Welcome to WOW2 — PART A !!
WOW2 used to a monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women, but it’s grown so much that now it’s a twice-monthly blog, splitting the month in half. These are the women and events from October 1 to October 16.
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.
Incredibly, this is my third year of work on WOW2, and every week I’m still discovering more stories of outstanding women. 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
has posted, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines: www.dailykos.com/...
Early October’s Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History
- October 1, 1847 – Maria Mitchell becomes the second woman to discover a comet, after Caroline Herschel, winning a prize established by King Frederick VI of Denmark. She was later appointed as head of the Vassar College Observatory, making her the first professional woman astronomer in the U.S., but had to persuade the administration to allow her students to be outside at night for observing
- October 1, 1847 – Annie Besant born, British socialist,women’s rights activist, theosophist, author and orator; notable speaker for the Fabian Society, the National Secular Society (NSS) and later for the Theosophist Society; prosecuted for publishing a book advocating birth control in 1877; also supported home-rule for Ireland and India, and labor movement actions, including the 1888 London matchgirls strike; elected to the London School Board for Tower Hamlets, even though few women could vote at the time
- October 1, 1861 – Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management is published, selling 60,000 copies in its first year and remaining in print in revised editions to the present day
- October 1, 1862 – Esther Boise Van Deman born, a leading American archaeologist; first woman to specialize in Roman field archaeology, establishing the standards for dating ancient constructions using variations in building materials, which advanced the study of Roman architecture
- October 1, 1891 – Stanford University opens its doors as a coeducational, tuition-free (until 1920) institution near Palo Alto CA
- October 1, 1893 – Faith Baldwin born, author of over 85 popular novels, frequently using women juggling career and family as a central theme; her last book, Adam’s Eden, was published in 1977, the year before she died at age 84
- October 1, 1912 – Kathleen Ollerenshaw born, English mathematician known for her work on lattices and pandiagonal magic squares, President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (1978-79); Political career: in spite of being deaf since the age of eight and only receiving an effective hearing aid at age 37, she served a member of the council for Rusholme (1956-1981) and Lord Mayor of Manchester (1975-76)
- October 1, 1921 – Margaret Hillis born, conductor, founder/director of Grammy-winning Chicago Symphony Chorus, which she conducted for 37 years; The Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence is now given annually
- October 1, 1931 – Spain adopts women’s suffrage
- October 1, 1935 – Dame Julie Andrews born, actress/singer, Academy Award for Mary Poppins, theatre director, children’s book author, advocate for Operation USA during the Haitian relief campaign
- October 1, 1953 – Grete Waitz born, Norwegian marathon runner, won the New York City Marathon 9 times, more than any other runner
- October 2, 1755 – Hannah Adams born, acquired a fair knowledge of Greek and Latin from divinity students boarding with her father, then tutored others to earn a living when her father went bankrupt. She turned to writing for additional income, and became the first U.S. woman to earn a living as an author, mainly writing about religion and history, including An Alphabetical Compendium of the Various Sects (1784), an encyclopedic outline of world religions, and A Summary History of New England (1799), which caused some scandal as she squared off with Reverend Jedidiah Morse, an orthodox Calvinist, over publication rights for their competing history textbooks, eventually ruining Morse's reputation, as Adams's coterie of liberal Bostonians rallied to her defense
- October 2, 1846 – Eliza Maria Mosher born, physician and educator, held positions as a prison physician, prison superintendent, college physician, college professor and women's dean at the University of Michigan (1896-1902); founder of the American Posture League, re-designing chairs for streetcars and kindergarten classrooms, and lecturing on the health benefits of physical education
- October 2,1871 – Martha Brookes Hutcheson born, American landscape architect; enrolled in first course offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Landscape Architecture, but had to leave after two years of study; designed the grounds for a number of residential estates, including the garden at Alice Mary Longfellow’s Cambridge MA home; after marriage, she retired from commercial practice, but landscaped her five acre garden at their 100 acre farm, now a New Jersey Historic Trust property, the Bamboo Brook Education Center; third woman named a fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects; author of The Spirit of the Garden (1923)
- October 2, 1885 – Ruth Bryan Owen born, first southern woman representative in U.S. Congress, first woman on House Foreign Affairs Committee, first woman appointed as U.S. Ambassador (1933-36, to Denmark)
- October 2,1895 – Ruth Streeter born, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve WWII colonel
- October 2, 1912 – Alice Bourneuf born, economist, contributed to Marshall Plan for Post-WWII European recovery, taught economics at Boston College (1959-77)
- October 2, 1919 – Shirley Clarke born, filmmaker, Academy Award, best feature documentary, Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World
- October 2, 1926 – Jan Morris born James Humphrey Morris, Welsh historian and author; London Times correspondent with the British Mount Everest Expedition who broke the story when Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit; Morris began medical transition in 1964, then travelled to Morroco in 1972 to undergo sex reassignment surgery, because doctors in Britain refused to allow the procedure unless Morris and his wife divorced, something Morris was not prepared to do at the time
- October 2, 1929 – Tanaquil La Clercq born, principal dancer with the New York City Ballet until she contracted polio while on tour in Copenhagen in 1956, which paralyzed her from the waist down; she later taught ballet and wrote Mourka: The Autobiography of a Cat, and The Ballet Cook Book
- October 2, 1949 – Annie Leibovitz born, portrait photographer
- October 3, 1648 – Élisabeth Sophie Chéron born, French painter, poet, musician and academicienne
- October 3,1849 – Jeannette Gilder born, pioneering American woman journalist; using the pen name “Brunswick,” she wrote for The Boston Evening Transcript and was their New York Correspondent; co-founder with her brother Richard of The Critic (1881-1906), a literary magazine; also joint editor with him of Scribner’s Monthly
- October 3,1858 – Eleonora Duse born, Italian actress, regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time; remembered for roles in plays by Gabriele d’Annunzio and Henrik Ibsen; formed her own company as actor-manager – rival of Sarah Bernhardt
- October 3, 1859 – Lilian Whiting born, journalist and author, The Life Radiant, Land of Enchantment, and The Golden Road among many others
- October 3, 1860 – Annie Horniman born, British theatre manager, co-founder of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester, promoted new playwrights
- October 3, 1873 – Emily Post born, American author and authority on etiquette; Etiquette, her first major book, was successful because it broke new ground, aimed at people who were without wealth or social position, telling her readers that making others feel comfortable was more important than knowing which fork to use; her radio program and daily column were so popular, she had to set up a special office to handle the high volume of mail
- October 3, 1885 – Sophie Treadwell born, American playwright, novelist and journalist; Machinal is the best-known of her plays that were performed on Broadway
- October 3, 1897 – Ruth Muskrat Bronson born, Bureau of Indian Affairs official who got loans for Indian students, National Congress of American Indians forced authorities to honor treaties (1944), wrote Indians are People, Too
- October 3,1898 - Gertrude Edelstein Berg, screenwriter and award winning actress. She wrote and starred in The Goldbergs, first on radio, then television
- October 3, 1904 – Mary McLeod Bethune opens her first school for African-American students in Daytona Beach, Florida
- October 3,1971 – Billie Jean King becomes first female athlete to earn $100,000 in a single season
- October 4, 1625 – Jacqueline Pascal born, French nun, poet and composer; her brother is Blaise Pascal
- October 4, 1835 – Jenny Twitchell Kempton born, American contralto opera soloist whose career spanned almost five decades; supporter of women’s suffrage who gave numerous benefit concerts for the cause between 1890 and 1910
- October 4, 1836 – Juliette Lambert Adam born, French author and feminist, Les provinciaux à Paris, Laide, Grecque, and L'Angleterre en Egypte; member of the Avant-Courrière (Forerunner) association which advocated for the right of women to have control over the product of their labor and to be witnesses
- October 4, 1864 – Eliza Kellas born, American educator; principal (1911-1916) of the Emma Willard School, the first U.S. women’s higher education institution (founded in 1814 as the Troy Female Seminary); co-founder of Russell Sage College, originally part of the Emma Willard School, which mainly through the efforts of Kellas, secured a separate charter in 1917, stressing science education for women
- October 4, 1876 – Florence Eliza Allen born, American mathematician and suffrage activist; second woman to receive a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she became an instructor and assistant professor; published papers on transcendental curves and the rational plane cubic
- October 4, 1888 – Lucy Tayiah Eads born, aka Cha-me, first female tribal chief of the Kaw tribe (1922-1928) and nurse at the Haskell Indian College; mother of nine children
- October 4, 1896 – Dorothy Lawrence born, English reporter; disguised as a man, she posed as a soldier at the front during WWI for ten days before turning herself in and being interrogated as a suspected spy; after the war, her book, Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier, was heavily censored by the British War Office
- October 4, 1908 – Eleanor Flexner born, author, pioneer in the field of Women’s Studies and historian – Century of Struggle: The Women’s Rights Movement in the United States, and Mary Wollstonecraft: A Biography
- October 4, 1917 – Violeta Parra born, Chilean singer-songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist
- October 4, 1932 – Anne Thwaite born, British biographer; AA Milne: His Life is the Whitbread Biography of the Year for 1990
- October 4, 1941 – Ann Rice born, American author; Interview with the Vampire is the first book in her series The Vampire Chronicles
- October 4, 1976 – Barbara Walters debuts as the 1st woman evening news co-anchor (ABC News)
- October 4, 1993 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg becomes the 2nd woman U.S. Supreme Court Justice
- October 4, 2010 – U.S. Supreme Court begins a new era, with three women serving together for the first time, as Elena Kagan takes her place at the end of the bench
- October 5, 1789 – The Women’s March on Versailles: Parisiennes, mostly market women, protesting the scarcity and high cost of flour, march to Versailles to demand bread from Louis XVI, to insist the King and his court move back to Paris, and also protest his refusal to issue decrees to abolish feudalism
- October 5, 1850 – Fanny Jane Butler born, pioneering English medical missionary to India, worked in Kashmir, also founded medical facilities in Srinagar and Bhagalpur
- October 5, 1858 – Helen Churchill Candee born, Helen Churchill Candee born, American author, journalist, interior decorator and feminist; survivor of the sinking of the Titanic; her book How Women May Earn a Living (1900) was a best-seller, and Decorative Styles and Periods established her design credentials; board member of the National Woman Suffrage Association
- October 5, 1889 – Teresa de la Parra born, Venezuelan author; Iphigenia: Diary of a young lady who wrote because she was bored
- October 5, 1917 – Magda Szabó born, major Hungarian novelist, The Door, Für Elise, An Old-Fashioned Story
- October 5, 1928 – Louise Fitzhugh born, American author-illustrator; Harriet the Spy series
- October 5, 1931 – Rosalie Cheeseman Gower born, Canadian nurse and political activist; appointed as a commissioner of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC – 1980-1992), where she was an effective advocate for public interest over industry profits, and improved media portrayals of women
- October 5, 1932 – Yvonne Braithwaite Burke born, African-American politician, US Congresswoman (D-CA)
- October 5,1936 – The Jarrow Crusade: Two hundred men, with Jarrow’s female MP Ellen Wilkinson, begin marching from the town of Jarrow to London, carrying a petition for re-establishment of industry in their town, which had ended when Jarrow’s main employer, Palmer’s shipyard, closed in 1934, after building more than a 1000 ships since 1851. While they were warmly welcomed by the London public, and Parliament received the petition, it was not debated, so the marchers believed they had failed. But the Jarrow March helped foster changes which did lead to major social reforms following WWII
- October 5, 1944 – French women get the right to vote
- October 5, 1959 – Maya Lin born, artist and architect of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. (1980-82) and other public sculptures, author of Boundaries
- October 6, 1565 – Marie de Gournay born, French protofeminist writer; The Equality of Men and Women (1622) and The Ladies’ Grievance (Les femmes et Grief des dames, 1626); advocate for women’s education
- October 6, 1591 – Settimia Caccini born, Italian singer and composer, whose compositions were not published during her lifetime, so most have been lost
- October 6, 1847 – Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is published in London
- October 6, 1897 – Florence B. Seibert born, biochemist, developed the standard Tuberculosis skin reaction test
- October 6, 1905 – Helen Wills Moody born, dominated American women’s tennis in the 1920s and 30s with 8 Wimbledon titles and 7 U.S. singles titles
- October 6, 1910 – Barbara Castle born, English politician, Member of Parliament for Blackburn (1945-79) the longest-serving female MP in the House of Commons
- October 6, 1914 – Joan Littlewood born, English theatre director, known for work in developing the Theatre Workshop group, called "Mother of Modern Theatre" — remembered for 1963 production of "Oh, What a Lovely War!"
- October 6, 1914 – Mary Louise Smith born, Republican Party committeewoman and chair (1974-77), supporter of ERA and pro-choice
- October 6, 1917 – Fannie Lou Hamer born, activist, singer, organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, member of the National Women's Political Caucus, fought for the right to vote for African Americans in the South
- October 6, 1925 – Shana Alexander born, journalist, first female staff writer for LIFE magazine
- October 6, 1952 – Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap opens in London, beginning the longest run of a theatrical production in British history
- October 6, 1978 – Liu Yang born, astronaut, first Chinese woman in space
- October 7, 1865 – Martha McChesney Berry born, educator, founder of Berry College in Georgia
- October 7, 1893 – Alice Dalgliesh born in Trinidad, American author, mainly for young readers; founding editor of Scribner’s and Sons Children’s Book Division; first president of the Children’s Book Council
- October 7, 1907 – Helen MacInnes born in Scotland, American author of spy thrillers; The Unconquerable, The Venetian Affair, The Salzburg Connection
- October 7, 1909 – Anni Blomqvist born, Finnish author, Against the Forces of the Sea
- October 7, 1913 – Elizabeth Janeway born, social analyst of 20th century women’s equality drive, wrote Man’s World, Women’s Place and Powers of the Weak
- October 7, 1919 – Henriette Avram born, American computer scientist and academic; developed the MARC format (Machine Readable Cataloging), the international data standard for bibliographic and holdings information in libraries
- October 7, 1920 – Kathryn Clarenback born, founding member of the National Organization for Women, executive director of the National Committee on the Observance of International Women’s Year (1977)
- October 7, 1928 – Lorna Wing born, British physician-psychiatrist, childhood developmental disorders pioneer, developed treating Autism as a spectrum disorder, coined term Asperger Syndrome, leader in founding UK National Autistic Society
- October 7, 1937 – Maria Szyszkowska born, Polish politician, senator for the Warsaw district, president of the Association of Free Thought
- October 7,1946 – Catherine A. Mackinnon born, American extreme radical feminist, lawyer, and legal scholar; argues sexual harassment is a form of sexual discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; is against all pornography as objectifying women and a form of sexual trafficking; has stated that all sex is an act of oppression of women
- October 7, 1948 – Diane Ackerman born, American poet, essayist, and naturalist
- October 7, 1954 – Marian Anderson is the first black singer to be hired by the NY Metropolitan Opera Company
- October 7, 1959 – Lourdes Flores Nano born, Peruvian lawyer and politician; councilwoman of Lima, former member of the Chamber of Deputies (1990-1992); first woman to chair the Partido Popular Cristiano (Christian People’s Party – 2003-2011)
- October 7, 2006 – Anna Politkovskaya, journalist who chronicled Russian military abuses against civilians in Chechnya, is found shot to death in Moscow
- October 8, 1645 – Jeanne Mance opens first hospital in Montreal, Quebec
- October 8, 1807 – Harriet Taylor Mill born, English philosopher and women’s rights advocate; second wife of John Stuart Mill, who influenced his views on the status of women
- October 8, 1826 – Emily Blackwell born, sister of Elizabeth Blackwell, third U.S. woman to earn a medical degree
- October 8, 1847 – Rose Scott born, Australian women’s rights and suffrage activist and speaker in New South Wales; co-founder of the Women’s Literary Society in Sydney, first President of the Women’s Political Education League; successfully worked for the Early Closing Act of 1899, which gave shorter evening hours to shop girls, as well as working for appointment of matrons at police stations and women inspectors in shops and factories, improving conditions for women prisoners, and New South Wales legislation raising the age of consent from 14 to 16; president of women's committee of the Prisoners' Aid Association
- October 8, 1872 – Mary Engle Pennington born, American bacteriological chemist and refrigeration engineer; first head of the Food Research Laboratory of the USDA (1907), developed safety standards for food processing and shipping; founder of the Household Refrigeration Bureau in 1923 to educate consumers on safe practices in domestic refrigeration, publishing pamphlets such as The Care of the Child’s Food in the Home (1925) and Cold is the Absence of Heat (1927)
- October 8, 1881 – Esther Lape born, co-founder League of Women Voters, championed U.S. participation in the Permanent Court of International Justice, which failed by 7 votes in the Senate (1935), worked for compulsory health insurance, which was supported by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower but defeated by the AMA
- October 8, 1891 – Ellen Wilkinson born, British Labour MP, only woman on the Jarrow March; served as a junior minister in the WWII Ministry of Home Security, then Minister of Education until her death (1945-1947)
- October 8, 1902 – Marina Tsvetaeva born, notable Russian poet who committed suicide in 1941 after her husband was executed by the Soviets on espionage charges
- October 8, 1929 – Betty Boothroyd born, English academic and politician, Labour MP for West Bromwich (1973-1992), first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Commons (1992-2000); currently President of NBFA Assisting the Elderly
- October 8, 1930 – Faith Ringgold born, African-American artist, and feminist, known for her painted story quilts.
- October 8, 1993 – Toni Morrison becomes the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature
- October 9, 1823 – Mary Shadd Cary born, first black woman editor in North America, “Provincial Freeman” (1853) in Windsor, Canada, helped black freed slaves know their rights
- October 9, 1830 – Harriet Hosmer born, American sculptor who worked in Rome, one of the few women to win complete financial independence through her artistic work
- October 9, 1884 – Helene Deutsch born, psychoanalyst, wrote 2-volume The Psychology of Women (1944-45) with emphasis on motherhood
- October 9, 1890 – Aimee Semple McPherson born in Canada, Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity who skillfully used radio to build up her image; there are still unresolved questions about whether or not she engineered her own kidnapping in 1926 when she disappeared for five weeks, causing an all-out media frenzy
- October 9, 1892 – Abigail Eliot born, founding member of the National Association for Nursery Education (1933), helped monitor quality and establish standards
- October 9, 1901 – Alice Mae Lee Jemison born, member of the Seneca tribe, Indian nations rights activist, journalist, critic of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
- October 9,1915 – Belva Plain born, best-selling American novelist of popular and historical fiction
- October 9, 1930 – Aviator Laura Ingalls (not the author) becomes the first woman to fly across the U.S., completing a nine-stop journey from New York’s Roosevelt Field to Glendale CA; holds several other records, including first woman to fly solo over the Andes
- October 9, 1934 – Jill Ker Conway born in Australia, academic and author; first woman president of Smith College (1975-1985), where she engaged in creative circumvention of Massachusetts welfare laws so single-parent scholarship students would not have to choose between welfare benefits to support their families or scholarships to continue their education, leading to a change in Massachusetts welfare laws to enable students to keep their benefits and their scholarships
- October 9, 1944 – Rita Donaghy born, British academic administrator, trade unionist, Labour life peer of the House of Lords; President of the trade union NALGO (National and Local Government Officers’ Association – 1989-1990)
- October 9, 1950 – Jody Williams born, American political activist for human rights; 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts toward banning anti-personnel mines
- October 9, 2012 – The Pakistani Taliban make a failed attempt to assassinate 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out for the rights of girls to an education, sparking international support for her and her cause
- October 10, 1870 – Louise Mack born, Australian journalist and author
- October 10, 1888 – Dorothy Ferebee born, gained medical internship at Freedman’s Hospital despite rampant sexism, then built a 47-year association with Howard University hospital and the District of Columbia
- October 10, 1900 – Helen Hayes born, actress and “First Lady of the Stage,” began in stock companies, in 1930s starred as Mary Queen of Scotland and Queen Victoria, won the first ‘Tony’ award in 1947
- October 10, 1911 – Clare Hollingworth born, British journalist and author, first war correspondent to report the outbreak of WWII
- October 10, 1931 – Alice Munro born, Canadian author, primarily known for her collections of short stories, won the Nobel Prize for Literature
- October 10, 1938 – Gloria Coates born, composer of 16 modern symphonies, as well as chamber music and works for solo instruments
- October 10, 1983 – Dr. Barbara McClintock wins Nobel Prize for Medicine, discovery of mobile genetic elements
- October 10, 2005 – Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union party, becomes German’s first female chancellor
- October 10, 2014 – Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani girls’ education activist, wins Nobel Peace Prize, shares with Indian child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi
- October 11, 1871 – Harriet Boyd Hawes born, archaeologist, nurse and relief worker, worked on the excavation at the Minoan palace site on Crete
- October 11, 1872 – Emily Wilding Davison born, British suffragette, jailed and force-fed numerous times, dies from injuries caused when she stepped in front of the horse owned by King George V during the 1913 running of the Epsom Derby, trying to gain attention for the cause of suffrage
- October 11, 1874 – Mary Heaton Vorse O’Brien born, labor and human rights activist, journalist, writer, Sinister Romance: Collected ghost stories
- October 11, 1884 –Eleanor Roosevelt born, civil and women’s rights advocate; U.S. First Lady (1933-45); only female member of U.S. delegation to the United Nations (1945-52) serving as first chair of the Commission on Human Rights; author, Courage in a Dangerous World
- October 11, 1913 – Dorothy Woolfolk born, aka Dorothy Manning, pioneering woman in American comic book industry, first female editor at DC Comics, helped develop ‘Kryptonite’ for the Superman series
- October 11,1940 – Lucy Morgan born, American newspaperwoman, first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1985, shared with co-author Jack Reed, for their coverage of corruption in the Pasco County FL Sheriff’s Office
- October 11, 1950 – Patty Murray born, U.S. Senator (D-WA) since 1993; has chaired the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and Senate Budget Committee; served as Secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference; currently Ranking Member of the Senate Health Committee and Senate Assistant Democratic Leader
- October 11, 1969 – Merieme Chadid born, Moroccan astronomer, explorer and researcher in Antarctica, leader of international scientific team installing a major astronomical observatory in the heart of Antarctica, first woman astronomer to work in Antarctica; her Ph.D. topic was hypersonic shock waves in pulsating stars
- October 11, 1984 – Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes 1st U.S. woman astronaut to “walk” in space on Challenger flight
- October 11, 1991 – Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, law professor Anita Hill accuses Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her; Thomas reappears before the panel to denounce the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching.”
- October 11, 2011 – The U.N. declares October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child honoring efforts of the Day of the Girl youth-led movement in the U.S.
- October 12, 1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute, from an altitude of 900 meters
- October 12, 1808 – Frances Dana Barker Gage born, reformer, abolitionist and suffragist, worked with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
- October 12,1840 – Helena Modjeska born, Polish actress who emigrated to the U.S., renowned for her portrayals of Shakespeare’s tragic heroines, also played Nora in the first American production of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
- October 12, 1860 – Mabel Thorp Boardman born, leader in the American Red Cross
- October 12, 1889 – Perle Reid Mesta born, US Ambassador to Luxembourg
- October 12, 1904 – Jiang Bigzhi born, pen name Ding Ling, notable 20th century Chinese author and activist, frequently at odds with the Chinese government, her works are banned in 1957 and she spends 5 years in jail during the Cultural Revolution, then is sentenced to 12 years of manual farm labor before “rehabilitation” in 1978; The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River, I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling
- October 12, 1913 – Alice Chetwynd Ley born, English historical romance author, Letters for a Spy
- October 12, 1915 – WWI British nurse Edith Clavell is executed by a German firing squad for aiding Allied soldiers to escape — her death is exploited as propaganda by Allies
- October 12, 1916 – Alice Childress born, African American playwright, author and actress; Gold Through the Trees (her first professionally-produced play), Trouble in Mind, which won an Obie for Best Off-Broadway Play of 1955-56, the first Obie given to a black woman playwright; her YA book, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich won several awards
- October 12, 1925 – Essie Mae Washington-Williams born, African American educator and author, raised by one of her mother’s sisters without knowing until she was 25 that her real mother had been a servant at age 16 in the household of Strom Thurmond’s parents, and her biological father was a then-21-year-old Strom Thurmond, which she kept secret until after his death; her 2005 autobiography was nominated for a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize
- October 12, 1928 – Domna Samiou born, Greek singer and musicologist, collects and records demotika, traditional Greek songs; in 1981 the Domna Samiou Greek Folk Music Association is founded to preserve and promote Greek traditional music
- October 13, c.1754 – Mary Hays McCauley born, “Molly Pitcher” of the Battle of Monmouth (1778), legendary water-carrying heroine of the American Revolution
- October 13, 1862 – Mary Kingsley born, trained as a nurse, but became an early British explorer of Africa, English ethnographic and scientific writer and explorer; wrote and lectured about Sierra Leone, Angola, Gabon, the Congo River and Cameroon; first European to enter remote parts of Gabon; lecturer who was controversial for criticizing missionaries; author, Travels in West Africa, West African Studies
- October 13, 1871 – Eleanor Clarke Slagle born, social worker and pioneer in occupational therapy
- October 13, 1897– Edith Sampson born, lawyer, first black American to be appointed as a United Nations delegate, first to be elected U.S. circuit judge
- October 13, 1919 – Jackie Ronne born, American explorer; first woman to work as a member of an Antarctic expedition (1947-49); the Ronne Ice Shelf is named for her
- October 13, 1923 – Rosemary Anne Sisson born, English author, playwright and television scriptwriter; The Excise Man, scripts for: The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), Elizabeth R (1971), Upstairs, Downstairs (1972–75) and The Duchess of Duke Street
- October 13,1925 – Margaret Thatcher born, Conservative MP and Party Leader, first woman to lead a major political party in Britain and first female UK Prime Minister (1979-1990)
- October 13,1934 – Nana Mouskouri born, Greek singer and politician; UNICEF spokesperson and Greek deputy to the European Parliament (1994-1999)
- October 13, 1950 – Mollie Katzen born, American chef, cookbook author; The Moosewood Cookbook, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest
- October 13, 1958 – Maria Cantwell born, American politician, U.S. Senator (D-WA 2001 to present), previously U.S. House of Representatives (D-WA for 1st District 1993-1995 and for 44thDistrict 1987-1993)
- October 13, 1961 – Rachel De Thame, English Horticulturist, garden expert and BBC 2 presenter on Gardener’s World, and Small Town Gardens, and co-host for the BBC’s annual coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show
- October 14, 1856 – Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore born, American travel writer, first female board member of the National Geographic Society. She had the idea to plant Japanese cherry trees to decorate Washington DC.
- October 14, 1863 – Winifred Sweet Black born, American investigative reporter and columnist for the Hearst papers, especially the San Francisco Examiner — publicity stunts like a “fainting spell” on a downtown street led to an exposé of San Francisco’s receiving hospital and the purchase of a city ambulance; investigated the leper colony on Molokai, Hawaiian Islands; active in organizing charities and public benefactions, using her Examiner column to mobilize public concern
- October 14, 1888 – Katherine Mansfield born, New Zealand-British novelist, short story writer, and essayist; best known for short stories, like "Mr Reginald Peacock's Day" and "Bliss"
- October 14, 1893 – Lillian Gish born, consummate actress, stuntwoman and early film editor, her 75 year career ranged from one-reelers like An Unseen Enemy (1912) to The Whales of August (1987); autobiography (with Ann Pinchot) Lillian Gish: the Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me
- October 14,1894 – Victoria Drummond born, first British woman marine engineer and first woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers, served at sea during WWII as an engineering officer in the British Merchant Navy, frequently cited for bravery under fire; retired after making 49 voyages in her 40-year career
- October 14, 1906 – Hannah Arendt born in Germany, notable American political theorist who escaped from Germany after being arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo for being Jewish in 1933, went to Switzerland, then France, and came to America in 1941 on a visa illegally issued by Hiram Bingham, who gave about 2,500 Jewish refugees unauthorized visas
- October 14, 1909 – Dorothy Kingsley born, American screenwriter for film, radio and television; was a “script doctor” at MGM, often uncredited, she re-wrote the ‘books’ (plots and dialogue) for MGM musicals, including Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Pal Joey, and Can-Can
- October 14, 1938 – Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll born, British librarian and museum director; first woman appointed as a director of a national arts collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum (1987-1994); Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (1995-1997), resigned because of multiple sclerosis
- October 14, 1938 – Shula Marks born, South African history professor, School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London; also wrote monograph for WHO on Health and Apartheid; currently working on the public health campaign against the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa
- October 14, 1949 – Katha Pollitt born, American feminist poet and essayist; writing frequently on abortion rights, racism, welfare reform, feminism and poverty
- October 15, 1830 – Helen Hunt Jackson born, American author, poet and activist for improved treatment of Native Americans by US Government; author of Ramona
- October 15, 1860 - Grace Bedell, 11 years old, writes a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, telling him he would look better if he grew a beard — he takes her advice
- October 15, 1880 – Marie C. C. Stopes born, Scottish palaeobotantist, advocate of birth control, women’s rights and eugenics; first woman academic on the faculty of the University of Manchester; editor of Birth Control News, and author of Married Love, a controversial but influential sex manual published in 1918; she opposed abortion, arguing that it would not be needed if contraceptives prevented unplanned pregnancies; her work has been overshadowed by her eugenic concerns of “impending racial darkness”
- October 15, 1906 – Alicia Patterson born, American publisher, founder and editor of Newsday
- October 15, 1906 – Victoria Spivey born, record producer, songwriter, 1920s blues singer, in all-black cast of 1929 film Hallelujah
- October 15, 1942 – Penny Marshall born, actor, director and producer; directed Big, first film directed by a woman to gross over $100 million at U.S. box office
- October 15, 1948 – Dr. Frances L. Willoughby becomes 1st woman doctor in regular U.S. Navy
- October 15, 1954 – Julia Yeomans born, British theoretical physicist and academic; active in the fields of soft condensed matter and biological physics
- October 15, 2007 – U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution designating October 15 as International Day for Rural Women
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October 16, 690 – Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty, proclaiming herself ruler of the Chinese Empire; she is the sole officially recognized Empress Regnant of China in over two millennia
October 16,1384 – Jadwiga is crowned “King” of Poland, the first female monarch of the Kingdom of Poland, and rules from 1384 until her death in 1399; after her marriage, she is co-King with her husband, Jogaila, Grand Duke of Lithuania, a heathen who converted to Catholicism in order to marry her; she becomes a very successful mediator between his quarreling kinsmen, and uses her persuasive skills to convince the people of Ruthenia to switch their loyalty from Hungary to Poland
- October 16, 1678 – Anna Waser born, Swiss painter; her promising career was interrupted by caring for her ailing parents
- October 16, 1869 – Girton College, Cambridge founded, England’s first residential college for women. Women were originally only granted titular degrees – the title of a Bachelor or Master of Arts, but not full rights – they couldn't vote in the university Senate, sit on committees, or use the library, museums, or laboratories of Cambridge
- October 16, 1895 – Marguerite Rawalt born, lawyer, president of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women (1954-56), supporter of the ERA and entire feminist agenda, particularly including the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
- October 16, 1903 – Cecile de Brunhoff born, French author and classical pianist, creator of the original Babar story
- October 16, 1908 – Olivia Ensor Coolidge born in Britain, American author of historical books for Young Adults, many about Ancient Greeks and Romans; and biographies for adults, including one on Edith Wharton
- October 16, 1916 – Margaret Sanger opens the U.S.’s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York – nine days later she was arrested. When she was convicted of illegally distributing contraceptives, the trial judge held that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.”
- October 16, 1919 – Kathleen Winsor born, American journalist and author; Forever Amber
- October 16, 1925 – Angela Lansbury born, actress with an 70+-year career in theatre, film and television from Gaslight (1944) to Driving Miss Daisy (2014 Broadway production), supporter of the U.S. Democratic Party, and British Labour Party, involved with Abused Wives in Crisis, which combats domestic abuse, and with other organizations that rehabilitate drug users, or help those with HIV/AIDS
- October 16, 1941– Emma Harriet Nicholson born, British politician; originally a Conservative, switched to Liberal Democrat as a Member of the European Parliament for South East England (1999-2009); in 2016, switched back to Conservative Party; Executive Chairman of the AMAR Foundation, which works to rebuild and improve the lives of disadvantaged communities in war-torn areas
- October 16, 1978 – Wanda Rutkiewicz is the first Pole and the first European woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest