“Lawmakers, either
get out of the vagina business
or go to medical school.”
– Wendy Davis, Texas State Senator
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WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from August 17 through August 24.
The next installment of WOW2 will be on August 20, 2022.
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“I never said it would be easy,
I only said it would be worth it.”
― Mae West
“Heterosexuality is not normal,
it's just common.”
– Dorothy Parker
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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 soon, 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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- August 17, 1801 – Fredrika Bremer born, Swedish writer and feminist reformer. In the 1840s and 1850s, her Sketches of Everyday Life were extremely popular in Britain and the U.S., where she was hailed as the “Swedish Jane Austen” and greatly increased the popularity of the realist novel in Sweden. Her work as a reformer began because she found the role of a debutante in Stockholm’s upper-class society intolerably stultifying, and started doing charity work, including volunteering at a hospital. She sought a publisher for her writing as a means to earn funds for her charity projects. Her four-volume Sketches of Everyday Life, originally published as an anonymous serial from 1828 to 1831, became an immediate success. Under the terms of Sweden’s 1734 civil code, all unmarried women were minors under the guardianship of their closest male relative until they married and became wards of their husbands; only widowed and divorced women were of legal majority. Under this law, her elder brother had complete control over her finances, even though he had squandered the family fortune during the ten years after their father’s death. The sole recourse of unmarried women was an appeal to the King to become emancipated. In her late 30s, she successfully petitioned King Charles XIV for emancipation from her brother’s wardship. In her 50s, she wrote the novel Hertha, a story which was an example of the injustice of this system, and included an appendix recounting recent court cases related to the legal status of adult Swedish women. It launched a social movement which ultimately won all Swedish women automatic legal majority at age 25. It also inspired Sophie Adlersparre to begin publishing the Home Review, Sweden’s first women’s magazine. In 1842, Bremer published Morning Watches, the first work she published under her own name. She founded the Stockholm Women’s Society for Children’s Care to help the orphans left by a cholera outbreak in 1853. She also founded the Women’s Society for the Betterment of Prisoners, to provide female inmates with moral guidance and rehabilitation. She died in 1865 at the age of 64. In 1884, the Fredrika Bremer Association was founded, first women’s rights organization in Sweden.
- August 17, 1837 – Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837-1914) American essayist, diarist, teacher, and poet, born in Philadelphia, into a prominent African American abolitionist family. She was educated at the Higginson Grammar School, a private academy for young women, the only non-white student in a class of 200. Known for its emphasis on critical thinking, the school had classes in history, geography, drawing and cartography. After Higginson, Forten studied literature and teaching at the Salem Normal School, which trained teachers. Like most of the rest of her family, she was active in the anti-slavery movement, helping to build coalitions and raise funds. She arranged for lectures by well-known writers and speakers, and sometimes spoke herself. She kept journals from an early age, and began writing poetry during her recovery from tuberculosis in 1858. During the American Civil War, Forten was the first black teacher to join the mission to the South Carolina Sea Islands known as the Port Royal Experiment. The Union allowed Northerners to set up schools to begin teaching freedmen who remained on the islands, which had been devoted to large plantations for cotton and rice. She became friends with Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the all-black 54th Massachusetts Regiment, and after Shaw and many of the men were killed storming Fort Wagner in 1863, she volunteered to nurse the wounded survivors. After the war, she worked in Washington DC, recruiting teachers, and then as a clerk in the Treasury Department. At age 41, she married Presbyterian minister Francis Grimké, a mixed-race nephew of Southern abolitionists Sarah and Angelina Grimké. She was an organizer of many of the congregation’s charitable and educational efforts. Her diaries were published as The Journal of Charlotte Forten.
- August 17, 1838 – Laura de Force Gordon born, American lawyer, editor, and women’s rights activist. In February 1868, she gave the first speech in California advocating for woman suffrage, "The Elective Franchise: Who Shall Vote.” In 1870, she was one of the founders of the California Woman’s Suffrage Society, making speeches in both California and Nevada for suffrage. She became the editor and manager of the Stockton Daily Leader in 1873, the first woman to run a daily newspaper in California. She and Clara Shortridge Foltz were the leaders of the campaign for the Woman Lawyer’s Bill, which passed in 1878, so women could practice law in California. Foltz was the first woman admitted to the bar in California, and Gordon was the second one. Gordon was elected president of the California State Suffrage Association (1884–1894), and was a paid speaker on behalf of the movement in the 1888 presidential election. In 1892, she spoke at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Gordon retired from the legal profession in 1901 to a farm. She died from pneumonia at age 68 in 1907.
- August 17, 1858 – Caroline Bartlett Crane born, American suffragist, educator, journalist, reformer, and Unitarian minister. In 1889 Bartlett became pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Kalamazoo, and led the church in starting the first free public kindergarten, a school of manual training and domestic science, a gymnasium for women, a day nursery, a cafeteria, and the Frederick Douglass Club for the “young colored people of the city.” The church continued to expand until it outgrew its building. In 1894, the church moved into a new building, renamed “People’s Church.” She was also known for public health and sanitation reforms, inspected and wrote sanitary surveys for over 60 cities, campaigned for meat inspection ordinances, and succeeded: before 1900, Michigan had the highest standards in the nation.
- August 17, 1863 – Geneva Stratton-Porter born, American author writing as ‘Gene’ Stratton-Porter; columnist, naturalist, wildlife photographer, and best-selling author during her lifetime, known for her novel A Girl of the Limberlost.
- August 17, 1865 – Julia Marlowe born as Sara Frances Frost in England; American actress, known for her interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays. Her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was four years old. She began her career in the chorus of a juvenile opera company which toured performing Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic operas. She was taken to New York by Ada Dow, for vocal lessons, and took the stage name Julia Marlowe. She made her New York debut in 1887 in Ingomar, the Barbarian. In 1891, she contracted typhoid fever, but after a slow recovery, returned to the stage. She made her Broadway debut in 1895, was married and divorced, and by 1904, she was playing Mary Tudor in When Knighthood was in Flower, her first huge hit, which led to her partnership with actor E.H. Sothern in several Shakespeare plays, starting with Romeo and Juliet. She began speaking out in favor of woman suffrage. After success on Broadway, she and Sothern toured the U.S. with their own company, playing in Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night. After a less successful tour of Britain, they returned to New York, presenting Shakespeare plays at affordable prices at the Academy of Music, bringing in audiences who had never seen Shakespeare on stage before. After briefly splitting up, they renewed their partnership, mounting productions of Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth. They resumed touring, giving special matinee performances for schoolchildren. Marlowe and Sothern were married in 1911, and in the 1920s they made recordings of Shakespeare for the Victor company. A production of The Merchant of Venice in 1921 was Marlowe’s last, as her health began to fail. She retired in 1924. When Sothern died in 1933, she became withdrawn, but lived until age 85, when she died in New York.
- August 17, 1893 – Mae West born, American performer, star of stage and screen, playwright, screenwriter, and witty sex symbol; noted for amusing and bawdy double entendres, she was often in trouble with the censors. Her 1927 play Sex, which she wrote, then played the starring role, ran for 10 months on Broadway before a grand jury found it to be such an “obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure drama” that it might corrupt “the morals of youth,” West was sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity, and travelled there in style – garlanded in roses, wearing silk underwear and riding in a limousine. Sex made her both notorious and a star. Her films include She Done Him Wrong, I’m No Angel, and My Little Chickadee.
- August 17, 1896 – Bridget Swift Driscoll, age 44, became the first recorded pedestrian killed by a motor car in Great Britain. The vehicle belonged to the Anglo-French Motor Carriage Company, and was being used to give demonstration rides in the grounds of the Crystal Palace in London. The jury returned a verdict of "accidental death" after an inquest lasting about six hours. The first person in the world known to have been killed by a motor vehicle was Mary King Ward, a 42-year-old Irish scientist. In 1869, she was thrown from an experimental steam car making a sharp turn at a bend in the road, then fell under the car’s wheels.
- August 17, 1900 – Vivienne de Watteville born, British travel writer and adventurer; her mother died when she was 9; thereafter her father referred to her as “Murray, my son.” In 1923, Vivienne, age 24, took charge of a hunting and fauna-specimen-collecting (she handled all the taxidermy) expedition to the Congo and Uganda led by her father, after he was killed by a lion. Her first book, Out in the Blue, is a description of her experiences on safari. She spent months (1928-1929) in Kenya photographing and filming elephants, camping for 5 months in the Masai Game Preserve with porters from the 1923-1924 expedition and her Irish Setter, then 2 months on Mount Kenya collecting seeds and sketching flora; when she got a bad toothache, she pulled out the tooth herself with pliers; her second book, Speak to the Earth: Wanderings among Elephants and Mountains, was published in 1935; her last book, Seeds that the Wind may bring, is a soul-searching account of a her impulsive decision to rent a house on Port-Cros off the Côte d’Azur, after a visit with her Swiss grandmother, thinking of using it as a “rest-home for world-weary friends.” This idyll turns into a tension-fraught winter of high winds and her young Italian servant becoming passionately obsessed with her, then driven to frenzies of jealousy when her friend “Bunt” (Captain George Gerard Goschen) comes to visit. Bunt shares her love of solitude, natural beauty, music, and games. In spite of her fears about losing her freedom, and saddling herself with the wrong companion for the rest of her life, she finally allows herself to fall in love with Bunt, and they become engaged. They married in July 1930, move to Shropshire, and have two children, David and Tana (named for the River Tana in Kenya). Seeds that the Wind May Bring was not published until 1965, eight years after her death from cancer. Ernest Hemingway was influenced by her two books on Africa, and originally included a quote from Speak to the Earth as an epigraph to his story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
- August 17, 1900 – Pauline A. Young born, African-American historian, teacher, librarian, and community activist. Her father died when she was a child, and her family moved from Massachusetts to Wilmington, Delaware, to live with her mother’s family. She and her siblings were raised by her mother, grandmother and her aunt, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, a writer and activist who greatly influenced Pauline. Pauline joined the NAACP at the age of 12, and remained a participating member for the rest of her life. Civil Rights activists and writers such as W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson would stop overnight at their house while traveling because there was no hotel in the area which would allow Negro guests. She went to Howard High School, the only school for black children in the state of Delaware, where her mother and aunt both taught. Young became the only black student in her class at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, earning a B.A. in history and English, then did some graduate work on educational tests and measurements. After two brief jobs in unrelated fields, she taught social studies and Latin at a segregated high school in Newport News, Virginia. There, she was thrown off a bus for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. She returned to Wilmington in 1928, and became a librarian, then a history and Latin teacher, at her old high school. After receiving her graduate degree in 1935 from the Columbia University School of Library Service, she taught at the University of Southern California, then became a member of the press staff at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In 1942, she completed 114 hours of ground school work and 12 hours of dual flight at the black-owned Coffey School of Aeronautics in Chicago. In 1943, she went through 50 hours of pre-flight instruction for teachers at Temple University, then taught pre-fight at Howard High’s night school. Young was chair of the Delaware NAACP education committee, and a coordinator of membership drives in Delaware, and during her time in Chicago. She also served on the Wilmington Council on Youth as the representative for the Wilmington Federation of Teachers. She wrote book reviews for The Baltimore Afro-American, The Wilson Bulletin for Librarians, and The Journal of Negro History, and countless letters to the editors of newspapers, and to publishing companies advocating for better Black representation and opportunities. She was a founder of the Delaware Fellowship Commission, which fought against segregated facilities and discriminatory hiring practices, and campaigned for equal opportunity for nurses’ training. Young wrote the chapter “The Negro in Delaware: Past and Present” in Delaware: a History of the First State, which was the first published comprehensive history of Black Americans in Delaware.
- August 17, 1906 – Hazel Bishop born, organic chemist, creator of “kiss-proof” lipstick in her home kitchen in 1949; during WWII, she was senior organic chemist at Standard Oil, and discovered the cause of deposits which were affecting superchargers of aircraft engines.
- August 17, 1909 – Electa “Exy” Johnson born, American author, sail training pioneer and lecturer. She and her husband Irving Johnson began sailing the world together and teaching young enthusiasts in 1932. From then until 1958, they went on seven tours, three before World War II and four after, all of which circumnavigated the world. Each voyage visited 120 ports of call, and lasted about 18 months.
- August 17, 1920 – Lida Moser born, American ‘New York school’ photographer and author; noted for photojournalism and street photography; she started as an assistant in photographer Berenice Abbott’s studio in 1947; she got her first independent assignment from Vogue in 1949, travelling across Canada, then did work for Harper’s Bazaar, Look and Esquire. Moser wrote “Camera View” articles (1974-1981) for The New York Times and articles for many photography magazines. Also published both how-to books on photography and a number of collections of her photographs. Her work fetches prices in the thousands, and is displayed at over 40 museums worldwide.
- August 17, 1936 – Margaret Heafield Hamilton born, American computer scientist and systems engineer, noted for her paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBFT) for systems and software design, and for coining the term, “software engineer.” Hamilton is the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies (since 1986). She was Director of the Software Engineering Division of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and lead developer of on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo space program (1964-1973). Recipient of numerous awards, including the 1986 August Ada Lovelace Award, the 2003 NASA Exceptional Space Act Award, and a 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom.
- August 17, 1945 – Rachel Pollack born, American science fiction, ‘magic realism’ fantasy novelist, and comic book author; Unquenchable Fire won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award; Godmother Night won the 1997 World Fantasy Award; has also written non-fiction books on the Kabbalah, the Tarot, and the history of the Goddess; she is a transsexual who writes frequently on transgender issues.
- August 17, 1946 – Martha Coolidge born, American filmmaker, producer, editor, and screenwriter; president of the Directors Guild of America (2002-2003); began her career making award-winning documentaries; noted for Not a Pretty Picture, Valley Girl, Rambling Rose, Real Genius, and the TV miniseries Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.
- August 17, 1953 – Herta Müller born in Romania of Banat Swabian heritage, German-language novelist, poet-lyricist and essayist; won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature; noted for depicting “the landscape of the dispossessed.” After publication in 1984 of her second book, Drückender Tango (Oppressive Tango), a collection of short stories, her work was banned in Romania, and she moved to Germany.
- August 17, 1968 – Helen McCrory born, British actress and philanthropist; she made her stage debut in 1990 in The Importance of Being Earnest, and played onstage the roles of Lady Macbeth, Olivia in Twelfth Night, and Rosalind in As You Like It. On the silver screen, she portrayed Cherie Blair, wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair in both The Queen and Special Relationship, as well as Narcissa Malfoy in the final three Harry Potter films, and Clair Dowar in Skyfall. On television, she played the leading role of Emma Banville, in Fearless (2017-2018). McCrory was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to drama. In 2018, she read Millicent Fawcett’s 1918 victory speech at the unveiling of Fawcett’s statue in Parliament Square. She was a patron of Scene & Heard, a London children’s charity, and when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, she and her husband Damian Lewis became supporters of Feed NHS, which delivered food from high street restaurants to National Health Service staff, raising £1 million for the charity by early April 2020. Helen McCrory was 52 years old when she died of cancer in April 2021.
- August 17, 1970 – Nicola Kraus born, American novelist; known as the co-author with Emma McLaughlin of The Nanny Diaries, a #1 New York Times Bestseller in 2002, and the sequel Nanny Returns.
- August 17, 2019 – The triennial summit of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) began in Geneva, Switzerland. The destruction of nature has reduced wildlife populations by 60% since 1970 and plant extinctions are running at a “frightening” rate, according to scientists. In May, 2019, the world’s leading researchers warned that humanity was in jeopardy from the accelerating decline of the planet’s natural life-support systems, which provide the food, clean air and water on which society ultimately depends. Ivonne Higuero, secretary general of CITES said, “We do depend on biodiversity. It is not just an environmental issue. There are so many species that, if they went extinct, would be sorely missed and we just don’t realise it.”
- August 17, 2020 – Donald Trump took a swipe at New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has received world-wide acclaim for her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in her country, because after bringing the number of new cases down to zero, New Zealand had reported nine new cases this day. Before these new cases, New Zealand had gone 100 days with no new cases reported. Trump said, "The places that they were using to hold up, they're having a big surge. And I don't want that, I don't want that. But they were holding up names of countries, and now they're saying, 'Whoops!' In fact, even New Zealand, do you see what's going on in New Zealand? They beat it, they beat it, it was like front page, 'They beat it,' because they wanted to show me something," Trump said. "The problem is, big surge in New Zealand. So you know, it's terrible." In fact, on the same day in the U.S., almost 42,000 new cases were added, compared to New Zealand’s “big surge” of nine new cases. New Zealand had a total of 22 deaths from Covid-19, compared to 170,000 deaths to this date in the U.S., with the number of new U.S. cases increasing daily. Ardern responded, "Obviously it's patently wrong. I don't think there's any comparison between New Zealand's current cluster and the tens of thousands of cases that are being seen daily in the United States. Obviously, every country is experiencing its own fight with COVID-19. It is a tricky virus, but not one where I would compare New Zealand's current status to the United States."
- August 17, 2021 – In the UK, MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the women and equalities committee, who is leading an inquiry into discrimination in the workplace against women going through menopause, said changing equality legislation to protect menopausal women should “not be ruled out.” The inquiry heard from women who have suffered discrimination in the workplace and have been forced to use disability legislation to seek redress in the courts. “One of the key messages coming through is that people don’t feel that they’ve got adequate recourse to tribunals, because they think the legislation isn’t clear enough,” Nokes said. “We are hearing too many stories of people finding the most convenient mechanism to bring a claim for disability discrimination – the menopause isn’t a disability … If the current legislation is working then great, but if it’s not working, and we’ve made maternity a protected characteristic, then do we need to look at making the menopause a protected characteristic?” Nokes added that she had been struck by the number of individual women who had contacted the inquiry to share their experiences, and warned businesses that if they did not take action to help menopausal workers they risked losing talent and productivity. Nokes credited celebrities with increasing awareness of menopause discrimination, especially Davina McCall and Lorraine Kelly, who are among those backing a public awareness campaign by The Menopause Charity. McCall, who wrote book called Menopausing, revealed that she had been advised not to talk about her symptoms, which began when she was 44, but decided she was not “going to be ashamed about a transition that half the population goes through.”
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- August 18, 1606 – Maria Anna of Spain born, Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduchess consort of Austria; she was the first wife (1631-1646) of Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor. It was a successful marriage, with affection and respect on both sides. She was a trusted advisor to her husband, acted as regent during his absences, and promoted a strengthening of relations between the Imperial and Spanish branches of the House of Habsburg. She was also a notable patron of the arts, especially painting. Maria Anna gave birth to six children, three of whom lived to adulthood. Her first-born son Ferdinand IV was King of Bohemia (1646-1654), and briefly King of the Romans (1653-1654), and her son Leopold I, succeeded his father as Holy Roman Emperor (1658-1705). She died from complications during her final pregnancy at age 39 in 1646.
- August 18, 1629 – Agneta Horn born, Swedish autobiographer, whose family often traveled with her father, a Swedish Count and military officer, during Sweden’s war with Denmark, until he was captured and held for eight years as a prisoner of war. When her mother died, she was sent to live with an aunt she detested. She married a soldier in 1648, and went with him to Poland and Germany, but he was killed in Poland, and she returned home as a 26-year-old widow with four children, where she ran her estates. She is remembered for her account of her life and travels, Agneta Horn’s Leverne.
- August 18, 1885 – Gertrude “Nettie” Higgins Palmer born, Australian poet and essayist, one of Australia’s leading literary critics.
- August 18, 1886 – Florence Lawrence, daughter of inventor Charlotte Bridgwood, becomes the “Biograph Girl” - the first actress in silent films to be a star without being famous before making movies. Like her mother, Lawrence was inventive, now credited with designing the first "auto signaling arm," a predecessor to the modern turn signal, along with the first mechanical brake signal. Unfortunately, she did not patent these inventions, so she received no acknowledgement or money for either.
- August 18, 1893 – Ragini Devi born, American specialist in classical and folk ethnographic dances, won acclaim from dance critics, author of Dance Dialects of India (1972) performed with her daughter and granddaughter.
- August 18, 1898 – Elizabeth Yung Kwai born; a graduate of Wellesley College, who worked in the Electricity Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology investigating self-luminous materials used by the military in aircraft instruments, compasses, watches and gunsights. Co-author of a paper, “Studies of Radium Luminous Materials,” presented at the April 1919 meeting of the American Physical Society. After raising a family during the 1920s and 1930s, she returned to government service during World War II as a member of the Women's Army Corps.
- August 18, 1900 – Ruth Grigorievna Bonner born, Soviet Communist activist who was sent to a labor camp during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge. In 1937, she was a health official in Moscow when her husband was arrested on charges of espionage and sentenced to death. She was arrested a few days later, and spent 8 years in the Gulag in Kazakhstan, then another 9 years in internal exile. In 1954, she was one of the first of Stalin’s victims to be “rehabilitated” under new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Her husband was rehabilitated posthumously. Then her daughter, human rights activist Yelena Bonner, and her son-in-law, Andrei Sakharov, were exiled to Gorky in 1980. Ruth Bonner, at age 80, was allowed to move to the U.S. to be with her grandchildren. After her daughter was released, she came home in 1987 and died in Moscow a few months later.
- August 18, 1902 – Leona Baumgartner born, physician, first woman to be commissioner of New York City Department of Health (1954); advocate for public health education; head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (1962).
- August 18, 1902 – Mardy (Margaret) Murie born, author and pioneering conservationist, worked for wilderness preservation, instrumental in passage of the Wilderness Act of 1964, and the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Noted for her books, Two in the Far North and Island Between. Murie was honored with the 1980 Audubon Medal, the 1983 John Muir Award, and was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton in 1998. She lived to be 101 years old.
- August 18, 1908 – Minnie Postma born as Magdalena Jacomina Wille, South African writer who published short stories and novels in Africaans, many for young readers, including Kewaantjie and Kewyntjie, which was broadcast on South African radio.
- August 18, 1911 – Klara Dan von Neumann born in what was Austria-Hungary, Hungarian-American pioneer in computer science. As a teenager she was a figure skating champion. She emigrated to America in 1938 to be with her second husband, physicist John von Neumann. By 1943, she was the head of the Statistical Computing Group at Princeton University. In 1946, she and her husband moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory where she worked on programming the MANIAC I machine designed by John von Neumann and Julian Bigelow. She was also involved as a primary programmer, and in designing new controls, for ENIAC.
- August 18, 1911 – Amelia Boynton Robinson born, American suffragist, civil rights activist, and playwright; American Civil Rights Movement leader who ran for Congress, the first African American woman to run for office in Alabama and the first woman of any race to run on the ticket of the Democratic Party in the state. She was a key figure in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches. Robinson was the founding vice-president of the Schiller Institute; awarded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Medal in 1990.
- August 18, 1914 – Lucy Ozarin born, American psychiatrist and physician, one of the first seven women in psychiatry who served as commissioned officers during WWII. After Pearl Harbor, almost all the male staff left the state hospital where she was working, leaving her the only physician for 1000 patients, and she quickly felt overwhelmed. When Federal legislation established the W.A.V.E.S. as part of the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942, she decided to join. The hospital refused to approve her request for leave, so she resigned her position. As an “officer and a gentleman” (the Navy just used the same commission papers that they already had for men to sign up the women), she started an Assistant Surgeon, Lieutenant Junior Grade. With no military training, she was immediately assigned to the military hospital at Bethesda, Maryland, then sent to Camp Lejeune. There, the hospital’s commander assigned her to doing physical examinations on civilian applicants for laborer jobs, even though male doctors with only 90 days of psychiatric training were treating psychiatry patients. A colleague helped her get a transfer, and she returned to Bethesda, to treat WAVES. She also studied for and passed the boards in psychiatry (1945). After the war, she went to work for the Veterans Administration, and was soon promoted to Chief of Hospital Psychiatry. She visited all of the Veterans Hospitals to investigate and make recommendations on clearing up the backlog of mental health services. She started programs for VA hospital staffers to improve their skills in relating to patients, and a training institute for clinical directors on advances in psychiatry. Ozarin joined the U.S. Public Health Services in 1957, working in the Kansas City regional office while studying for a Master’s in Public Health, which she earned in 1961. The National Institute of Mental Health chose her as one of 5 people to write the regulations and establish community health centers across the U.S. after passage of the 1963 Community Mental Health Act. She was an advocate for deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients. In the 1970s, she did a study for the World Health Organization (WHO) on drug and alcohol treatments in 9 European countries, then convened a conference to report her findings, attended by representatives from 21 countries. After her “retirement” in 1983, she volunteered to catalog medical books, and thousands of documents, medical dissertations, and publications for the National Library of Medicine, to facilitate medical research. Received the Director’s Honor Award for her efforts in 2008. Even in her late nineties, she continued working, this time as author of over 50 mini-biographies of notable psychiatrists, posted at Wikipedia. She lived to be 103 years old.
- August 18, 1916 – Dame Moura Lympany born, English concert pianist; in February 1945, she was the first British musician to perform in Paris after the city was liberated, as a soloist with the orchestra of the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1981, she helped establish the annual Festival des Sept Chapelles in Guidel, Brittany, France.
- August 18, 1920 – 19th Amendment Yellow Rose Day: The U.S. Constitution’s 19th Amendment is ratified, giving women the right to vote. But it almost didn’t happen. Battle of the Roses: Yellow roses were worn by suffrage supporters, red roses by opponents. Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify the 19th Amendment, by a single vote. That vote was cast by 24-year-old Harry Burn, who had been in the anti-ratification camp and was still wearing his red rose when he voted for passage, because he had received a last-minute letter from his mother that morning. Phoebe Ensminger Burn, called “Miss Febb,” wrote, “Hurrah, and vote for suffrage! Don’t keep them in doubt. I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet.” She ended the missive with a rousing endorsement of the suffragist leader Carrie Chapman Catt, imploring her son to “be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification.” He explained his sudden change of heart, “I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.”
- August 18, 1921 – Lydia Litvyak born, Soviet fighter pilot during WWII, called the ‘White Lily of Stalingrad.’ She was the first woman fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft, and one of the first two women certified as aces. Shot down and killed by the Germans during the Battle of Kursk in 1943.
- August 18, 1927 – Rosalynn Carter born, U.S. First Lady (1977-1981), politically active while in White House, focused on mental health, senior citizens, and community voluntarism; co-founder with husband of the Carter Center; active supporter of Habitat for Humanity.
- August 18, 1937 – Sheila Cassidy born, English doctor who is a leader in the UK hospice movement. She completed her medical studies at Oxford University in 1963. In the 1970s, she went to practice medicine in Chile when Salvador Allende was president. In 1975, after Cassidy gave medical treatment to Nelson Gutierrez, a political opponent of the new Pinochet regime being sought by police, she was arrested by the Chilean secret police and kept in custody without trial, and severely tortured at the notorious Villa Grimaldi, trying to force her to disclose information about her patients and other contacts. The combined efforts of the British Embassy and Argentinean diplomat Roberto Kozak secured her release, and she was expelled from Chile. The interviews she gave about her imprisonment and torture on the parrilla (a metal frame to which a victim is strapped and subjected to electric shock) brought attention in the UK to the widespread human rights abuses in Chile. She also published her account in Audacity to Believe. After her recovery from her ordeal, she continued to practice medicine. She was medical director of the new St. Luke’s Hospice in Plymouth (1982-1997), and set up palliative care service for Plymouth hospitals. Since retiring from St. Luke’s, she’s been an advocate for hospice, and written books with hospice and religious themes.
- August 18, 1944 – Paula Danziger born, American author of over 30 children’s books, including The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, and the Amber Brown series.
- August 18, 1952 – Elayne Boosler born, American comedian and writer; in 1986, she became the first woman comedian to get her own one-hour comedy special on cable when Showtime aired Party of One. She is active in liberal politics, and was the moderator for a 2003 Democratic presidential candidates’ debate on C-Span hosted by the National Organization for Women (NOW). She is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post, and a strong support of women’s reproductive rights. She founded Tails of Joy in 2001, a nonprofit that benefits the smallest animal rescue organizations, and advocates for animal rescue.
- August 18, 1959 – Winona LaDuke born, American economist, writer, environmentalist, and industrial hemp grower, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development. La Duke is an enrolled member of the Ojibwe Nation. In 1985, she helped found the Indigenous Women’s Network, which since 1991 has been publishing Indigenous Women, the first and currently the only magazine written by and for Native women. In 1989, LaDuke founded the White Earth Land Recovery Project, a foundation to buy back land that had originally been part of the Anishinaabe White Earth Indian Reservation, but which had been sold to non-natives after the Nelson Act of 1889. By 2000, the foundation had purchased 1200 acres, which it is holding in a conservation trust while restoring forests, reviving cultivation of traditional food like wild rice, introducing a heard of buffalo, a wind-energy project, and introduced an Ojibwe language program. In 1993, she became the executive director and co-founder, with the Indigo Girls, of Honor the Earth, a Native environmental advocacy organization that has played an active role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. In 1996 and 2000, she was a Green Party vice-presidential candidate with Ralph Nader.
- August 18, 1972 – Victoria Coren Mitchell born, English professional poker player, weekly columnist for The Observer, and television presenter of the BBC quiz show Only Connect since 2008.
- August 18, 1974 – Nicole Krauss born, American writer and novelist; noted for her contributions to The New Yorker, and her novels Man Walks Into a Room, The History of Love, Great House, and Forest Dark.
- August 18, 1997 – Beth Ann Hogan became first woman to attend Virginia Military Institute (VMI). She dropped out in January 1998, in part because a tendon injury meant she could not participate in many activities, including marching and drill.
- August 18, 2000 – A Federal jury finds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guilty of discrimination against Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo; she was passed over for promotion after repeatedly reporting complaints that a U.S. company was mining toxic vanadium in South Africa; her example helped to pass “No FEAR,” the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-Discrimination and Retaliation Act (2002). Her memoir, No Fear, was published in 2011.
- August 18, 2015 – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved flibanserin, the first prescription drug to treat low sex drive in premenopausal women. The approval came with restrictions, including labels warning of potential side effects, such as low blood pressure and fainting, especially for women who drink alcohol while taking the drug. In trials, women with low sex drive reported a slight increase in "satisfying sexual experiences" while taking the pink pill — to be sold under the brand name Addyi by Sprout Pharmaceuticals. Skeptics said the limited impact was not worth the side effects. "Women's sexuality is very complicated. It's not a matter of just taking that pill, by the way, and then all of a sudden the lights go on," said Judy Kuriansky, a clinical psychologist and certified sex therapist. "You have to feel good about your body. You have to feel good about yourself ... It's complex. It's not the same as a man taking a pill."
- August 18, 2016 – Another study, this one by Cambridge University Press, revealed what most women already know: sports reporting is really sexist. Researchers, who studied over 160 million words related to sport in the Cambridge English Corpus, a multibillion-word collection of written and spoken English, found “notable terms that cropped up as common word associations or combinations for women, but not men, in sport include ‘aged,’ ‘older,’ ‘pregnant,’ and ‘married’ or ‘unmarried’. The top word combinations for men in sport, by contrast, are more likely to be adjectives like ‘fastest,’ ‘strong,’ ‘big,’ ‘real,’ and ‘great’–all words regularly heard to describe male Olympians.” When it comes to performance, ‘men’ or ‘man’ was associated with verbs such as ‘mastermind,’ ‘beat,’ ‘win,’ ‘dominate,’ and ‘battle,’ whereas ‘woman’ or ‘women’ is associated with verbs such as ‘compete,’ ‘participate,’ and ‘strive.’ The study concludes that women are more likely to be referred to as “girls” while men are rarely referred to as “boys” by the newscasters tasked with covering their sport. “The breadth of sources we’ve analyzed means we’re able to give a unique insight into the language used to describe women and men within the context of sport,” said Sarah Grieves, a language researcher at Cambridge University Press. “It’s perhaps unsurprising to see that women get far less airtime than men, and that their physical appearance and personal lives are frequently mentioned. It will be interesting to see if this trend is also reflected in our upcoming research on language used at the Rio Olympics.” Predictably, The Chicago Tribune tweeted “Wife of a Bears' lineman wins a bronze medal today in Rio Olympics” when Corey Cogdell won the bronze medal for women’s trap shooting. They were not the only media outlet to refer to her as “the wife of NFL/Bears lineman Mitch Unrein” instead of using her name.
- August 18, 2020 – In the UK, Jessica Johnson, an 18-year-old student who predicted the A-level results crisis in an award-winning dystopian story about an algorithm deciding school grades according to social class, has had her own results downgraded. “I’ve fallen into my story. It’s crazy. I based it on the educational inequality I already saw. I just exaggerated that inequality and added the algorithm. But I really didn’t think it would come true as quick as it did!” Johnson won an Orwell youth prize senior award in 2019 for her short story titled A Band Apart. Set in 2029, it imagined a system where students were sorted into bands based on their background. “Mum still thinks I can be a doctor. She doesn’t understand how hard it is to get into Band 1 for people like us,” says a character in the story. Johnson had her English A-level result downgraded from A to B and lost her place at the University of St Andrews before the government announced it would allow A-level and GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) students to use grades awarded by teachers, after a computer moderation process designed to combat grade inflation mistakenly downgraded legitimate scores, causing many students like Johnson to miss out on university places. Now that results will be based on teacher assessments instead, she is hopeful that her place will be restored. “I’ve been so stressed and anxious these past few days, waiting to hear back from universities,” she said. “We got told you can go wherever you want in life if you work hard enough, but we’ve seen this year that no matter how hard you worked, you got a grade based on where you live.” Professor Jean Seaton, director of the Orwell prize, said: “Jessica saw into the heart of what the system represents and her story demonstrates the human ability which exams only exist to uncover.” After Johnson’s results were reevaluated based on teacher predictions, the University of St Andrews, her first-choice school, reinstated its offer to her. “I’m definitely relieved and I’m really excited to go,” the 18-year-old said. “I’m glad, for me at least, it’s been sorted but obviously there’s still a lot of people in a really confusing situation so I’m hoping university places start to be sorted for them, too.”
- August 18, 2021 – Sakira Ventura, a 28-year-old music teacher from Valencia, Spain, has created an interactive map featuring over 500 women composers from across the globe. “… nobody ever spoke to me about female composers.” She said. “They don’t appear in musical history books, their works aren’t played at concerts and their music isn’t recorded ... They deserve a place in history.” She continued, “I had always talked about putting these composers on the map – so it occurred to me to do it literally … There’s a moment where you ask yourself, where do I look for this information?” She added, “When I started I thought I wouldn’t know more than five female composers.” After more than a year and hundreds of hours of work, the site documents 530 composers – including a short description of each one and a link to listen to their work (https://svmusicology.com/mapa/). Ventura is continuing her work, and already has a list of 500 more names. The result is a catalogue of artists that range from Kassia, a Byzantine abbess born in 810 and whose hymns are still sung in the Orthodox church, to Alma Deutscher, the British teenager who composed her first piano sonata at the age of six. Many of the women listed on the map languished in obscurity, their careers marred by the long-held notion that music could be a pastime for women but not a profession. Some, like Maria Anna Mozart, Mozart’s sister, saw their careers come to an abrupt halt amid concerns that performing and touring could put her reputation at risk. “It was taken for granted that a work composed by a woman wouldn’t be of the same quality as that composed by a man,” said Ventura. The barriers forced female composers to get creative; some enrolled in convents in order to study music while others published works under male pseudonyms. She has received a few complaints about the absence of men on the map, but there’s also been a lot of positive response, especially from other music teachers who are eager to incorporate her map into their lessons.
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- August 19, 1612 – The Samlesbury Witches: three women from the village of Samlesbury in Lancashire, England, are put on trial, accused by a 14-year-old girl of practicing witchcraft, including child murder and cannibalism. Ten others accused during the same Assizes are hanged, but the three from Samlesbury are acquitted when the girl who accused them is discredited as a “perjuring tool of a Catholic priest.”
- August 19, 1692 – Five people found guilty of witchcraft executed by hanging in Salem, in the Massachusetts colony, including John Proctor, who with his wife Elizabeth, would be used by Arthur Miller as major characters in his play The Crucible. Elizabeth Proctor was given a stay of execution because she was pregnant, then released after the witch hysteria had died down.
- August 19, 1814 (?) – Mary Ellen Pleasant born as a slave, American abolitionist and entrepreneur, self-made multimillionaire; she often “passed for white” which helped keep her from getting caught as an Underground Railroad conductor, but changed her designation to “Black” after the civil war; sometimes called the “Mother of Civil Rights in California” – her successful lawsuit against a streetcar company for forcing her and two other black women off the streetcar ended segregation on public transportation in San Francisco, and set a precedent used by the California Supreme Court in other cases.
- August 19, 1815 – Harriette Newell Woods Baker born, American children’s book author and editor; she used the pen names Mrs. Madeline Leslie and Aunt Hattie. Her best-known book was Tim, the Scissors Grinder. As ‘Mrs. Leslie,’ she wrote moral and religious tales. Her first published story appeared in The Youth’s Companion magazine when she was 11 years old, and earned for her the sum of one dollar. She wrote almost to the end of her life, dying at age 77 of a respiratory ailment at the home of her son.
- August 19, 1858 – Ellen Willmott born, English horticulturalist, influential member of the Royal Horticultural Society, one of the first women to be elected a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and with Gertrude Jekyll, one of only two women to receive the Victorian Medal of Honour in 1897, newly instituted that year for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. She published Warley Garden in Spring and Summer, and a two-volume work, The Genus Rosa.
- August 19, 1870 – Annie Webb Blanton born, American suffragist, educator, and author of a series of grammar textbooks. Blanton was professor of English at the North Texas State Normal College in Denton (1901-1918). She later served on the education faculty of the University of Texas at Austin for 22 years. In 1916, she was the first woman elected as president of the Texas State Teachers Association. Blanton was elected Superintendent of Texas Public Instruction in 1918, the first year Texas women could vote in statewide elections. She was the first woman in Texas elected to statewide office, and served two terms. While in office, she launched the successful Better Schools Campaign, which amended the state’s constitution to allow local property taxes to fund public schools. She also instituted a system of free textbooks, revised teacher certification standards, raised teacher salaries, improved rural education, and promoted equal pay for women teachers.
- August 19, 1871 – Florine Stettheimer born, American modernist painter, feminist, theatrical director, poet, and salonnière. Credited with painting the first feminist nude-self-portrait, and noted for paintings depicting controversial issues of race and sexual preference. In the mid-1930s, she became internationally famous for her stage designs and costumes (using the innovative material cellophane) for Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson's avant-garde opera, Four Saints in Three Acts. She is best known for her four monumental works illustrating what she considered to be New York City's "Cathedrals": Broadway, Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, and art museums.
- August 19, 1883 – Coco Chanel born, influential French fashion designer of the ‘little black dress’ and the Chanel suit. She began her fashion career as a milliner in 1910, then opened a boutique in 1913, in the resort town of Deauville, to sell deluxe clothing for leisure and sport, making jersey and tricot fabrics into high-fashion sportswear. Next, she expanded her enterprise to Biarritz in 1915, which was so successful she was able to pay back her lover’s investment after the first year. By 1919, she was a registered couturière and established her maison de couture in Paris. By 1927, she owned her original building and four adjacent buildings. By 1935, she employed 4,000 people, but Elsa Schiaparelli had become a serious rival. She closed her business in 1939, moved into the Hotel Ritz, favored hotel of high-ranking Nazi officers, and narrowly escaped being tried as a Nazi collaborator after the war, due to Winston Churchill’s intervention, said by some to be due to her close association with several English peers, and even members of Britain’s royal family. After several years living in a sort of exile in Switzerland, she returned to Paris in 1954 with her come-back collection. She was back in business, and continued until her death at age 87.
- August 19, 1900 – Dorothy Burr Thompson born, classical archaeologist, art historian and academic; a leading authority on Hellenistic terracotta figurines; the first graduate from Bryn Mawr College with a major in Greek and archaeology, summa cum laude in 1923; she then studied at the American School of Classical Studies, and worked on excavations at Phlius on the Peloponnese peninsula with Carl Blegen. She discovered a tholos (‘beehive’) tomb in 1925, which was the burial place of the king and queen of Midea. Completed her Ph.D. at Bryn Mawr in 1931. In 1933, she was the first woman appointed as a Fellow of the Athenian Agora excavations, where Canadian archaeologist Homer Thompson was the assistant director of field work. They were married in 1934. In between giving birth to three daughters, she still did some work on the Athenian excavations, discovering the garden of the Temple of Hephaistos in 1936. The family moved to Princeton NJ in 1946 when Homer Thompson accepted a chair at the Institute for Advanced Study, where she continued to carry out her research and publish her work. In 1987, she was awarded the Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement by the Archaeological Institute of America.
- August 19, 1911 – Anna Terruwe born, Dutch psychiatrist, known for her work with emotional deprivation disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder; she based her work on that of Thomas Aquinas. Dr. Terruwe, a devout Catholic, made church history in the fifties. After complaints about her by some Jesuits, a high-ranking Dutch Jesuit (Dr. Sebestian Tromp) of the Holy Office issued a ban: it was forbidden for priest students to see 'female psychiatrists' (there was only one: Dr. Terruwe). At the time, there were still many priest students, and quite a few religious superiors sent some of them to see Dr. Terruwe for their ‘emotional distractions.’ Rome also ordered Terruwe's mentor and advocate, Professor Willem Duynstee, to come to Rome in exile. Within ten years, the Vatican admitted that a terrible error of judgment had been made. Dr. Terruwe was not only rehabilitated, Pope Paul VI called her work "a gift to the Church."
- August 19, 1914 – Dame Rose Heilbron born, British barrister and High Court judge; the first woman to achieve a first class honours degree in law at the University of Liverpool (1935); the first woman to win a scholarship to Gray's Inn (1936); one of the first two women to be appointed King's Counsel (1949) in England; the first woman to lead in a murder case, the first woman recorder (1956), and the first woman judge to sit at the Old Bailey (1972), and the first woman treasurer of Gray's Inn. She was also the second woman to be appointed a High Court judge (1974), after Elizabeth Lane.
- August 19, 1920 – Lucila Biskaljon Engels born, Dutch-Curaçao painter, draftsperson, monumental artist, and mosaicist; noted for still life and figure studies. She met her husband and partner, Dutch artist Chris Engels, in 1939. She died at age 73 in 1993. Her work is also listed under the names Lucila Engels and Lucila Engels-Biskaljon.
- August 19, 1933 – Bettina Cirone born, American portrait photographer, worked as a Ford model in the 1960s, then began her photographic career in 1970, shooting landmark buildings in downtown Manhattan, then switched to portrait photography of political figures and celebrities.
- August 19, 1934 – Renée Richards born, American ophthalmologist, author, and tennis player; United States Tennis Association Eastern Tennis Hall of Fame inductee in 2000; after undergoing sex reassignment surgery in 1975, she was denied entrance to the U.S. Open by the USTA; she fought the ban in court – New York State Court ruled in her favor in 1977.
- August 19, 1938 – Nelly Vuksic born, Argentinian choral conductor and singer. When her family could not afford to pay for her secondary education, she earned the money herself by playing the piano and singing, then studied conducting at the National University of Rosario, and conducted the University’s youth choir, and later, its adult choir. After graduation in 1969, she married pianist Cesar Vuksic, and they went to the U.S. when he got a scholarship to Ball State University in Indiana. After arriving, she was also offered a scholarship continue her studies in music, and also to learn English. She became the conductor of the school’s women’s chorus, and earned her Ph.D. in conducting in 1978. In New York City, after some lean years when she had to take jobs cleaning houses and performing in night clubs, she was hired by Hugh Ross, choral director of the Schola Cantorum, as a singer. She went on to found the Americas Vocal Ensemble, and has taught at the Bloomingdale School of Music, Columbia University; now Director of the Conservatory Chorale at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.
- August 19, 1944 – Bodil Malmsten born, Swedish poet and novelist; she co-authored her first book with Peter Csihas, a children’s story called Ludvig åker. Her novel, Priset på vatten i Finistère (The Price of Water in Finistère) was translated into English by Frank Perry.
- August 19, 1946 – Dawn Steele born, one of the first women to run a major Hollywood Studio, beginning in merchandising and rising through the ranks of production to President of Production at Paramount Pictures in 1985, and took over as President of ailing Columbia Pictures (1987-1990), but after a string of loses, she resigned, and the studio was sold to Sony Corporation. Next, she formed Steel Pictures and made films for the Walt Disney Company (1990-1993), then became a partner in Atlas Entertainment (1994-1997); her 1993 memoir, They Can Kill You But They Can’t Eat You, described her tenure at Columbia. In Steel’s obituary, Norah Ephron said she was the first powerful woman in Hollywood to hire large numbers of women as executives, producers, marketing people and directors.
- August 19, 1947 – Anuška Ferligoj born, Slovenian mathematician; noted for her work in network analysis, multivariate analysis, social networks, and survey methodology. Professor of Multivariate Statistics and head of the graduate program on Statistics at the University of Ljubljana, and Fellow of the European Academy of Sociology.
- August 19, 1950 – Jennie Bond born, English journalist and television presenter; the BBC’s Royal Correspondent (1989-2003); has published several books on Britain’s Royal Family.
- August 19, 1955 – Patricia Scotland born in Dominica, British Leeward Islands, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, called to the Middle Temple in 1977, specializing in family law. In 1991, she became the first black woman to be appointed as a Queen’s Counsel, then was elected as a Bencher of the Middle Temple. She was named as a Millennium Commissioner, and a member of the Commission for Racial Equality, in 1994. Received a Life Peerage in 1997, and is a Lord Temporal Member of the House of Lords. Parliamentary Under-secretary of State (1999-2001), then Parliamentary Secretary (2001-2003). Appointed as Attorney General (2007-2010) then Advocate General (2010) for Northern Ireland, and also served as the first woman Attorney General for England and Wales (2007-2010). Currently the first woman Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations (since 2016).
- August 19, 1957 – Gerda Verburg born, Dutch politician and trade union member; Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations organizations for Food and Agriculture since 2011; Member of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands (2010-2011); Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (2007-2010); youth worker then member of the board of the construction trade union for the National Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Netherlands (1982-1997).
- August 19, 1965 – Maria de Medeiros born, Portuguese actress, singer, and director, known for her performance in the films Henry and June and Pulp Fiction. She has directed seven films, including Capitães de Abril (April Captains), for which she also co-wrote the screenplay with Eve Deboise. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.
- August 19, 1975 – Chynna Clugston Flores born, freelance American comic book creator; known for her manga-influenced teen comedy series Blue Monday.
- August 19, 1988 – Veronica Roth born, American writer and dystopian novelist, known for her Divergent series.
- August 19, 2019 – Google’s change in policy intended to stop deceptive ads from “crisis” pregnancy centers had a loophole that allowed the centers to continue to post the ads. These pregnancy centers are anti-abortion clinics which discourage women from getting abortions. The Google loophole meant only users who specifically searched under the term 'abortion' would be provided information on abortions. In May 2019, it was reported that Google had allowed one US-based centre that has a network of clinics across the country, funded by Catholic organizations, to post $150,000 USD worth of free advertisements in 2011 and 2015. Following widespread complaints, Google developed the new policy to rein in this deceptive advertising, but the loophole allowed their misleading advertising to continue. Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren condemned the Trump administration for working “to gag doctors, spread misinformation, and support so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centers’ that go out of their way to present misleading and incomplete reproductive health care information to women.” A site called Abortion Pill Rescue was marketing “an effective process called abortion pill reversal that can reverse the effects of the abortion pill.” The site, run by Heartbeat International, a Christian anti-abortion organization, directed visitors to a hotline to guide them through the procedure. “If you have taken the first dose of the abortion pill and regret it, you are not alone,” the website reads. “We can help you!” This treatment involved a series of injected doses of the progesterone given over the course of several days, and was developed outside the mainstream scientific community, by a family medicine physician named George Delgado, who is anti-choice, and had no medical research experience. Medical researcher Dr. Mitchell Creinin, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UC Davis, as well as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology, are concerned that pregnant women are being given misleading and potentially harmful information, especially because legislators in Arkansas, Idaho, South Dakota, and Utah have made it a legal requirement that doctors who provide medical abortions must tell their patients that ‘reversal’ is an option, although doctors are not yet prevented from also telling patients if they think the treatment doesn't work. "You create a law based on no science — absolutely zero science," Creinin said. Consumer watchdogs asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to shut down the websites, citing the potential danger of this ‘reversal’ treatment, which has never been approved by the FDA. In 2019, Dr. Creinin got a grant to test the so-called ‘abortion reversal’ procedure, but the study was stopped after three women out of the 12 participants developed hemorrhaging so severe they had to be rushed to hospital, and one woman needed a blood transfusion. “I did not expect women to bleed like this,” Dr. Creinin said. “That’s why we stopped the study. I couldn’t continue to enroll women and put them at the same kind of risk.”
- August 19, 2020 –U.S. Representatives Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the two first Muslim women to serve in Congress, held a press conference to denounce the Israeli government’s decision to deny them entry to the country, saying the travel restrictions are part of a broader effort to suppress voices of dissent over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in occupied and disputed territories. "Netanyahu's decision to deny us entry might be unprecedented for members of Congress," Omar said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "But it is the policy of his government when it comes to Palestinians. This is the policy of his government when it comes to anyone who holds views that threaten the occupation. The only way to preserve unjust policy is to suppress people's freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of movement.” Additional public pressure had been applied by Donald Trump, a vocal critic of Omar and Tlaib, before Netanyahu's government said it would not allow the two lawmakers to enter the country, citing their support for boycotting Israel. The Israeli government did offer to let Tlaib in on humanitarian grounds to visit her 90-year-old Palestinian grandmother on the condition that she did not promote a boycott of Israel. Tlaib said she made the decision to not accept the conditional travel permit after consulting with her grandmother and other family members. "Through tears, at three o'clock in the morning, we all decided as a family that I could not go until I was a free, American United States Congresswoman coming there, not only to see my grandmother but to talk to Palestinian and Israeli organizations that believed that my grandmother deserves human dignity as much as anyone else does," she said. The decision by Netanyahu's government to deny entry to two sitting members of Congress prompted withering criticism from Democrats, who said the move could damage the typical bipartisan support among U.S. lawmakers for Israel. "Denying visit to duly elected members of Congress is not consistent with being an ally," Omar said. "And denying millions of people freedom of movement or expression or self determination is not consistent with being a democracy."
- August 19, 2021 – In Afghanistan, high-profile women in sports were urged to wipe their social media presence and some were advised to burn their uniforms as supporters scramble to protect them from the Taliban. Speaking from Copenhagen, Khalida Popal, former captain of the Afghanistan women’s football (soccer) team, said female players should take urgent steps to remove all trace of their sporting history. “Today I’m calling them and telling them, take down their names, remove their identities, take down their photos for their safety. Even I’m telling them to burn down or get rid of your national team uniform,” she told Reuters. “And that is painful for me, for someone as an activist who stood up and did everything possible to achieve and earn that identity as a women’s national team player. To earn that badge on the chest, to have the right to play and represent our country, how much we were proud.” A source close to the country’s cycling federation echoed the advice, saying female members had been told to stay at home and avoid posting on social media at all cost. The speed with which the Taliban took over control of Afghanistan ended any chance the women might have had to flee, the source added. “Everything changed in 48 hours. Nobody was able to escape. If it [had been] a week or something, we would have sent them to neighbouring countries but it all happened on the same day, the airport is closed, everywhere you see terrorists with guns.” Just four days after the invasion of Kabul by the Taliban, there are few women on the streets of the Afghan capital. Only women wearing the burqa, which covers them from head to the ground with only a mesh screen in front of the eyes so the wearer can see, are on the street, and all are accompanied by a male guardian. The burqa and the male guardian are required by the Talban for all Afghan women whenever they are outside the home.
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- August 20, 1630 – Maria van Oosterwijck born, Dutch ‘Golden Age’ painter, specializing in richly detailed flower paintings and other still lifes, often with allegorical themes; one of the very few women professional painters in the 1600s. She was born near Delft, and did her early work there, but moved to Amsterdam at some point in the 1670s. Her studio was opposite the workshop of painter Willem van Aelst, who courted her, but she turned down his marriage proposal because she was devoted to her painting. She remained single, but raised her orphaned nephew. Van Oosterwijck picked an excellent agent in Amsterdam to market her work outside the Netherlands, and counted among her patrons Louis XIV of France, Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, Elector of Saxony Augustus II the Strong, William III of England, and the King of Poland. In spite of her skill and widespread popularity, she was denied membership in the painters’ guild, because women were not allowed to join. She taught her servant Geertgen Wyntges, also known as Geertje Pieters, to mix her paints, and trained her as a painter too. After van Oosterwijck died, Wyntges lived independently, supporting herself as a painter. Arnold Houbraken, an artist better known for his biographies of Dutch Golden Age painters, wrote about her, but considered her an amateur painter, overlooking the large sums paid for her work by high-profile collectors, including European royalty.
- August 20, 1841 – Maria Louise Pool born, American author, noted for sketches of New England life; published in periodicals like the New York Evening Post and the New York Tribune, then collected in book form.
- August 20, 1908 – Jeanne Machin Stern born, French screenwriter and translator who went to Germany as an au pair and French teacher, where she met Kurt Stern, and in 1932, they married in Paris, then went to Spain in 1934, then to Mexico in 1942, where they took part in the Free Germany Movement. They returned to Germany in 1947. She is known for Unbändiges Spanien, Das Leben beginnt, Stronger Than the Night, and Das Verurteile Dorf.
- August 20, 1919 – Noni Jabavu born as Helen Nontando Jabavu, one of the first Black South African women writers and journalists, and one of the earliest Black South African women to publish her autobiographies, The Ochre People and Drawn in Colour. She was a radio personality for the BBC, worked as a film technician, a semi-skilled engineer, and as an oxyacetylene welder working on bomber engine parts during WWII.
- August 20, 1936 – Míriam Colón born, American actress best known for her appearances on Broadway and on television, and the role of Mama Montana in the film Scarface. In the 1966, she founded and was the director of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York City. She was honored in 1993 with an Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theater, and President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2014. She died at age 80 of complications from a pulmonary infection in 2017.
- August 20, 1946 – Connie Chung born, American television journalist, the second woman to co-anchor a network evening news program, on CBS. During her nearly 50 year career, she has worked for NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC. She is on the list of Notable Chinese Americans in Journalism and the Media.
- August 20, 1955 – Agnes Chan born in Hong Kong, Chinese singer; television and radio presenter in Japan; Doctor of Philosophy, and professor at Japanese universities; essayist and novelist, noted for her series, We All Are People Who Live on the Earth. Since 1988, Chan has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and also supports the Japan Committee for UNICEF.
- August 20, 1955 – Janet Royall born, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, British Labour Co-operative Party politician and academic; Principal of Somerville College, Oxford since 2017; Leader of the House of Lords (2009-2010); became a member of the Privy Council in 2008, and Lord President of the Council (2008-2009); Lord Temporal of the House of Lords since 2004; head of the European Commission Office in Wales (2003).
- August 20, 1958 – Patricia Rozema born, Canadian film director-producer-writer; her credits include I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, Mansfield Park, When Night Is Falling, and Into the Forest.
- August 20, 1961 – Amanda S. Berry born, OBE; CEO of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) since 2000; BAFTA’s Director of Development and Events (1988-2000); Scottish Television Enterprises (1990-1997); London Weekend Television (LWT – 1989); Duncan Heath Associates (1983-1988).
- August 20, 1974 – Amy Adams born, American actress and producer, who has won two Golden Globes, six nominations for Academy Awards, and seven BAFTAs (British Academy Film Awards), and was executive producer on the TV mini-series Sharp Objects in 2018. She also works with underprivileged students at New York City's Ghetto Film School; is a supporter of the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that helps LGBT teens; has raised money for the brain cancer charities Snog and Headrush; and participated in a fundraiser to help sexually abused children. During the 2020 pandemic lockdown, she and Jennifer Garner launched #SaveWithStories to help parents deal with stress, and raise funds for children’s education online during the school closures.
- August 20, 1988 – Sarah R. Lotfi born, American filmmaker, noted for films inspired by historical figures and events, including the short Tudor Rose, and the feature-length films The Last Bogatyr and Menschen.
- August 20, 2015 – Vassiliki Thanou-Christophilou, president of the Greek Court of Cassation, and Greece’s most senior judge, briefly becomes the nation’s first woman prime minister, from August 27 to September 21, 2015, after Alexis Tsipras resigned over the latest German economic bailout proposal for the beleaguered nation.
- August 20, 2019 – In El Salvador, Evelyn Beatríz Hernández Cruz is freed for a second time, after being tried again for the charge of murder because she gave birth in a toilet to a stillborn baby. Hernández has always maintained her innocence, insisting that she did not realize when she was raped at age 17 that she had become pregnant, and that she lost consciousness during the birth. The judge in this trial concurred with the judge who had handled her previous appeal that there was insufficient evidence to convict. “Thank God, justice was served,” said Hernández outside the courthouse, surrounded by jubilant supporters, after the verdict was handed down. “I thank all of you who have supported me and thank everyone from around the world who has shown support.” In the last decade, 41 Salvadoran women have been freed as a result of dogged campaigning by both domestic and international human rights groups, including six women in 2018. At least 16 other women are serving up to 35 years in jail, and four more women are facing trial.
- August 20, 2020 – Aspiring mathematician Vitoria Mario is Portuguese but has lived in London for four years. She was awarded two A*s and an A in her A levels, and wanted to study at Warwick University. She was ineligible for government funding and the relatives she has been living with since her father’s death couldn’t afford to support her. So she started a GoFundMe page, with a goal of raising £24,000 for accommodation, £3,000 for equipment and £13,000 for general living costs including food, transport, gas and electricity. She wrote, “Though my story is not unique, my dream of becoming a mathematician is not only a chance at social mobility for my family and I, but to inspire people who have been in similar positions to aspire to be the best version of themselves and strive for their dreams despite gender/racial inequality, immigration issues and financial barriers.” A number of donations came in, but she was far from reaching her goal, until U.S. pop start Taylor Swift made a contribution of £23,373, writing: “Vitoria, I came across your story online and am so inspired by your drive and dedication to turning your dreams into reality. I want to gift you the rest of your goal amount. Good luck with everything you do! Love, Taylor.” Mario said she has not spoken to Swift but was keen to thank her because “she actually made my dream come true. I feel like at some points I was worrying too much about the money, what I have to do, if I have to look for a job, and now I can just do more maths, prepare myself for uni, so I can just be really prepared when it comes.”
- August 20, 2021 – Reem Alsalem of Jordan begins a three-year term as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, its causes and consequences. She holds a Masters in International Relations from the American University in Cairo, and a Masters in Human Rights Law from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. She is an independent consultant on gender issues, the rights of refugees and migrants, transitional justice and humanitarian response. Alsalem has consulted extensively for United Nations departments, agencies and programmes such as UN-Women, OHCHR, UNICEF and IOM, as well as for non-governmental organizations, think tanks and academia. She worked for UNHCR in 13 countries, planning, implementing, and monitoring programs to protect survivors of gender-based violence.
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- August 21, 1856 – Medora von Hoffman born, American heiress, whose father was a wealthy banker. In 1882, she married Antoine-Amédée de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Morès et de Montemaggiore. They traveled extensively, and she contracted an infectious disease in India, which affected her health for the rest of her life. In 1889, the Marquis, a virulent anti-Semite, gave speeches in Algeria claiming French and African Jews and the British were conspiring to conquer the entire Sahara Desert. In 1896, he set off on an expedition to meet with the Madhi, the Muslim leader fighting the British in the Sudan. French military intelligence found him an embarrassment, and had him assassinated by dissident Tuareg “guides” at the Berrefor well in the Algerian desert. The now-widowed Marquise de Morès, mother of three, divided her time between Paris and Cannes. During WWI, she turned her home into a hospital for wounded soldiers, and served as a nurse. Her health was further weakened by a leg injury while nursing the wounded. She died at age 65 in 1921.
- August 21, 1861 – Mary Lizzie Macomber born, American artist in the Pre-Raphaelite style. A large part of her work was lost in a fire at her studio in 1913.
- August 21, 1886 – Ruth Manning-Sanders born in Wales, British poet and author of children’s books and collections of folk and fairy tales, who published over 90 books. After their marriage in 1911, she and her husband, artist (not the actor) George Sanders, toured Britain in a horse-drawn caravan and worked in a circus, which she wrote about extensively. Noted for her A Book of series, from A Book of Giants (1962) to A Book of Magic Horses (1984).
- August 21, 1893 – Lili Boulanger born, French composer, first woman to win the Prix de Rome with her composition Faust et Hélène.
- August 21, 1897 – Constance McLaughlin Green born, American historian and author; won the Pulitzer Prize for History for Washington, Village and Capital, 1800-1878.
- August 21, 1916 – Consuelo Velázquez born, Mexican concert pianist, and singer-songwriter, best known for “Bésame Mucho.” She was also elected as a member of the Mexican Congress, served as president of the Society of Authors and Composers of Mexico (SACM), and was vice-president of the International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies (CISAC).
- August 21, 1921 – Jaymala Shiledar born, Indian Hindustani classical singer and stage actress, influential in reviving Marathi musical theatre.
- August 21, 1929 – Marie Severin born, American illustrator and comic book artist, known for her work for Marvel Comics and EC Comics, Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame inductee.
- August 21, 1933 – Dame Janet Baker born, British mezzo-soprano, noted for her acting ability, performances in Italian operas and in works by Benjamin Britten and Gustav Mahler.
- August 21, 1945 – Celia Brayfield born, English novelist, non-fiction writer, and cultural commentator; she wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times before the birth of her daughter in 1980, when she began work on her first book, a non-fiction work entitled Glitter: the Truth About Fame. She is the author of Pearls, White Ice, Getting Home, and Heartswap.
- August 21, 1951 – Yana Bland (née Mintoff) born, Maltese Labour politician, economist, and educator; she worked as a teacher in the United Kingdom, where she was active in the Socialist Workers Party. On her return to Malta, she was one of the founders of the Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region. She was an editor on four non-fiction books of collected works, Militarism in the Mediterranean, Health in the Mediterranean, Nobody Can Imagine Our Longing: Refugees and Immigrants in the Mediterranean, and In Search of Peace. In 1998, she was a founder and superintendent of the Katherine Anne Porter School in Wimberly, near Austin, Texas. She returned to Malta in 2012 to help her ailing father. In 2013, she ran for a seat in the Maltese House of Representatives, but was not elected.
- August 21, 1962 – Sister Dr Bernadette Porter born, British Roman Catholic nun, educator, and academic administrator. She held several posts at Roehampton University before serving as Vice Chancellor (1999-2004). She was appointed CBE in 2005, and is a member of the Reform Club, the first gentlemen’s club in London to accept women as equal members, beginning in 1981.
- August 21, 1968 – Laura Trevelyan born, BBC World News America anchor/correspondent based in New York City; BBC United Nations correspondent (2006-2009). She is the author of A Very British Family: The Trevelyans and Their World, and The Winchester: The Gun That Built An American Dynasty. Trevelyan became a U.S. citizen in 2016.
- August 21, 1975 – Alicia Witt born, American actress, singer-songwriter, and pianist. She was “discovered” as a child by director David Lynch, and appeared in several of his film and television projects. She played Zoey, the daughter of Cybill Shepherd’s character in the TV series Cybill (1995-1998). She has been in films made in the UK, South Africa, and Germany, and appeared on the London stage in Piano/Forte. She has also released several music albums, including Live at Rockwood, Revisionary History, and 15,000 Days. She sang the song she co-wrote with Ben Folds on the soundtrack for the movie Cold Turkey, in which she also played a lead character. In 2022, she went public with her diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer.
- August 21, 1998 – The paperback version of Kathryn Cullen duPont’s Encyclopedia of Women’s History in America is published. She is also the author of the biography Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Women’s Liberty; Women’s Rights on Trial; and Global Issues: Human Trafficking.
- August 21, 2008 – Swaziland Women’s Protest: Hundreds of women held protests in the capital of Swaziland against a shopping trip to Europe and the Middle East by nine of the king’s wives. As one of the poorest countries in the world, the protesters believed the money could be spent in a better way.
- August 21, 2019 – In the UK, anti-abortion activists lost a court of appeal challenge to an Ealing council’s decision to ban protesters from gathering outside a Marie Stopes clinic in west London. Judges dismissed an appeal against a ruling that the restrictions imposed by the council outside the local clinic were justified. The council’s public spaces protection order (PSPO) was the first to create a buffer zone around a clinic in the UK, which it imposed in April 2018 after reports of “intimidation, harassment and distress” by the Good Counsel Network (GCN) activists, which seeks to dissuade women from getting abortions. The GCN lawyers argued that the ban interfered with their rights under the European convention on human rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and freedom of assembly and association, and that PSPO was designed to protect local residents from antisocial behaviour, and clinic users were “one-off or occasional” visitors to the area. Ealing council argued that some users of the clinic who had abortions many years ago were still “significantly affected by their encounters with the activists.” The authority’s QC said the council received a petition signed by more than 3,500 people urging it to take action. The Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, Lady Justice King, and Lady Justice Nicola Davies unanimously dismissed their appeal, upholding an earlier decision in favour of Ealing by the high court. Julian Bell, leader of the Ealing council, said: “We’re delighted the court of appeal has decided to keep our safe zone in place to protect clinic users and local people from harassment and intimidation. Since we introduced the zone in April 2018, it has been working well and we have seen a dramatic reduction in activities having a detrimental effect and there has been a significant improvement to the quality of lives of local people. We hope today’s judgment will provide encouragement for other councils facing similar issues, but at the end of the day, this is a national issue that deserves a national solution. I’d call on the home secretary to introduce Ealing-style safe zones across the country so other communities and visitors can also be protected.”
- August 21, 2019 – Police in Madrid have arrested a 53-year-old Colombian man accused of filming the intimate parts of more than 500 women without their consent while they travelled on the Metro. The accused made the videos, a practice known as upskirting, using a mobile phone concealed in a backpack. Police say he then uploaded at least 283 of these videos on to pornographic sites where they were viewed millions of times. Police have identified 555 victims, some of them underage. The man is alleged to have been filming on a daily basis since at least the summer of 2018 when he first published the material. Police say he operated near local railway stations and supermarkets. He apparently then followed his victims and even introduced himself in an effort to get closer and obtain better-quality images. Police caught the man in the act while filming in the Metro. Police found a laptop and three hard drives at his home containing hundreds of videos. The accused’s own site had 3,519 subscribers and his videos had been viewed more than 1m times. Upskirting became a criminal offence in Britain in February 2019, following a campaign by the writer Gina Martin to have it outlawed after she had been upskirted at a music festival. Filming under a person’s clothing without their consent in the UK is now punishable by up to two years in prison. In Spain, the practice is categorised as sexual abuse and is also punishable with prison.
- August 21, 2020 – Since 2000, Nepal had made significant gains in the number of women giving birth in clinics and hospitals, contributing to major decreases in maternal and neonatal mortality. Between 2000-2019, the number of institutional births more than quadrupled, while maternal mortality declined by 76 percent, and newborn mortality declined by 62 percent. But according to a report published in the UK medical journal The Lancet, during Nepal’s four-month COVID-19 lockdown, the number of births in clinics and hospitals fell by over 50%, while the rate of neonatal deaths more than tripled, from 13 to 40 per 1,000 live births. Stillbirths and pre-term births also increased. “Services for women were shut down [during the lockdown] and those doctors were moved to serve Covid patients,” explained Dr Lhamo Sherpa, an epidemiologist and medical doctor, adding that women were “sent away by the hospitals, saying ‘we do not want to take in cases.’” The lockdown was aimed at providing authorities time to bolster the capacity of health care facilities. But the government response was poor, and the number of Covid-19 cases has been increasing since June, 2020.
- August 21, 2021 – The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325 in 2000, a groundbreaking initiative to change the perception of ‘gender’ as being a social issue, rather than a necessary part of what it takes to create peace, security, and prosperity, but women’s groups have been frustrated with the slow progress being made. Between 1992 and 2019, women served as only 6% of mediators, 6 % of signatories, and 13% of negotiators globally. The COVID-19 pandemic shone a harsh light on the full extent of gender inequality in contexts affected by conflicts, and increased the urgency of fostering gender-inclusive approaches to harness sustainable peace. Empowering women leaders to participate in peacebuilding is becoming increasingly crucial. Women who participate in peace processes tend to represent broader and more diverse constituencies, ensuring a range of views and interests are represented and peace processes are fully democratized. Digital technology shows promise for increasing women’s participation. Amera Malek is a Syrian activist familiar with digital technologies and their use to enhance women’s voices and gather support. “We see that women are more likely to participate in online discussions because they can do so anonymously and flexibly, balancing their care burdens,” says Malek. “Yet, we must ensure these methods are underpinned by robust gender analysis. We must continue to leverage the huge potential of digital tools for constituency-building while ensuring that existing discrepancies in accessing digital tools do not further inequalities.”
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- August 22, 1762 – Ann Smith Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s sister-in-law, becomes the first American woman newspaper editor, for The Newport Mercury.
- August 22, 1848 – Emma Smith DeVoe born, a leading suffragist in the early 20th century, who led a successful campaign to win the right to vote for the women of the state of Washington. DeVoe had supported woman suffrage from childhood, but when she moved to Tacoma, Washington with her husband in 1905, she found a near-defunct Washington Equal Suffrage Association, and revitalized it, with a campaign that became known as the Washington method. She urged her fellow workers to be “good natured and cheerful,” recruit more women, and engage voters one-on-one. She organized a statewide canvass to determine how every voter stood on the question of suffrage. Her volunteers sent out mass mailings of penny postcards, and put up posters. DeVoe urged labor and temperance organizations to support the suffrage movement quietly, to avoid alienating big business and the brewers. She even distributed a cookbook throughout the state to prove suffragists did not want to change women’s traditional role as homemakers – but her cookbook had “Votes for Women” on the back cover. The voters approved the amendment by almost 64%. After this victory, she helped campaigns in other states, teaching the Washington method, and also organized the National Council of Women Voters, the first national organization of voting women, which studied issues to educate voters on a non-partisan basis. It held itself apart from party politics, working for equality of opportunity for all, and for the protection of children and families. The NCWV eventually merged with the National League of Women Voters.
- August 22, 1860 – Eleonore Reuss of Köstritz born, Tsaritsa of Bulgaria as the second wife of Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria; she worked as a nurse during the Balkan and First World Wars.
- August 22, 1861 – Mary Elizabeth Wood born, librarian and missionary to China, founder of the first library school in China.
- August 22, 1868 – Maud Powell born, American violinist, first American violinist to achieve international rank; awarded Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in January 2014.
- August 22, 1881 – Agnes Pelton born in Germany, American symbolist painter who was called the Desert Transcendentalist. Her father died in 1881, and she and her mother moved to the Netherlands and then Switzerland before arriving in New York in 1888, where her mother ran the Pelton School of Music in Brooklyn for 30 years. Due to poor health, Agnes was educated at home by her mother. Pelton studied at the Pratt Institute from 1895 to 1900. After graduating, she studied landscapes with one of her instructors, Arthur Wesley Dow, and worked as his assistant at his summer school. Dow also taught Georgia O’Keeffe. Her first exhibition in 1912 attracted the attention of Walt Kuhn, who invited her to exhibit two paintings at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, the first large exhibition of modern art in the U.S., a landmark in American art history. The show later traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Copley Society of Art in Boston. Pelton visited art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos, New Mexico in 1919, and also visited several Pueblo communities in the American Southwest. Her work changed significantly. After her mother died in 1921, she gave up her studio in New York, and traveled to Hawaii, Beirut, Syria, Georgia, and California. In 1932, she settled in Cathedral City, California, and painted the desert which enthralled her, but also incorporated her spiritual and philosophical beliefs in her work. In 1938, Pelton was a co-founder and the first president of the Transcendental Painting Group. She died in Cathedral City at age 79 in 1961.
- August 22, 1893 – Dorothy Parker born, American poet, author, screenwriter, and critic, known for her satirical wit; member of the famed New York literary group, the Algonquin Round Table; nominated twice for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, as co-author of the 1937 version of A Star is Born, and co-author for 1947’s Smash-up. She won the O. Henry Award in 1929 for “Big Blonde.” In her will she left her literary estate to Martin Luther King Jr., a man she had never met, but greatly admired. Upon his death, his family donated the bequest to the NAACP. After Parker died in 1967, her ashes were moved around unclaimed for 17 years, including several years in her attorney’s filing cabinet drawer. In 1988, the NAACP asked for them, and placed them in a memorial garden at its Baltimore headquarters, under a plaque which reads, “Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph she suggested, 'Excuse my dust'. This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988.”
- August 22, 1900 – Lisy Fischer born in Britain, Swiss pianist and child prodigy from a talented Jewish family. She gave her first piano recital in Geneva at age eleven, and studied in Paris and Berlin. As a teenager, Fischer gave concerts and appeared as a soloist in Germany and Switzerland, and was awarded the Professor Gustav Hollaender Medal in 1920. She married Ernest Simson of Düsseldorf in 1923. Many of her concerts were aired on Swiss Radio. In her later years, after the death of her husband, she lived in England with her daughter, and died there at the age of 98.
- August 22, 1902 – Leni Riefenstahl born, Nazi film producer-director, noted for Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) and Olympia, two of the most technically innovative and effective propaganda films ever made. She was arrested after WWII and classified as a “fellow traveler and Nazi sympathizer” and detained in Allied prison camps (1945-1948), which ended her directing career. She spent much of the rest of her life taking still photographs, publishing books on the Nuba peoples of Sudan, and underwater photography.
- August 22, 1918 – Mary McGrory born, American journalist and columnist, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on the Watergate scandal. She was a fierce opponent of the Viet Nam War, and her name was on Richard Nixon’s infamous enemies list. She began her career as a journalist in 1947 at the Washington Star, and rose to prominence because of her coverage of the McCarthy hearings in 1954, in which she likened McCarthy to a neighborhood bully. She covered both John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy extensively, and was part of the press corps that traveled with RFK during his 1968 presidential campaign, which ended when he was assassinated in Los Angeles. The day after the Star went out of business in 1981, she went to work for The Washington Post. In 1995, she was honored with The Four Freedoms Award for Freedom of Speech.
- August 22, 1921 – Sotiria Bellou born, Greek singer and performer, known for rebetiko style music. She was also a member of the Greek Resistance against the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. She was caught by the Nazis, tortured, and put in prison. In 1944, she participated in the Dekemvriana as a member of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS). During the civil war she supported the leftists and she was caught at least once and kept in detention. Extreme Rightists never forgave her for supporting the leftists, and later six members of the royalist group X showed up at a club where she was performing with other musicians, and demanded she sing a famous right wing song. When she refused, they beat her, called her insulting names, and threatened to kill her. Not one of the men onstage with her or in the audience came to her defense.
- August 22, 1922 – Theoni V. Aldredge born in Greece, American costume designer; won three Tony Awards, 11 other Tony nominations, an Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 1975 Oscar for Best Costume Design for The Great Gatsby.
- August 22, 1925 – Honor Blackman born, English actress best known for her work on the television series The Avengers (1962-1964), in the sitcom The Upper Hand (1990-1996), and as Pussy Galore in the Bond film Goldfinger, but she also worked in British theatre. She developed a one-woman stage show, Word of Honor, which premiered in 2006. Politically, she was a liberal republican (against having a monarchy). She declined a CBE in 2002, feeling that it would be hypocritical, given her views on the monarchy, to accept. She said of Margaret Thatcher, “She was a powerful figure, but she did damn all for empowering women. She didn’t surround herself with any women whatsoever, or encourage women to come into politics or do anything in particular. She could have been a quite wonderful role model.” Blackman died at age 94 in April 2020.
- August 22, 1935 – Annie Proulx born, American journalist and author, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. National Book Award for her novel The Shipping News and the PEN/Faulkner Award for the novel Postcards.
- August 22, 1949 – Diana Nyad born, American long-distance swimmer, author, journalist, and motivational speaker. She broke records, including a 45-year old record for circumnavigating Manhattan Island, and setting a non-stop distance record in 1979, swimming from Bimini to Florida without a wetsuit, which still stands. After four failed attempts, on August 31, 2013, at the age of 64, she began her fifth attempt to swim 110 miles from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida. About 53 hours later, she reached Key West on September 2, 2013. She is the author of four books, Other Shores, Basic Training for Women, Boss of Me: The Keyshawn Johnson Story, and Find a Way: One Wild and Precious Life. Nyad has also written for The New York Times, Newsweek, and has been a regular contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. She has spoken frankly about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child, and considers it a motivating factor in her determination while swimming. Nyad is openly lesbian and an atheist.
- August 22, 1950 – Althea Gibson becomes the first black tennis player accepted at a U.S. national competition.
- August 22, 1959 – Pia Gjellerup born, Danish solicitor and Social Democrat politician; Director, Danish National Centre for Public Sector Innovation; Member of Folketinget (Parliament) since 1987; Finance Minister (2000-2001); Minister of Trade and Industry (1998-2000); Justice Minister (1993).
- August 22, 1964 – Diane Setterfield born, British novelist and academic; noted for her Gothic romance The Thirteenth Tale, and a ghost story, Bellman & Black.
- August 22, 1973 – Kristen Wiig born, American comedian, writer, actress and producer; began her career as a member of improvisational comedy group, The Groundlings in the early 2000s. She was a cast member of Saturday Night Live in 2005, and appeared in several films, including Knocked Up and Paul. She co-wrote the screenplay and starred in the 2011 hit comedy film Bridesmaids, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actress and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
- August 22, 1977 – Keren Cytter born, Israeli visual and performance artist, and novelist; I Was the Good and He Was the Bad and the Ugly.
- August 22, 1986 – Kerr-McGee agrees to pay the estate of whistleblower Karen Silkwood $1.36 million to settle her nuclear contamination lawsuit, which had been going through appeals for 10 years.
- August 22, 2018 – In the UK, research has found that girls achieving top grades in science and maths at the GCSE examinations, taken at the end of compulsory education (year 11), are deterred from continuing to a higher level with such subjects, including physics, because they are affected by low confidence, an absence of peers in the classroom, and what society considers “feminine.” As hundreds of thousands of pupils await the results of their GCSE exams, a study published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, suggests that only dramatic intervention will change girls’ low take-up of physics and maths at more advanced levels. The IFS study notes that while girls have long outperformed boys at GCSE level, including in the science, technology, and maths (subjects known collectively as STEM), fewer girls go on to take maths and physics at A-level, and fewer continue with those subjects at a higher education level. Girls are therefore missing out on potentially highly paid careers. Women with maths degrees earn 13% more than other women graduates five years after university; women with degrees in economics, which require high levels of maths ability, earn nearly 20% more. A pilot program even offered high-scoring girls financial scholarships in return for studying physics or maths A-levels, but the rewards made little difference. Physicist Jess Wade and Chemist Claire Murray campaign to debunk myths about girls, “This isn’t because of ability – girls outperform boys at GCSE and A-level – or enthusiasm, but because we exist in a world that tells children that girls and boys are good at different things. We meet too many girls who, despite being brilliant, are not confident, and are unsure of their own potential to become scientists.”
- August 22, 2020 – A CDC summary of reports from 13 U.S. states covering the period from March 1, 2020 to August 21, 2020, from of maternal and birth outcomes of hospitalized pregnant women with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 reveals that of 598 women who contracted COVID-19 while pregnant, 55% were asymptomatic at admission to the hospital; severe illness occurred among pregnant women symptomatic when admitted, including intensive care unit admissions (16%), mechanical ventilation (8%), and death (1%). None of the women who died were asymptomatic at admission. 87% of the women were in their third trimester at admission. Pregnancy losses occurred for 2% of pregnancies completed during COVID-19-associated hospitalizations, and were experienced by both symptomatic and asymptomatic women. 28% of the women were age 15-24 and 25% of this group were symptomatic at admission. 53% were age 25-24, and 53% of them were symptomatic at admission. 19% were age 35-49, and 22% of them were symptomatic at admission.
- August 22, 2021 – French President Emmanuel Macron announced that Josephine Baker will be entered into the Panthéon mausoleum in November, 2021, the first Black woman to be remembered in the hallowed Parisian monument. Baker, the famed American-born dancer, singer, and actress, became a sensation in Paris as a headliner at the Folies Bergère in the 1920s and 1930s, then renounced her U.S. citizenship when she married French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. During WWII, she was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency, as an "honorable correspondent." She socialized with the Germans, Vichy bureaucrats, and high ranking Japanese and Italian officials to gather information. She and her entourage went to French colonies in North Africa, and made tours of Spain. After the war, she was awarded the Resistance Medal, the Croix de Guere, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. When she died in 1975, she became the only American-born woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral.
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- August 23, 1817 – Emily Chubbuck Judson born, author and poet under pen-names Fanny Forrester and Emily Judson; married missionary and went to Burma (1846-1851), but returned to the U.S. after her husband died; she died of consumption in 1854; noted for An Olio of Domestic Verses.
- August 23, 1838 – First graduating class from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, South Hadley, Massachusetts, one of the earliest colleges for women.
- August 23, 1843 – Lillie Hitchcock Coit born, ‘Firebelle Lil’ was wealthy socialite fascinated by firefighting, who became a mascot as a teen, and then an honorary member of Engine Company No. 5, often riding along to fires, sometimes scandalously wearing trousers, or when the engine company was in a parade; she left one-third of her estate to the City of San Francisco, which used the bequest to build the landmark Coit Tower, and to place a statue of three firefighters in Washington Square Park.
- August 23, 1847 – Sarah Frances Whiting born, American physicist, astronomer, and first professor of physics at Wellesley College (1876-1916); Whiting was quick to explore the newest techniques being applied to astronomy, and became the first director of the college’s Whitin Observatory. Annie Jump Cannon was among her notable students, one of the most effective Harvard “computers,” a group of women who worked on completing the Henry Draper Catalogue, an ambitious project to map and define every star in the sky to a photographic magnitude of around 9. Whiting also wrote numerous articles for Popular Astronomy, and became a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1883.
- August 23, 1899 – Grace Chu born, cookbook author and teacher, emigrated from Shanghai in 1920 with a scholarship from Wellesley College, taught Chinese cooking, wrote Madame Chu’s Cooking School Cookbook in 1975.
- August 23, 1900 – Malvina Reynolds born to Jewish immigrant parents who were socialist and peace activists. She was an American folk/blues singer-songwriter and political activist, best known for her songs, “Little Boxes” and “What Have They Done to the Rain.” Reynolds sang her songs frequently at gatherings for liberal causes. She opposed nuclear weapons, campaigned for civil rights, but also wrote several songs for children, including “Morningtown Ride.” She later contributed several songs and materials to Sesame Street, and made occasional appearances on the show. She earned a doctorate in English from the University of California, Berkeley (1938), and later returned to UC-Berkeley to study music theory. Reynolds was an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, which was founded in 1972.
- August 23, 1902 – Fannie Farmer opens Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery in Boston Massachusetts.
- August 23, 1908 – Hannah Frank born in Glasgow to Russian Jewish immigrants, Scottish artist and sculptor; she was an illustrator for GUM, the student magazine of Glasgow University even after graduation, while she continued her studies at the Glasgow School of Art, where she began clay modeling, and focused more on sculpting than painting. She often donated pieces of her work to fundraisers for Jewish organizations in Glasgow. She was a member of the Glasgow branch of Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her work was exhibited by the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute, and the Royal Academy in London.
- August 23, 1911 – Betty Robinson born in Illinois, American athlete and Olympic champion; in 1928, when she was 16 years old, in her second race she equaled the women’s world record running 100 meters, but it was not officially recognized because it was deemed ‘wind-aided.’ At the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, only her third 100 meter competition, she again equaled the world record, winning gold. She was the first Olympic champion in the women’s 100 meters event, since only a few events for women had been in the 1924 Paris Olympics, and the inclusion of “strenuous” events for women like the 100 meters were still heavily disputed among officials. With the American 4×100 meters relay team, Robinson earned a silver team medal. In 1931, Robinson nearly died in a plane crash near Oak Forest, Illinois, so severely injured that the man who found her thought she was beyond saving, and took her to the undertaker, where she was found to be still alive, so she was sent on to the local infirmary, which had very limited facilities. She did survive, but spent the next six months in a wheelchair, and it was another two years before she could walk normally. She missed the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. Robinson did make the American team in time for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, but because she was unable to kneel for the 100 meters start, she was only able to take part in the 4 X 100 meters relay. The German women’s team was heavily favored to win, but their baton dropped in a handoff, and Robinson took the lead, handing off to Helen Stephens for the final lap, and the Americans took the gold. She retired from competition after the Berlin Olympics, and became an official for athletic events. She died at age 87, suffering from cancer and Alzheimer’s.
- August 23, 1922 – Nazik Al-Malaika born to a feminist poet mother and academic father; Iraqi poet, one of the most influential women poets in Iraq. Notable as the first Arabic poet to use free verse, in her ground-breaking second book of poetry, Sparks and Ashes. Her poems covered nationalism, social and feminist issues, honour killings and alienation. She left Iraq with her husband and family in 1970 after the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party came to power, moving to Kuwait, until it was invaded by Saddam Hussein in 1990, and then to Egypt, where she lived for the rest of her life in Cairo. Her other three books of poetry are And the sea changes its colour, Bottom of the Wave, and The Night’s Lover.
- August 23, 1941 – Onora O’Neill born, Baroness O’Neill of Bengrave, philosopher, academic, and crossbench member of the House of Lords; President of the British Academy (2005-2009), the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences; Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge (1992-2006); founding President of the British Philosophical Association (BPA); author of numerous works on political philosophy, ethics, international justice, bioethics, the importance of trust, consent and respect for autonomy in a just society, and the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.
- August 23, 1944 – Antonia C. Novello born, American physician and public health administrator; she joined the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps in 1979, serving in various capacities. She was appointed as Surgeon General of the United States (1990-1993), the first woman and first Hispanic Surgeon General. Novello later served as Commissioner of Health for the State of New York (1999- 2006).
- August 23, 1949 – Vicky Leandros born as Vassiliki Papathanasiou, Greek singer with an international career, but best known in Europe, record producer and politician. She was elected as town councilor of the Greek habour town of Piraeus in 2006, and also served as Deputy Mayor until 2008. She has several gold and platinum records, and sings in German, English, French, and Spanish as well as Greek.
- August 23, 1954 – Halimah Yacob born, Singapore Independent politician; President of Singapore; National Singapore University Chancellor since 2017; Speaker of the Parliament of Singapore (2013-2017); Member of Parliament (2001-2017).
- August 23, 1956 – Valgerd Svarstad Haugland born, Norwegian teacher, politician, and civil servant. Governor of Akershus since 2011; Minister of Culture (2001-2005); leader of the Christian Democratic Party (1995-2004); Minister of Children and Family Affairs (1997-2000).
- August 23, 1958 – Roberta Rudnick born, American earth scientist and professor of geology at University of California, Santa Barbara; world expert on the continental crust and lithosphere; fellow of the American Geophysical Union since 2005, and member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2010; awarded the 2012 Dana Medal by the Mineralogical Society of America; editor-in-chief of Chemical Geology (2000-2010).
- August 23, 1960 – Helen Rees Leahy born, UK Senior Lecturer and Director of the Centre for Museology, University of Manchester. She was previously a curator and museum director for over 12 years, and has organised numerous exhibitions of fine art and design. Leahy’s written work covers topics from relating to national identity, art collecting, the art market, and art criticism. She has also addressed practices of individual and institutional collecting, in both historical and contemporary contexts, including issues of patronage, display and interpretation. Noted for Museum Bodies: The Politics and Practices of Visiting and Viewing and the four-volume The International Handbooks of Museum Studies, which she co-authored with Ruth B. Phillips.
- August 23, 1971 – Gretchen Whitmer born, Democratic politician; Governor of Michigan since January, 2019; Ingham County Prosecutor (2016 – finished the term of the previous prosecutor after he was arrested on charges of involvement with a prostitute and willful neglect of duty); Minority Leader of the Michigan Senate (2011-2015); Member of the Michigan Senate, 23rd district (2006-2015); Member of the Michigan House of Representatives (2001-2006).
- August 23, 1983 – Athena Farrokhzad born in Iran, Iranian-Swedish poet, playwright, translator, literary critic, and controversial host of the Sverges Radio show Sommar since 2014; joint winner of the Karin Boye Literary Prize in 2013.
- August 23, 1986 – Mallory McMorrow born, Democratic politician; member of the Michigan state senate since January 2019. On April 19, 2022, she made a remarkable speech blasting Lana Theis, a Republican state senator who had accused McMorrow by name of grooming and sexualizing children. It was a ploy in Theis' fundraising email, ostensibly alluding to McMorrow's opposition to legislation restricting the discussion of gender and sexuality in schools, but the subject line was “Groomers outraged by my invocation,” referencing Theis’ self-serving “prayer” for the safety of children from pedophiles by passing a proposed bill to ban discussion of gender and sexuality in schools, like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. McMorrow and other Democrats had walked out in disgust during her invocation. McMorrow declared, “Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won't.”
- August 23, 2018 – Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman sentenced to five years in jail in Iran for spying, was temporarily released from prison for the first time in over two years. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose plight left a shadow hanging over Iran-UK relations, was given a three-day furlough, taking her and her family by surprise. She was briefly reunited with her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who has been in the care of her Iranian family since she was 22 months old. The Iranian move came ahead of critical decisions by the European Union on the extent to which it will resist U.S. sanctions designed to curb European investment in Iran, including the purchase of Iranian oil. In March 2020, she and 85,000 other Iranian prisoners were temporarily released from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic. She was required to wear an ankle tag, effectively putting her under house arrest at her parents’ home in Tehran. In April 2021, she was given an additional one-year sentence, on top of the original five-year sentence. Her family's legal team has written to the UN, asking for its working group on arbitrary detention to "engage" with the authorities in both Iran and the UK about Nazanin. Lawyers from Redress and Doughty Street Chambers have asked the working group to comment on Nazanin's use as diplomatic leverage and acknowledge that her treatment is "tantamount to torture."
- August 23, 2020 – Statistics aren’t always our best guide. To determine where women get the most equal treatment in American society, WalletHub compared the 50 U.S. states in three categories: education/health, political empowerment, and workplace environment. They ranked Hawaii number one overall, followed by Maine, Nevada, and New Mexico. WalletHub rated Texas, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah as the bottom four. The problem with their rating system was that a bad rating or good rating in a single category could drastically affect a state’s overall ranking. In Ms. Magazine, a 2020 report from the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security was very different, with Hawaii ranked tenth, Maine ninth, and Nevada wasn’t in either the top twelve or the bottom twelve. New Mexico was rated 39th. Ms. rated Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana as the worst states.
- August 23, 2020 – Signs featuring Kamala Harris have appeared all over Chennai, the village where her grandfather was born, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Harris boosted her fanbase all over India, but especially in Chennai, when she used the Tamil word chithis (an affectionate word for ‘aunties’ in the Tamil language) during her speech accepting the Democratic nomination for U.S. vice president. She said her mother had “raised us to know and be proud of our Indian heritage. Family is my uncles, my aunts and my chithis.” She is the first candidate of Indian descent to be on a U.S. presidential ticket. Her Tamil Nadu family is immensely proud of her – most of them traveled to Washington DC for her inauguration as a U.S. Senator in 2017.
- August 23, 2021 – During the aftermath of the earthquake that struck Haiti on August 14, Human Rights Watch expressed concerns about the potential for human rights violations amid the chaos and shortages of medical personnel, medicines, and supplies. “The basic medical needs are so great that there is a risk that respect for human rights will be seen as an optional, unaffordable luxury, but we’ve been down that road before, and it left women and girls open to violence, abuse, and preventable deaths,” said Amanda Klasing, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Given the vast knowledge of what went wrong, it would be intolerable and inhumane to once again forget and ignore human rights in this response effort.” After the 201o Haitian earthquake, the safety and health needs of women and girls were not adequately addressed. Lack of safe conditions in the camps exacerbated the impact of sexual violence, while it was nearly impossible to get post-rape care. Some women reported trading sex for food, due to shortages. In the area hardest hit by the 2021 quake, four medical facilities were destroyed, and many others were damaged, leaving many of the injured, as well as pregnant women, with little or no medical help.
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- August 24, 1552 – Lavinia Fontana born, Italian painter of the Bolognese Mannerist school; considered the first woman professional artist; she supported the family, her husband took care of the house and kids; she was among the first women artists to depict nude women, in spite of the social unacceptability of women being exposed to nudity, and the art academy barring women from viewing any nude body, a crucial part of an artist’s training. Art historians have long debated whether family members modeled for her.
- August 24, 1556 – Sophie Brahe born, Danish horticulturalist, genealogist, and student of chemistry and medicine; assisted her brother, astronomer Tycho Brahe, with observing and recording. She spent her last years writing up the genealogy of Danish noble families, publishing the first major version of Det Kongelige Bibliotek in 1626, and made later additions. It is still considered a major source of early history on Danish nobility.
- August 24, 1862 – Zonia Baber, born as Mary Arizona Baber, American geographer, geologist, activist, and teacher, known for her development of teaching methods for geology. After graduation from a Normal School as a teacher, she worked as a private school principal (1886-1888), then became an instructor and head of the Geography Department (1890-1899) at Cook County Normal School (now Chicago State University). While there, she designed a school desk specifically for use by students studying geography and other sciences. Baber was an associate professor and head of geography and geology in the Department of Education at the University of Chicago (1901-1902), and was also principal of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. She continued her own studies, and earned her Bachelor of Science in 1904 from the University of Chicago. As a teacher, she focused on field work and first-hand experience, but she also chaired a committee of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom to review textbooks, and recommend eliminating outdated or inappropriate phrases and concepts to stop the perpetuation of prejudice. In 1898, she co-founded the Geographic Society of Chicago, served as a term as its President and was active in the society for 50 years. Baber was an anti-imperialist, a feminist and suffragist, and a member of the executive committee of the Chicago branch of the NAACP. In 1926, she traveled with a WILPF delegation to Haiti and Puerto Rico, and advocated for extending suffrage to the women of Puerto Rico. Co-author with Wallace Atwood of Geography: The Elementary School Teacher and Course of Study.
- August 24, 1890 – Jean Rhys born as Ella Rees Williams born; Dominican-English author of novels and short stories; Wide Sargasso Sea.
- August 24, 1900 – Maria Zubreeva born, Russian Soviet realist (Leningrad school) painter and portraitist, graphic artist, and designer.
- August 24, 1904 – Ida Cook born, English civil servant, novelist under the pen name Mary Burchell, and Jewish rescuer. With her sister, Mary Louise Cook, and funded mainly by her writing, helped 29 Jews escape from the Nazis during the late 1930s. The Cook sisters also used their love of opera as a cover for making numerous trips into Germany to smuggle valuables out (hidden amongst their going-to-the-opera finery, which they sewed themselves) for Jewish families, after Jews were severely restricted by law in what money and valuables they could take with them as they left Germany; ‘Mary Burchell’ was known for her romance novels; as Ida Cook, she published We Followed Our Stars, the story of the sisters’ rescue operation; in 1965, the Cook sisters were honored as Righteous Gentiles by Yad Vashem in Israel.
- August 24, 1919 – Tosia Altman born, Polish Jewish courier and smuggler for Hashomer Hatzair, a secular Socialist Zionist youth movement, and for the Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB), during the WWII German occupation of Poland and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Volunteering as a courier, she passed herself off as a Polish gentile using false papers, and risked her life to visit ghettos, first to organize underground education and later to warn them of the impending mass extermination of Jews. After formation of the ŻOB, she became their liaison with the Home Army, smuggling weapons and explosives into the Warsaw Ghetto, and establishing a ŻOB group in the Kraków Ghetto. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, she was a courier between bunkers, and was one of only six to escape from the command bunker when the Germans discovered it, in spite of head and leg wounds. Altman was captured two weeks later, when the factory she was hiding in caught fire. Severely burned, she was handed over to the Gestapo, and died two days later, at the age of 23.
- August 24, 1926 – Nancy Spero born, American visual artist, anti-war and feminist activist, noted for epic-scale works, including a linear mosaic in NY subway walls at Lincoln Center station, and collage on paper; member of the Art Workers Coalition, Women Artists in Revolution, and Ad Hoc Committee of Women Artists; founding member of A.I.R. Gallery (Artists in Residence).
- August 24, 1929 – Betty Dodson born, American sex educator, artist and author, pioneer in women’s sexual liberation; noted for Bodysex Basics, Orgasms for Two, and Sex for One.
- August 24, 1932 – Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly nonstop across the U.S., from Los Angeles California to Newark New Jersey in just over 19 hours.
- August 24, 1936 – Antonia Duffy born, uses pen name A. S. Byatt, English novelist and poet; Angels and Insects, Babel Tower.
- August 24, 1937 – Susan Sheehan born, American author; won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for her landmark book on mental illness and the mental-health system, Is There No Place on Earth for Me?; staff writer for The New Yorker since the 1960s.
- August 24, 1940 – Francine Lalonde born, Canadian member of the House of Commons (1993-2011 - for two different districts); campaigned for Assisted Suicide/Death With Dignity bill.
- August 24, 1942 – Karen Uhlenbeck born, American mathematician and a founder of modern geometric analysis. Currently a visiting senior research scholar at Princeton University, a visiting associate at the Institute for Advanced Study, and a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she had held the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair. In 2019, she became the first woman to be awarded the Abel Prize, widely viewed as the mathematics equivalent of a Nobel Prize, for work which “led to some of the most dramatic advances in mathematics in the last 40 years.” Her research “inspired a generation of mathematicians,” according to François Labourie of the University of Côte d’Azur in France. “She wanders around and finds new things that nobody has found before.” Author of Mathematicians: An Outer View of the Inner World. Later in 2019, she won the Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, for her long-lasting influence in geometric topology and analysis, and for her mentorship of young people and women in mathematics.
- August 24, 1945 – Ronee Blakley born, singer-songwriter, actor, producer; women’s rights activist.
- August 24, 1950 – Edith Spurlock Sampson becomes the first African-American to be a U.S. delegate to the U.N., and served until 1953. She was a lawyer and judge, and one of the first black members of the National Association of Women Lawyers.
- August 24, 1952 – Marion Bloem born, Indonesian-Dutch writer and filmmaker; author of Geen gewoon Indisch meisje (No Ordinary Indo Girl) and as director of the feature film Ver van familie (Far from Family).
- August 24, 1959 – Meg Munn born, Deputy Chair of the Board of Governors of Sheffield Hallam University, and Chair of the British Council’s Society Advisory Group; international consultant on governance, including parliamentary processes gender, political party development, gender mainstreaming and women in leadership, working with organizations such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women; British Labour Member of Parliament (2001-2015); advocate for women in STEM and other non-traditional careers.
- August 24, 1965 – Marlee Matlin born, American actress, author, and deaf activist. She is best known for playing Sarah Norman in the 1986 film Children of a Lesser God, winning an Oscar for Best Actress, the only deaf winner to date in Academy Award history. She lost all hearing in her right ear and 80% of the hearing in her left ear at the age of 18 months due to illness and fevers. In her autobiography I'll Scream Later, she suggests that her hearing loss may have been due to a genetically malformed cochlea. She is the only member of her family who is deaf. She made her stage debut at age seven, as Dorothy in an International Center on Deafness and the Arts (ICODA) children's theatre production of The Wizard of Oz. Henry Winkler later discovered her during one of her ICODA theater performances, which led to her casting in the film of Children of a Lesser God. She appeared in the television movies Bridge to Silence and Against Her Will: The Carrie Buck Story. She played recurring roles on The West Wing and My Name is Earl, and as a series regular on Picket Fences and Quantico. In 2002, she published her first novel, Deaf Child Crossing, followed a sequel, Nobody’s Perfect, in 2007. She is an active supporter of Easter Seals, the Children Affected by AIDS Foundation, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and VSA arts. Matlin is also a member of the Red Cross Celebrity Cabinet, and a prominent member of the National Association of the Deaf.
- August 24, 1972 – Ava DuVernay born, American producer, director, screenwriter, and film distributor; the first African American woman to win the Sundance Film Festival directing award, in 2012 for Middle of Nowhere; director of the feature film Selma, which was nominated for an Academy award as Best Picture 2014, and the film of A Wrinkle in Time; creator and producer of the TV series, Queen Sugar.
- August 24, 1988 – Kelly Lee Owens born, Welsh electronic musician, composer, and producer. Her first album was released to critical praise in 2017, and her second album, Inner Song, came out in 2020, reaching #3 on the UK Dance Chart. Known for the songs “Uncertain” and “Bird.”
- August 24, 2018 – Tom Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the Obama administration, was placed under arrest for alleged forcible touching, sex abuse, and harassment. Allegations against Frieden were levied by a longtime friend of Frieden and his wife, who reported that in October 2017 at his Brooklyn home, he had grabbed her buttocks without her consent. Frieden surrendered to Brooklyn police. President Barack Obama had appointed him as head of the CDC in 2009, and Frieden served until he resigned when Donald Trump took office in 2017. In June, 2019, Frieden pled guilty to the lesser charge of disorderly contact. At the time of the incident, he was the New York City health commissioner. He could have been sentenced to up to a year in jail if he had been tried on the original charges against him. The judge ordered Frieden to avoid contact for a year with the woman who reported him.
- August 24, 2020– On Mother’s Day in the Middle East in 2019, the bullet-ridden body of her son was sent home to Janna Ezat. Her son, Hussein Al-Umari, was 35 years old when he and 50 other Muslims at prayer at Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, were killed in an attack by an Australian terrorist, a self-professed white supremacist. As people ran for their lives or lay dead on the floor, Al Umari had rushed towards the shooter shouting at him to stop. On this day, a year and a half later, Janna Ezat came face-to-face for the first time with her son’s killer at his trial. She had written down what she wanted to say, but instead, she spoke directly to him: “I have decided to forgive you, Mr Tarrant, because I don’t have hate, I don’t have revenge. The damage is done. Hussein will never be here.” The terrorist had sat impassively behind glass, listening to testimony by bereaved relatives or survivors who were only a few feet away from where he was sitting. Janna Ezat, looking directly in his eyes, continued, “I have only one choice: to forgive you.” He nodded his head, the only acknowledgment he gave to any of the witnesses. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, the first terrorism conviction in New Zealand’s history. The shootings prompted New Zealand to pass stricter gun laws and buy back certain weapons from owners. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said upon hearing of his sentence, "Today I hope is the last where we have any cause to hear or utter the name of the terrorist."
- August 24, 2021 – The League of Women Voters, in partnership with Black Leaders Organizing for Communities, Voces del La Frontera, and three individual voters, have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin challenging Wisconsin’s state legislative map, which the 2020 Census revealed to have unequally populated districts. The suit asks the court to strike down the current maps as unconstitutional and implement new maps that do not violate the rights of voters, given the likelihood the legislature and governor are unable to agree on new maps. “It is imperative that the Census 2020 data is transformed into fair, nonpartisan maps,” says Debra Cronmiller, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin's executive director. “Our legislators must draw fair maps that represent everyone – no matter their race, background, zip code, or income – to ensure a representative government. For over 100 years the League has defended voters, and the fight for fair maps is an extension of that mission. We are proud to stand with our partners in this important fight.”
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Nature’s Hard-Working Single Moms:
Hummingbirds
Female hummingbirds do all the work of nest-building, raising, and teaching their young to fly. Unlike many other birds, she won’t select a helpful mate and relocate to his territory. There is simply too much competition for food, and a mate would eat more than he could provide for the offspring. Instead, the female establishes her own home range and mates with a male in the vicinity. After mating, he moves on, leaving the mom to raise the offspring alone. After impregnation, hummingbird moms-to-be embark upon nest building. First, she’ll collect sticky bits of spider web and use it to adhere a leaf or other flat plant to a tree branch. From there, she builds up the sides of her nest with soft supple materials: grasses, mosses, feathers, dryer lint, and more spider web. It takes the female hummingbird hundreds of trips over a two-week period to accumulate what she needs to construct a safe comfortable haven for her chicks, a haven that expands as the chicks grow, thanks to the elasticity of spider webbing. When the nest is complete, mama lays a pea-sized egg, a few days later she lays a second one, and, more rarely, a third.
When the chicks hatch, the feeding frenzy begins. Hummingbirds become fully mature in about a month, but until then, the mother must gather enough nectar to nourish herself and her hungry young, who will be fed frequently until about a week after they leave the nest. It is an arduous task for such a little bird.
Hummingbirds, due to their incredibly high metabolic demands, are some of the few birds that are known to go into torpor. Torpor is a very deep, sleep-like state in which metabolic functions are slowed to a minimum and a very low body temperature is maintained. If torpor lasted for long periods, we would call it hibernation, but hummingbirds can go into torpor any night of the year when temperature and food conditions demand it. Hummingbirds live between three to five years.
There are 365 species of hummingbirds in the Americas, and 28 of these species are considered either endangered or critically endangered. Overall, hummingbirds in North America are on the decline, and the rate of decline is increasing.