1825 – Walter Hunt patents the safety pin, but sells the rights for $400
1840 – Augusta Lundin born, the first international Swedish fashion designer, who introduced Parisian clothing construction methods to Sweden. In 1886, she was commissioned by the Reformed Dress Society to design a more healthful form of dress for women. Lundin designed a loose dress without a corset of bustle. She employed only women until 1910, and instituted a 12-hour work shift, with a two-week summer vacation, the first Swedish employer to do so
Augusta Lundin Fashion House Workroom – 1900
1863 – Lucy Christiana born, Lady Duff-Gordon, British fashion designer, known professionally as Lucile; she was the first British-based designer to win international acclaim, opening branches of her London house in Paris, New York, and Chicago. She introduced the ‘mannequin parade’ (a precursor to the fashion show), and trained the first professional models, as well as popularizing less restrictive corsets, pared-down lingerie, and slits for walking more freely in skirts
1865 – William Butler Yeats born, Irish poet and playwright, major figure in the Irish Literary Revival and the founding of the Abbey Theatre, 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature
1866 – The U.S. House agrees to the changes made by the Senate in the proposed 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and a joint resolution on June 18th requests that the President transmit the proposal to the states for ratification. The amendment grants citizenship and protection of civil liberties to recently freed male slaves
1872 – Chrystal MacMillan born, Scottish women’s rights activist, pacifist and one of the first British women called to the Bar, in 1924; member of the Scottish Federation of Women’s Suffrage Societies, campaigning for women’s suffrage, and organizer and delegate to the pro-peace 1914 Women’s Congress in The Hague, and a delegate to the International Congress of Women in Zürich in 1919, which issued a strong condemnation of the harsh terms imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. She was also the second woman member of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society. In her will, she left bequests for the Open Door International for the Economic Emancipation of the Woman Worker, and to the Association for Moral and Social Hygiene
1873 – Karin Swanström born, Swedish actress, theatre company founder, silent film producer and director. She founded and ran the Karin Swanström Theater Company (1904-1921), then began acting in silent films. In 1923, she became head of production at Bonnierfilm, and directed her first film, for AB Svensk Filmindustri. She starred in several silent films, and directed three more films between 1923 and 1926, then returned to the stage (1926-1931), but still appeared in silent films. 1934 to 1941, she again worked for AB Svensk Filmindustri, this time as producer, artistic adviser, and then as production manager and co-head of production with her husband, Stellan Claësson. In 1942, Swanström died in Stockholm. Noted for her direction of Flickan i frack (Girls in Tails)
1875 – Miriam “Ma” Ferguson born, American politician, first woman Governor of Texas (1925-1927 and 1933-1935) . During her first term in office, she followed through on her campaign promise to pass a law forbidding anyone to participate in public activity while wearing a mask. Although the courts eventually overturned the anti-mask law, it did accomplish Ferguson’s goal of undermining the political power of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas
1879 – Lois Weber born, American silent film director, actress, screenwriter, and producer; an important and prolific director of the silent film era; pioneer of the split screen technique in her 1913 film Suspense; early experimenter with sound; first woman to direct a full-length feature film, The Merchant of Venice (1914); in 1917, the first woman director to own a film studio, Lois Weber Productions (1917-1921), and the only woman member of the Motion Picture Directions Association
1881 – Mary Antin born, American author and immigration rights activist, known for her autobiography The Promised Land about her life in Czarist Russia, immigration and assimilation into American culture
1893 – Dorothy L. Sayers born, British author, poet and playwright; noted for the Lord Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane mystery novel series
1898 – Canada organizes the Yukon Territory, with Dawson as its capital
1899 – Carlos Chávez born, Mexican composer, conductor, and journalist, founder of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra
1905 – Xian Xinghai born, Chinese composer, one of the earliest Chinese composers to incorporate some Western classical music motifs into his compositions
1913 – The U.S. Post Office Department’s new Parcel Post service begins without specifying exactly what could and could not be mailed via Parcel Post. After several children are “mailed” via Parcel Post (their parents paid for stamps, and in at least once case, postal insurance, and they were safely delivered by postal workers to visit their relatives), Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson announces a new rule in 1914 that all human beings are barred from being mailed, but a few children are still sent, until postal inspectors begin investigating violations of the rule. Today, you can mail live chickens and other poultry, assorted reptiles and bees, but not children
1923 – Reginald September born, South African trade unionist, African National Congress (ANC) executive committee member, founding member of the South African Coloured People’s Congress, and executive member of the South African Communist Party. In 1960, the apartheid regime detained him for five months without charge, and repeatedly harassed and detained him after that as it cracked down on internal resistance. He fled the country in 1963 and served as the African National Congress’ Chief Representative for the United Kingdom and Western Europe until 1978, and as member of the ANC’s Revolutionary Council in Lusaka. September returned to South Africa in 1991 after the unbanning of the ANC, and was elected as a member of parliament in 1994 in South Africa’s first democratic elections, serving from 1994 to 2004, when he retired
1937 – Eleanor Holmes Norton born, civil rights activist, feminist and politician; Since 1991, U.S. Representative for the District of Columbia (a non-voting, at-large position because Congress maintains supreme authority over the city, and may even overturn local laws); Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1977-1981); Assistant Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (1965-1970); in 1970, Norton represented sixty women employees of Newsweek who filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because only men were hired as reporters by Newsweek. She won the case
1944 – Dame Christine Beasley born, British nurse and National Health Service (NHS) administrator; held a range of senior posts with broad experience if policy development and leadership, including Head of Development with the Directorate of Health and Social Care and Director of Nursing, and NHS Human Resources & Organisational Development; established the London Standing Conference, contributing to improvements in service and clinical practice; appointed Chief Nursing Office for England in 2004; became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 Birthday Honours
1954 – Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala born, Nigerian economist; first woman and first African Director-General of the World Trade Organization since March 2021; Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (2016–2020); first woman Minister of Finance in Nigeria (2011-2015); Managing Director of the World Bank (2007-2011); Nigerian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2006-2006)
1955 – Leah W. Sears born in Heidelberg Germany to a U.S. Army family; American jurist; Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court (2005-2009), the first African-American woman Chief Justice in the U.S.; Associate Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court (1992-2005), the first woman and youngest person to sit on Georgia’s Supreme Court; first black woman Superior Court judge (1988-1992) in Georgia
1964 – In South Africa, Nelson Mandela arrives on Robben Island to begin serving his life sentence
1966 – U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-4 in the landmark case Miranda v. Arizona that Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination requires that police inform suspects of their rights before questioning them
1967 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson nominates Solicitor-General Thurgood Marshall to become the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court
1970 – The Beatles song, “The Long and Winding Road” is #1 on the U.S. charts
1971 – The New York Times begins publication of the Pentagon Papers, a study prepared by the Department of Defense of U.S political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967; Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst at the RAND Corporation, who worked on the top-secret study, releases a copy of the papers, which prove “that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance”
1983 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System when it passes beyond the orbit of Neptune
1994 – A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, blames recklessness by Exxon and Captain Joseph Hazelwood for the Exxon Valdez disaster, allowing victims of the oil spill to seek $15 billion in damages
2000 – President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea meets Kim Jong-il, leader of North Korea, for the beginning of the first ever inter-Korea summit, in the northern capital of Pyongyang
2002 – The George W. Bush administration withdraws the U.S from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, signed with the USSR, ten years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and creates the U.S. Missile Defense Agency in 2002; the appropriation for the agency passed by Congress for 2017 was $8.2 billion
2010 – A capsule of the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa, containing particles of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, returns to Earth
2018 – London Breed, former San Francisco Board of Supervisors president, was declared the winner of the race for mayor of San Francisco, after eight days of ballot-counting all but eliminated rival candidate Mark Leno, who conceded the race. Breed, age 43, became San Francisco’s second woman mayor, after Senator Dianne Feinstein (Democrat-California), and the city’s first Black woman mayor. Leno would have been San Francisco’s first openly gay mayor. All three frontrunners were Democrats. Breed briefly took over as mayor when Mayor Ed Lee (Democrat) died of a heart attack in December. She served out the remainder of Lee’s term, until 2020, but faced the voters again in 2019. In November 2019, she was reelected, winning just over 70% of the vote
2020 – Amidst the nationwide protests triggered by the police killing of George Floyd, Donald Trump’s announcement that he would hold his first election rally during the coronavirus pandemic on June 19th in Tulsa, Oklahoma, caused a growing outcry. In 1921, Tulsa was the scene of one of the worst race massacres in US history – and June 19th, known as “Juneteenth” – is the anniversary of the day in 1865 when a general read out Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation in Texas, freeing the slaves in the last un-emancipated state
Everybody have a Still Free Friday
