to, part of, or a post-symptomatic phase of, the menopause”, the inquiry heard. “For the women concerned, this was tantamount to a complete denial of their concerns and being written off by a system that was supposed to care,” the review, chaired by Baroness Julia Cumberlege, concluded. “Much of this suffering was entirely avoidable, caused and compounded by failings in the health system itself,” she said. “We couldn’t believe that people had gone through so much agony and suffering and had been ignored. We did believe them.” She added, “As women, we know when things are not right with our bodies. We are the first to know. When that information is ignored, it is simply belittling and adds to the suffering.” A common theme was the systemic failure to collect data on patient outcomes. The inquiry could not establish rates of mesh complications or how many women had taken sodium valproate while pregnant. The report made wide-ranging recommendations, including the appointment of an independent patient safety commissioner, an overhaul of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the expansion of the General Medical Council register to include a list of financial interests for all doctors. It also recommended the establishment of a central medical device database and a registry of all women of child-bearing age who are taking sodium valproate. A recent survey by the Epilepsy Society found that one in 10 women currently taking the drug remain unaware of the risk of birth defects. The report stops short of recommending a ban on the use of pelvic mesh, but says that such surgery should take place within specialist centres, and only in rare circumstances, after other conservative treatments have been tried. Kath Sansom, who founded the Sling the Mesh campaign in 2015, welcomed the recommendations, saying: “The report is hard-hitting, harrowing and recognises the total failure in patient safety, regulation and oversight in the UK. It also makes it very clear that our medical establishment is deeply entrenched in institutional denial and misogyny.”
- July 7, 2021 – An interim report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) warned that women and girls are being subjected to an “epidemic of violence” that requires a “radical and bold” shift in how authorities in England and Wales tackle crimes that disproportionately affect female victims. Among shocking statistics highlighted in the report are the Crime Survey for England and Wales estimate of 1.6 million women experiencing domestic abuse in the 12 months to March 2020, as well as the 153,136 rape and other sexual offences recorded by police, in which the victim was female in 84% of cases. “Offending against women and girls is deep-rooted and pervasive in our society. Urgent action is needed to uproot and address this and police cannot solve this alone. There must be a seamless approach to preventing and tackling violence against women and girls across the whole system, including education, local authorities, health, social care and those from across the criminal justice system – with all agencies working together.” Among the inspectorate’s recommendations was a call for an “immediate and unequivocal commitment” that the response to violence against women and girls is an “absolute priority” for government, policing, the criminal justice system, and public sector partnerships – backed up by funding.
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- July 8, 1593 – Artemisia Gentileschi born, Italian painter, one of the most accomplished painters of her generation, noted for painting strong or suffering women from myth; the first woman member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.
‘Judith’ and ‘Self-Portrait’ — by Artemisia Gentileschi
- July 8, 1821 – Maria White Lowell born, American poet and abolitionist, advocate for temperance and women’s rights. She was taught under a strict ascetic discipline at an Ursuline convent, until it was burned down during the Ursuline Convent Riots in 1834 during a wave of anti-Catholicism in New England. In 1839, she attended the first “conversation” organized by women’s rights activist Margaret Fuller, the same year her brother introduced her to his Harvard classmate, James Russell Lowell. They became engaged in 1840, but her father insisted that Lowell be gainfully employed before they were married. She and her mother spent the winter of 1843-1844 in Philadelphia, hoping its milder winter would help heal her lungs, already in the early stages of tuberculosis. She first met Quakers there, and her growing friendship with members of the congregation led to her more active opposition to slavery. After her marriage to Lowell in 1844, she joined the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, and persuaded her husband to use his writing to further the anti-slavery cause. They moved to Philadelphia, where he worked as an editor on Pennsylvania’s Freeman, an antislavery weekly, but moved back to Massachusetts in 1845. Of her four children, born between 1845 and 1850, only her fourth child Mabel survived to adulthood, the others dying as infants. Maria White Lowell died in 1853, at the age of 32. Her husband privately printed her poems two years after her death.
- July 8, 1844 – Mary Bailey Lincoln born, American pioneer in domestic science, author of cookbooks, including Mrs. Lincoln’s Boston Cook Book: What to Do and What Not to Do in Cooking.
- July 8, 1862 – Ella Reeve “Mother” Bloor born, American labor organizer, communist, and a major figure in the socialist feminist movement. Bloor worked as a trade union organizer and helped during industrial disputes in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, Ohio, and New York. She organized strikes across a wide range of industries including miners, hatters, steelworkers, and needle-workers. In 1905, Bloor helped Upton Sinclair gather information on the Chicago stock yards. Her investigative reporting, under the pen-name Mr. Richard Bloor, eventually appeared in Sinclair’s best-selling book, The Jungle.
- July 8, 1867 – Käthe Kollwitz born, German painter, printmaker, and sculptor; she often depicted the tragedy of war, poverty, and hunger.
- July 8, 1899 – Audrey Richards born, English social anthropologist, and field researcher who studied East African peoples, especially the Bemba, in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Uganda, and the Transvaal in South Africa. Richards’ detailed studies included social psychology, food and nutrition, agriculture, land use, economic organization, and how long ordinary tasks took to complete, from fence-building to food gathering and preparation, and the length of work days in different seasons.
- July 8, 1902 – Gwendolyn Bennett born, Harlem Renaissance author and artist, she wrote “The Ebony Flute” column for journal Opportunity; co-founder of Fire!! a literary journal.
- July 8, 1911 – “Two Gun” Nan Aspinwall, rodeo cowgirl, arrives in New York City with her horse Lady Ellen, after riding across the U.S. on horseback, departing from San Francisco CA on September 1, 1910.
- July 8, 1916 – Jean Rouverol born, American author, actress, and screenwriter; blacklisted by Hollywood in the 1950s. She played supporting roles in Hollywood movies in the 1930s, then after her marriage to screenwriter Hugo Butler and the birth of her children, she acted in radio series like One Man’s Family in the 1940s. While her husband was serving overseas during WWII, she wrote her first novella, which she sold to McCall’s magazine in 1945. In 1950, her first screenplay was made into a film, but in 1951, she and her husband were subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee because they had been members of the Communist Party in the early 1940s. The Rouverols took their four children and went into self-exile in Mexico rather than face a prison sentence. They would not return to the U.S. until 1964, but they co-authored screenplays, sold under names of friends from the Writers Guild of America, and she continued to write short stories and articles for magazines under pen names. After their return to California, she wrote a book on Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her husband died in 1968, and she wrote three more books, as well as writing scripts for soap operas like Guiding Light, Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns. At age 84 in 2000, she published Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years. Rouverol lived to be 100 years old.
- July 8, 1918 – Julia Pirie born, British spy for MI5, who infiltrated the Communist Party in the 1950s, initially as a typist, but worked her way into the inner circles, working directly for the party undersecretary John Gollan. She was never found out, and retired from the party in 1978, with a pension which the Party paid until her death in 2008; her next assignment for MI5 was to collect information on the activities of the Provisional IRA, often posing as a tourist. She finally left active operations in the 1990s, but lectured to groups of MI5 and police trainees.
Thames House, home of MI-5, and MI-5 logo
- July 8, 1926 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross born in Switzerland, Swiss-American psychiatrist, author, and leading authority on the psychology of dying. She developed the theory of the five mental-emotional stages of terminal illness and grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Best known as the author of On Death and Dying. Kübler-Ross was inducted into the American National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2007.
- July 8, 1929 – Shirley Ann Grau born, American author; 1965 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Keepers of the House.
- July 8, 1934 – Raquel Correa born, Chilean journalist, mostly worked for newspaper El Mercurio de Santiago, awarded Chile’s National Journalism Award in 1991.
- July 8, 1945 – Micheline Calmy-Rey born, Swiss Social Democratic politician; President of Switzerland (2007 and 2011); Vice President of Switzerland (2006 and 2010); Minister of Foreign Affairs and Member of the Swiss Federal Council (2003-2011).
- July 8, 1947 – Jenny Diski born, English writer; regular contributor to the London Review of Books, and won the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America With Interruptions. Noted for her memoirs, Skating to Antarctica in 1997, and In Gratitude, written about her mentor Doris Lessing, and other literary figures who had inspired her, which was published in 2016, just before her death from cancer.
- July 8, 1948 – The U.S. Air Force recruits the first women into its W.A.F. program, and the U.S. Navy accepts its first peace-time female recruits after the Women’s Armed Service Integration Act allows women to serve when the nation is not at war. Vietta M. Bates becomes first enlisted woman sworn into the regular U.S. Army, and Esther Blake is the first woman to enlist in the regular U.S. Air Force.
- July 8, 1948 – Ruby Sales born, African American social activist; at age 17, she participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, she was part of the voter registration drive, and was arrested with others for picketing a whites-only store that was ignoring the Civil Rights Act of 1964; after her release, she went with friends to buy sodas at a nearby store, where she was confronted by a special county deputy with a shot gun. Fellow marcher and activist Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopalian studying for the priesthood, pushed her out of the way, and was shot to death in her place. Sales was so traumatized by his murder she could barely speak for seven months, but in spite of death threats made against her and her family, she testified at the trial. The deputy was acquitted by an all-white-male jury, resulting in legal challenges and a reform of jury selection procedures. She went on to the same divinity school that Jonathan Daniels had attended, then worked as a human rights advocate in Washington DC. Sales founded the SpiritHouse Project, a non-profit inner-city mission dedicated to Daniels’ memory.
- July 8, 1951 – Anjelica Huston born, American actress, director, producer, and author; won the 1985 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Prizzi’s Honor, and made her directorial debut with the 1996 film Bastard out of Carolina, then directed and starred in Agnes Browne in 1999. She has published two memoirs: A Story Lately Told and Watch Me. Huston led a 2007 letter campaign for U.S. Campaign for Burma and Human Rights Center, and recorded a public service announcement for PETA urging her Hollywood colleagues not to use great apes in television, movies, or advertisements.
- July 8, 1952 – Marianne Williamson born, teacher, author and lecturer on the intersection between spirituality and politics; founder of Project Angel Food, a meals-on wheels program serving homebound people with AIDS; a co-founder of the Peace Alliance, the grassroots campaign supporting legislation to establish a U.S Department of Peace; and member of the Board of RESULTS, a non-profit working to end poverty; author of several books, including A Woman’s Worth, and Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment. Williamson ran as a candidate for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination.
- July 8, 1958 – Tzipi Livni born, Israeli politician, diplomat, and lawyer; represented five different factions during her time (1999-2019) in the Knesset (Israeli legislature). She also served in 8 different cabinet positions, including Foreign Minister (2006-2009), a record for the most government roles held by an Israeli woman. She is known for her efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is a leading voice for the two-state solution.
- July 8, 1976 – Dame Ellen MacArthur born, English solo long distance sailor; broke the work record for fastest solo circumnavigation of the globe in 2005; retired from professional sailing in 2010, and launched the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a non-profit working on creating a circular economy, to minimize waste and increase recycling, repair and repurposing, creating a sustainable economy with the least impact on the environment.
- July 8, 1981 – U.S. Senate confirms Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman justice on the Supreme Court; the vote is 99-0.
- July 8, 1982 – Sophia Bush born, American actress and activist, fundraising for Fuck Cancer, Run for the Gulf, and Global Green Gulf Relief; campaigned for Barak Obama and other Democrats in Texas during the 2008 election; supporter of gay rights, women’s rights, and protecting the environment; one of the performers who told stories about the people who were killed in the Orlando Pulse massacre in a 2016 Human Rights Campaign memorial video.
- July 8, 2018 – The delegates to the World Health Assembly, the annual gathering of the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, had expected a resolution to promote breastfeeding to pass easily. But then, the U.S. delegation tried to water down the resolution, siding with the $70 billion infant formula industry despite decades of research showing breast milk is the healthiest food for infants. When the cajoling failed, the State Department allegedly threatened Ecuador, which had planned to introduce the resolution, with trade measures and the withholding of military aid. Ecuador backed down. Russia then stepped in to introduce the resolution, and the U.S. did not pressure Moscow. "WHO recommends breastmilk as the best source of nourishment for infants and young children. Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months is one of the most effective ways to ensure child health and survival," WHO spokesman Tarik Jašarević said.
- July 8, 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges following his arrest by Federal agents. Epstein, a convicted sex offender, was arrested at a New Jersey airport, and his Manhattan home was raided an hour later. Epstein was charged with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy, as prosecutors alleged he sexually exploited dozens of girls between the ages of 13 and 16 in his Upper East Side and Palm Beach homes. Prosecutors also said the FBI discovered "nude photographs of what appeared to be underage girls" at Epstein's home. Epstein, 66, served 13 months in a Florida jail under a heavily criticized 2008 plea deal signed by Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, then U.S. attorney in Miami. On August 10, 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his Metropolitan Correctional Center jail cell, where he was awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges, and taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The official cause of death was suicide by hanging, but that is contested by his former lawyers.
- July 8, 2020 – The U.S. Supreme court ruled 7-2 to uphold a Trump administration rule that will allow employers to opt out of providing no-cost birth control for their employees if they cite moral or religious objections. The Affordable Care Act mandated employers and insurers provide contraceptives as part of their coverage, but exempted houses of worship. The Trump administration broadened the exception in 2017 to cover all employers with religious or moral objections, but lower courts had blocked the changes. Only Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the ruling to let the policy stand. Ginsburg noted that 70,000 to 126,000 women would lose free access to birth control because of the ruling. A previous Supreme Court decision in the 2014 Hobby Lobby case allowed family-owned companies to opt out of providing birth control for moral or religious reasons. Liberal groups and Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, decried the decision, which she called a “fundamental misreading” of the health care law. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the decision would make it “easier for the Trump-Pence Administration to continue to strip health care from women.”
- July 8, 2021 – From the end of July, women in the UK will be able to buy two brands of progesterone-only contraceptive “mini pills” without a prescription for under £7.50 ($9.20 USD) a month after a brief consultation with a pharmacist, making them much more accessible. The pills contain desogestrel, a synthetic progesterone that inhibits ovulation and prevents fertilisation by thickening the cervical mucus and thinning the uterus lining. Doctors called on the government to make the pills free in community pharmacies, since they are available free of charge with a doctor’s prescription, and to make a wider range of brands available.The two pills, Lovima and Hana, are considered safe for most women to take. Combined oestrogen and progesterone pills, which still require a prescription, carry risks to women smokers who are over 35, that are considered to potentially outweigh the benefits.
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The Three Sexes of Pleodorina starrii Algae
The Pleodorina starrii algae is dived into male, female, and a third sex dubbed bisexual in reference because it can produce both male and female sex cells in a single genotype and exists due to normal expression of the species’ genes. These algae are 32- or 64-celled organisms and have small mobile (male) and large immobile (female) sex cells.
Evolutionarily ancient living things have sex cells that are similar in appearance and known as plus or minus, rather than male or female. More recently evolved species usually have dramatic differences between the sex cells, like the large egg and small spermatozoa of humans.
In the lab, researchers can watch green Pleodorina starrii cells grow in spherical colonies with other individuals of their sex. Male colonies are recognizable by the clear packets of sperm they release into the water. The sperm packets swim until they hit a female colony, then split up into individual sperm cells that enter individual female cells and combine to produce a new generation.
Cells in genetically bisexual Pleodorina starrii possess both male and bisexual-factor genes, but they can produce normal male or female colonies when they reproduce sexually with other Pleodorina starrii colonies.
