WOW2 is a thrice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from January 12 through January 21.
The next WOW2, for Late January
will post on Saturday, January 30.
The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN
will post soon, so be sure to go there and catch up
on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.
Many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor and STEM Researcher of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.
These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.
Mid-January’s Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History
Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer
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- January 12, 1673 – Rosalba Carriera born, successful Venetian Rococo painter, noted for portrait miniatures, beginning with snuff box lids, and pastel work; made an 'Accademico di merito' (the title for non-Roman members) by the Roman Accademia di San Luca.
- January 12, 1724 – Frances Brooke born, English novelist, essayist, playwright, and translator; she spent time in Quebec, Canada, where her husband was serving as a military chaplain, and wrote The History of Emily Montague there, believed to be the first novel written in Canada, but it was published in England upon her return.
- January 12, 1799 – Priscilla Falkner Bury born, English botanist and illustrator; noted for Drawings of Lilies, and the large folio edition A Selection of Hexandrian Plants; her work was admired by John James Audubon.
- January 12, 1820 – Caroline Severance born, early suffragist, social reformer, and women’s clubs pioneer; co-founder of the American Woman Suffrage Association (1869). She was the first woman registered to vote in California (1911).
- January 12, 1874 – Laura Adams Armer born, American writer, photographer, and artist. Her book Waterless Mountain won the 1932 Newbery Award. Adams Armer’s photographs of San Francisco’s Chinatown, and extensive photos of the lives and culture of the Navajo and Hopi people, are now part of museum collections in the San Francisco area, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
- January 12, 1881 – Mary Gawthorpe born, British suffragette, socialist, trade unionist, teacher, and editor; member of the National Union of Teachers, Women’s Labour League, and the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She was arrested several times at WSPU protests, and suffered beatings by police more than once. Gawthorpe was an editor for the radical periodical The Freewoman: A Weekly Feminist Review, which discussed topics such as women's wage work, housework, motherhood, the suffrage movement, and feminist literature, before she emigrated to the U.S in 1916. In New York City, she became active in the American suffrage movement, and later in the trade union movement, becoming an official of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union. She chronicled her early activism in her autobiography, Up Hill to Holloway, published in 1962.
- January 12, 1884 – “Texas” Guinan born, American entertainer-producer, “The Queen of the West,” an early woman emcee who opened a speakeasy in New York called the 300 Club during Prohibition; credited with coining “butter and egg men” and "give the little ladies a great big hand." She greeted her patrons with “Hello, suckers!”
- January 12, 1885 – The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, commonly known as The National Trust, is co-founded by English social reformer Octavia Hill, with Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, to “"promote the permanent preservation for the benefit of the Nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest” in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The National Trust Act of 1907 gave it statutory powers. It protects both wild land in places like the Lake District and the Peak District, as well as historic houses and estates of titled families, and homes of notable people, such as Jane Austen’s house in Chawton where she wrote her novels, and the childhood homes of Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
- January 12, 1910 – Luise Rainer born in the German Empire, German-American-British stage actress and film star. She started her acting career in Germany at age 16, working for Austria's leading stage director, Max Reinhardt, in his Vienna theatre ensemble, and in German-language films. She was “discovered” by MGM talent scouts, and signed to a three-year contract in 1935. She won the 1937 Oscar for Best Actress for her second Hollywood film, The Great Ziegfeld, then won the Best Actress award in 1938 for The Good Earth, the first person to win back-to-back Academy Awards. After a string of forgettable parts, and battles with Louis B. Mayer over the mediocre scripts she was offered, she went to Europe to raise funds for children who were victims of the Spanish Civil War. She made one last film for MGM, then left Hollywood. She returned to the stage in England, but left in 1940 to appear onstage in Washington DC and New York. Attempts to revive her film career were not successful, but she made some appearances on television in the UK and the U.S. Rainer died at her London home in 2014 at the age of 104.
- January 12, 1914 – Mieko Kamiya born, Japanese psychiatrist who treated leprosy patients at Nagadhima Aiseien Sanatorium; she also translated a number of philosophical works into Japanese, including Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, and books by Michel Foucault, Virginia Woolf, and Khalil Gibran. Noted for her book, Ikigai Ni Tsuite (The Meaning of Life), based on her experiences with leprosy patients.
- January 12, 1915 – The U.S. House of Representatives rejects expanding the right to vote to include women. The Susan B. Anthony amendment was debated for over 10 hours in the House of Representatives before falling far short of the two-thirds majority needed — the vote was 174 for and 204 against. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National Suffrage Association, said, “I am not gratified, but the vote was better than I had expected.” Suffragists were aware that they did not yet possess the support necessary to get an amendment ratified, but the vote brought the cause greater national attention, including a front-page article in the New York Times. By December 1915, petitions for suffrage with thousands of signatures were arriving in Washington DC from across the country.
- January 12, 1916 – Ruth Rogan Benerito born, American chemist, a pioneer in development of wash and wear and stain resistant fabrics. Earlier, she had investigated fat emulsions, and the transport of fat in animals. For the Office of the Surgeon General, she developed an intravenous fat emulsion for intravenous feeding to help supply necessary calories for long term patients. Benerito also investigated the reaction epoxies. Her findings have been used in the textile industry, but also have applications to paper, film, and epoxy plastic manufacture, and in the use of epoxy compounds to preserve wood. Benerito was granted over 50 patents. Her research has resulted in the development of cotton fabrics that are comfortable, wrinkle-free, stain resistant, “drip-dry” and better able to retard flames.
- January 12, 1916 – Mary Baldwin Wilson born, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx, British poet; married to Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. Noted for her collections, Selected Poems, and New Poems.
- January 12, 1930 – Jennifer Johnston born, Irish novelist; her book, The Old Jest, set during the Irish War of Independence, won the 1979 Whitbread Book Award; and The Captains and the Kings won the Author’s Club First Novel Award (1973).
- January 12, 1932 – Hattie Wyatt Caraway (Democrat –Arkansas 1931-1945) became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate, the first woman to preside over the Senate, and the first woman to chair a committee – the Senate Committee on Enrolled Bills. She was originally appointed fill to her husband’s place after his death in 1931, and won a special election in January 1932 to finish the term, but it was assumed that she would step down to make way for a man to take over. When she announced her candidacy, the state party gave her no support, but Senator Huey Long of Louisiana campaigned with her, and she received nearly twice as many votes as her closest opponent in the primary, then went on to win the general election. She cast her votes for New Deal measures which would benefit farmers and veterans, and for flood control, but was opposed to the Roosevelt administration’s anti-lynching bill. In 1943, Caraway was the first woman in either house of Congress to co-sponsor the Equal Rights Amendment.
- January 12, 1935 – Teresa del Conde Pontones born, Mexican art historian, biographer, and critic; a Fellow of the Academia des Artes, columnist for La Jornada; former director of Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City.
- January 12, 1936 – Jennifer Hilton born, Metropolitan Police of London Commander who was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in the 1989 Birthday Honours; now Baroness Hilton of Eggardon, life peer and Member of the House of Lords since 1991.
- January 12, 1941 –Dame Fiona Caldicott born, British psychiatrist and psychotherapist; Chair of the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, and a past President of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. She was the first woman president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (1993–1996) and college’s first woman dean (1990–1993). Served as chair of the National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care (2011-2013).
- January 12, 1944 – Cynthia Robinson born, American trumpeter and vocalist with Sly and the Family Stone, the first woman trumpeter in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
- January 12, 1946 – Hazel Cosgrove born, Lady Cosgrove, Scottish lawyer and judge; first woman Sheriff of Glasgow and Strathkelvin; first woman appointed as a Senator of the College of Justice; served as a judge on Scotland’s Supreme Courts (1996-2006); Deputy Chair of the Boundary Commission for Scotland (1997-2006).
- January 12, 1947 – Sally Hamwee born, Baroness Hamwee, British Liberal Democrat politician and spokesperson; Life Peer and Member of the House of Lords since 1991; Member of the London Assembly (2000-2008), and its chair (2002-2007).
- January 12, 1948 – Sipuel v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. At the urging of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), twenty-one-year-old Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher agreed to seek admission to the University of Oklahoma's law school in order to challenge Oklahoma's segregation laws and achieve her lifelong ambition of becoming a lawyer. Her application in 1946 for admission to the University of Oklahoma College of Law was rejected, and she was informed it was solely because Oklahoma statutes prohibited whites and blacks from attending classes together, and prohibited black persons from attending state universities. The laws also made it a misdemeanor to instruct or attend classes comprised of mixed races. Oklahoma did provide funding for black students who were accepted at schools outside the state. With Thurgood Marshall and others as her attorneys, she filed suit in 1946. She lost her case in the county district court and in the Oklahoma Supreme Court, but her appeal was taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that Oklahoma must provide Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher with the same opportunities for securing a legal education as it provided to other citizens of Oklahoma. The case was remanded to the Cleveland County District Court to carry out the ruling. Following the Supreme Court's favorable ruling, the Oklahoma Legislature, rather than admit Fisher to the Oklahoma University law school – or close the law school to both black and white students – decided to create a separate law school exclusively for her to attend. “Langston University School of Law” was thrown together in five days and was set up in the State Capitol's Senate rooms. Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher refused to attend this new school of law, and her lawyers filed a motion in the Cleveland County District Court contending that Langston's law school did not afford the advantages of a legal education to blacks substantially equal to the education whites received at OU's law school. This inequality, they argued, entitled Fisher to be admitted to the University of Oklahoma College of Law. However, the Cleveland court ruled against her, finding that the two state law schools were "equal." The Oklahoma Supreme Court, predictably, upheld the finding. After this second adverse ruling, Fisher's lawyers announced their intention to again appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, Oklahoma Attorney General Mac Q. Williamson declined to return to Washington, D.C., and face the same nine Supreme Court justices in order to argue that Langston's law school was equal to OU's law school. So on June 18, 1949, more than three years after Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher first applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma College of Law, she was finally admitted. “Langston University School of Law” closed twelve days later.
- January 12, 1950 – Dorrit Moussaieff born in Israel, jewelry designer, and First Lady of Iceland (2003-2006).
- January 12, 1950 – Sheila Jackson Lee born, American politician; U.S. Congresswoman (Democrat-Texas) since 1995. Houston city council member (1990-1995). She has been a vocal critic of the Tea Party political group, and a supporter of LGBTQ rights.
- January 12, 1953 – Mary Harron born, Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter; noted as co-author and director of American Psycho, The Notorious Bettie Page, and the TV series Alias Grace, winning the 2018 Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction of a Limited Series.
- January 12, 1958 – Christiane Amanpour born, British-Iranian journalist and television host; Chief International Anchor for CNN, and host of CNN’s interview program Amanpour, as well as Amanpour & Company on PBS since 2018, which replaced the Charlie Rose Show after allegations of sexual harassment were made against Rose.
- January 12, 1969 – Margaret Nagle born, screenwriter, television producer, and human rights activist; winner of three Writers Guild of America Awards, in 2015 for The Good Lie, in 2014 for body of work, and in 2011 for Best New Show for Boardwalk Empire.
- January 12, 1971 – The Harrisburg Seven, a group of religious anti-war activists, including former nun Elizabeth McAlister and Mary Cain Scoblick, the wife of a former Catholic priest, are indicted on charges of conspiracy to kidnap National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and plotting to blow up steam tunnels under Washington DC. Librarian Zoia Horn was jailed for 20 days for refusing to testify for the prosecution on the grounds that her forced testimony against Boyd Douglas, a prisoner on a work-study program at her library, would threaten intellectual and academic freedom. She was the first U.S. librarian to be jailed for refusing to share information as a matter of conscience. The trial resulted in a hung jury, and the defendants were freed.
- January 12, 1972 – Priyanka Gandhi Vadra born, Indian politician; has served as General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee since 2019, and a trustee of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, which focuses on literacy, health, and science, empowerment of the underprivileged, as well as natural resource management.
- January 12, 1985 – Issa Rae born, African-American actress, writer, director, producer, and web series creator; creator of Awkward Black Girl.
- January 12, 2019 – Rahaf Al-Qunun, an 18-year-old Saudi woman arrived in Canada after being granted asylum to avoid returning to Saudi Arabia. Al-Qunun fled from her allegedly abusive family while on a trip to Kuwait and flew to Thailand, where she barricaded herself in an airport hotel room while launching a social media campaign pleading for asylum. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Al-Qunun would be welcomed to his country as a refugee. She was met at the airport in Toronto by Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who dubbed Rahaf Al-Qunun "a very brave new Canadian."
- January 12, 2020 – Kimia Alizadeh, the only Iranian woman to win an Olympic medal – a bronze in Taekwondo at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio – announced she intended to leave the Islamic republic, in a blistering online statement in which she describes herself as “one of the millions of oppressed women in Iran.” She criticised the mandatory wearing of the hijab, and accused officials in Iran of sexism and mistreatment. “Whatever they said, I wore,” Alizadeh wrote in the statement. “Every sentence they ordered, I repeated.” She described the decision to leave Iran as difficult, but necessary.
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- January 13, 1338 – Siege of Dunbar Castle: ‘Black Agnes’ Randolph, Countess of Dunbar and March, was known for her dark complexion, and became renowned for her heroic defence of Dunbar Castle in East Lothian against an English siege led by William Montagu, 1st Earl of Salisbury, which began on January 13, 1338, and lasted until June 10, 1338, during the Second Scottish War of Independence (1331-1341). Her husband, Patrick Dunbar, the 9th Earl of March, was away fighting, when an English force of 20,000 laid siege to Dunbar Castle, but Lady Agnes refused to surrender. Legend says she declared, “Of Scotland’s King I haud my house, I pay him meat and fee, And I will keep my gude auld house, while my house will keep me.” Salisbury’s army began the siege using a gigantic siege tower called a Sow to hurl boulders and lead shot at the ramparts. Black Agnes set one of her ladies-in-waiting to dusting off the ramparts with her handkerchief, and called out that Salisbury should “take good care of his sow, for she would soon cast her pigs, (meaning his men), within the fortress.” She then ordered that one of the hurled boulders be thrown down from the battlements unto the Sow, which was crushed to pieces. When one of the Scottish archers struck an English soldier standing next to Salisbury, the earl is said to have cried out, “There comes one of my lady’s tire pins; Agnes’s love shafts go straight to the heart.” Unable to make progress by siege, Salisbury turned to craft. He bribed the Scotsman who guarded the principal entrance, advising him to leave the gate unlocked, or to leave it in such a manner that the English could easily break in. However, the Scotsman, though he took the Englishman’s money, reported the stratagem to Agnes, so she was ready for the English when they made entry. Although Salisbury was in the lead, one of his men pushed past him just at the moment when Agnes’s men lowered the portcullis, separating him from the others. Agnes, of course, had meant to trap Salisbury, but she moved from stratagem to taunt, hollering at the earl, “Farewell, Montagu, I intended that you should have supped with us, and assist us in defending the Castle against the English.” After John Randolph, 3rd Earl of Moray, captured Agnes’ brother, the English threw a rope around his neck and threatened to hang him if Agnes did not surrender the castle. However, she responded that his death would only benefit her, as she would inherit his earldom. (She was not actually in line for the earldom, so either she was taking a gamble with her brother’s life, or the story came later.) As a last resort, Salisbury decided to isolate the castle from the roads and any communication with the outside world, trying to starve out the Countess and her garrison, but Ramsay of Dalhousie, who had justly earned a reputation for being a constant thorn in the English king’s side, got wind of what the English were trying and moved from Edinburgh to the coast with forty men. Appropriating some boats, Ramsay and his company approached the castle by sea and entered the postern next to the sea. Charging out of the castle, the Scotsmen surprised Salisbury’s advance guard and pushed them all the way back to their camp. After five months, Salisbury gave up and lifted the siege, but the triumph of a Scotswoman over an English army lives on in a ballad, which puts these words in Salisbury’s mouth: “Cam I early, cam I late, I found Agnes at the gate.”
- January 13, 1610 – Maria Anna of Austria born, married Maximillian I, Elector of Hanover, then became co-regent for her son Ferdinand Maria after his father’s death in 1651. She was responsible for the Department of Justice, and was a non-voting member of the Privy Council until Ferdinand reached his majority in 1654. She remained one of his close advisors until her death in 1665.
- January 13, 1810 – Ernestine Rose born in Poland, American Jewish free thinker, atheist, feminist, and abolitionist; by age 14, she had renounced all Jewish laws and customs that relegated women to an inferior status. When she was 16, she inherited a significant amount of property, but without consulting her, her father arranged for her to marry a man his own age, and signed over her inheritance as the dowry. She took her inheritance claim to a Polish court, where she won a legal endorsement of it. She left Poland the following year, having to leave most of her inheritance to her father, and moved to Berlin, then the Netherlands. She next spent time in Paris before moving to England, where she married reformer and silversmith William Rose in 1836. They immigrated to New York, where she became a leader and an intellectual force in the women’s rights movement, campaigning against the law that deprived married women of control over the wages they earned, or any property that was theirs before they married. New York became the first state to pass the Married Women’s Property Act. She also fought for the abolition of slavery, and a ban on the manufacture of alcoholic beverages. In 1869, she was a co-founder, with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of the National Woman Suffrage Association, aiming at passage of a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote.
- January 13, 1850 – Charlotte E. Ray born, first woman African-American lawyer in U.S.; first woman admitted to the bar in Washington DC, and one of the first women to be granted permission to argue cases in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.
- January 13, 1879 – British athlete Ada Anderson, a pedestrianist (competitive walker), completes a record-breaking 2700 quarter miles in 2700 quarter hours at the Mozart Gardens in Brooklyn, New York, for which she earned $8,000.00 USD (worth over $210,000 in today’s dollars).
- January 13, 1900 – Gertrude M. Cox born, American statistician who was a pioneer in the development of modern statistical methods. In 1940, she was the first woman to receive a professional appointment at North Carolina State University, as the head of the newly established Department of Experimental Statistics. Even after her official retirement, she continued to promote the development of statistical programs with work in Thailand and Egypt. Cox co-authored (with William G. Cochran) the classic book, Experimental Designs (1950). She stressed that before beginning research, the outline of the data analysis plan should be drawn up. This approach avoids afterwards choosing analysis to give preconceived desired results.
- January 13, 1913 – Delta Sigma Theta, the largest Black women’s sorority, is founded by 22 collegiate women at Howard University in Washington DC.
- January 13, 1917 – Edna Hibel born, artist and colorist, the first American woman to win the Leonardo da Vinci World Award of Arts. Her "Golden Bridge" and "Peace Through Wisdom" exhibits traveled in the U.S., China, Russia, and Yugoslavia. Honored for many contributions to children’s and medical charities.
- January 13, 1921 – Dachine Rainer born as Sylvia Newman, American-born English writer, poet, and anarchist; author of A Room at the Inn.
- January 13, 1926 – Carolyn Gold Heilbrun born, American feminist, author, and academic; she was the first woman tenured professor at Columbia University, in the English Department. Heilbrun also published popular mystery novels, many featuring English professor Kate Fansler, under the pen name Amanda Cross. She took early retirement in 1992, saying, "When I spoke up for women's issues, I was made to feel unwelcome in my own department, kept off crucial committees, ridiculed, ignored . . . In life, as in fiction, women who speak out usually end up punished or dead. I’m lucky to escape with my pension . . .”
- January 13, 1926 – Melba Liston born, self-taught jazz trombonist; first woman trombonist to play in big bands in the 1940s; member of Dizzy Gillespie’s Middle East tour (1956). She recorded, taught, and performed in Women’s Jazz Festivals.
- January 13, 1938 – Anna Home born, English children’s television producer for the BBC; her career spanned from Play School in the 1960s to her last project, Teletubbies, before her retirement in 1997.
- January 13, 1945 – Joy Chant born, British fantasy author; winner of Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards for Red Moon and Black Mountain, and When Voiha Wakes.
- January 13, 1955 – Dame Anne Pringle born, British diplomat; Ambassador to the Czech Republic (2001-2004) and to Russia (2008-2011).
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January 13, 1957 – Claudia Emerson born, American poet; winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Poetry Prize for Late Wife; Poet Laureate of Virginia (2008-2010). She was the poetry editor for the Greensboro Review, and a contributing editor for the literary magazine Shenandoah. Emerson died in 2014 from colon cancer at age 57.
- January 13, 1957 – Lorrie Moore born, American fiction writer; noted for humorous and poignant short stories; she won the 1998 O. Henry Award for her short story "People Like That Are the Only People Here."
- January 13, 1959 – Winnie Byanyima born, Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician, and diplomat; Executive Director of Oxfam International since 2013; Director of the Gender Team in the Bureau for Development Policy at the UN Development Programme (2006-2013); the first Ugandan woman to earn a degree in aeronautical engineering, at the University of Manchester, and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Cranfield University. She went to work as a flight engineer for Uganda Airlines, but joined the National Resistance Army during the Ugandan Bush War (1981-1986), then became Uganda’s Ambassador to France (1989-1994), and a Member of the Ugandan Parliament (1994-2004).
- January 13, 1970 – Shonda Rhimes born, African American television producer, screenwriter, and author; Rhimes was creator, executive producer, and head writer of the television series Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, and Scandal, and the executive producer on How to Get Away with Murder, and For the People.
- January 13, 2013 – Alice Pyne died after a six year battle with the cancer. When the 17-year-old British teen put a “bucket list” on her blog of things she wanted to do after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2011, it went viral on the Internet. She achieved most of the wishes on her list, including campaigning to increase the number of bone marrow donors in the UK, and raising over £100,000 for charity. She won the Pride of Britain Teenager of Courage award in 2012 for her efforts. Pyne was also able to show her beloved dog Mabel in a dog show, and stayed in the Chocolate Room at the Alton Towers Resort. Comedian David Walliams posted on his Twitter page: "I am so sad about the passing of Alice Pyne, who I met through the Pride of Britain Awards. What a beautiful and courageous girl. x"
- January 13, 2020 – Taraneh Alidoosti, one of Iran’s most popular actresses, bluntly criticised the government in Tehran in a post on Instagram, telling her almost six million followers, “I fought this dream for a long time and didn’t want to accept it. We are not citizens. We never were. We are captives.” Her post comes amid reports that Iranian authorities fired live ammunition to disperse protesters in the nation’s capital, wounding several people. Alidoosti is best known outside Iran for starring in The Salesman, which was nominated in 2017 for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category, but she boycotted the awards ceremony in protest over the Trump administration’s blanket visa bans on Iranians.
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- January 14, 1273 – Joan I of Navarre, Queen Regnant of Navarre, Countess of Champagne (1274-1305), and Queen Consort of France (1305). Though she was Queen Regnant of Navarre, her marriage at the age of 11 to Philip the Fair, who became Philip IV, King of France in 1285, meant that she never spent time in Navarre, and it was ruled by French governors appointed by her husband, who were unpopular in Navarre. She was much more active as countess of Champagne, since it was not a separate kingdom, but part of France, and she had more latitude to act as its ruling vassal under the king. On 1297, it was Joan who raised and led an army to defeat the Count of Bar when he rebelled against her and invaded Champagne. She and her escort brought the Count to prison before she rejoined her husband. She also acted directly against Bishop Guichard of Troyes, whom she accused of stealing funds by fraud from both Champagne and her mother, Blanche of Artois. Joan gave birth to seven children, four of whom lived to adulthood, the others dying at ages four, seven and eleven. Joan died in 1305, probably either because of a miscarriage, or in childbirth, at the age of 32. Bishop Guichard was arrested in 1308, accused of killing Joan by “witchcraft,” but he was released in 1313.
- January 14, 1507 – Catherine of Austria, Queen consort of Portugal (1525-1557) and regent during the minority of her grandson, King Sebastian (1557-1562). Catherine was very concerned about the education of her family, creating a substantial library, and establishing a kind of salon in the court. She brought a number of women scholars into her household, including the humanists Joana Vaz and Públia Hortênsia de Castro, and the poet Luisa Sigea de Velasco. Joana Vaz was responsible for tutoring Catherine's daughter, Princess Maria, as well as Catherine's niece, also called Maria, who became a scholar in her own right. Catherine had one of the earliest and finest Chinese porcelain collections in Europe. She also collected ‘exotica’ including fossilised sharks' teeth, a snake's head encased in gold, heart-shaped jasper stones supposed to stop bleeding, a coral branch used as a protector against evil spirits, bezoar stones, and a “unicorn's horn” (a narwhal tusk). After the death of her husband in 1557, she was challenged by her daughter-in-law and niece, Joan of Austria, over her role as regent for her grandchild, the infant King Sebastian. Mediation by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V resolved the issue in favor of his sister Catherine over his daughter Joan, who was needed in Spain in the absence of Philip II.
- January 14, 1841 – Berthe Morisot born, French painter and printmaker; one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism with Marie Bracquemond and Mary Cassatt. In 1890, Morisot wrote in a notebook about her struggles to be taken seriously as an artist: "I don't think there has ever been a man who treated a woman as an equal and that's all I would have asked for, for I know I'm worth as much as they." She always exhibited her work under her maiden name, instead of as the wife of Eugène Manet, or under a pseudonym. Morisot’s work found an audience when the private dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, bought 22 of her paintings in the 1870s. She died in 1895, at age 54, from pneumonia contracted while nursing her daughter Julie, who survived the illness, but became an orphan at the age of 16.
- January 14, 1900 – Marion Martin born, elected to Maine House of Representatives, (1930-1934), Maine Senate (1934-1938); the first woman to head the Maine Department of Labor and Industry (1947-1962), where she worked for a minimum living wage, industrial safety laws, and child labor laws.
- January 14, 1905 – Emily Hahn born, American journalist, author, biographer, and feminist; her love of travel and animals greatly influenced her work, a significant chronicle of Asia and Africa in the 1930s and 1940s for Western readers. Her books include China to Me, No Hurry to Get Home, and The Soong Sisters.
- January 14, 1912 – Tillie Olsen born, American writer, union organizer, and feminist; Tell Me a Riddle won the 1961 O. Henry Award for Best American Short Story. Her long poem, I Want You Women Up North to Know, exposed the terrible working conditions and slave wages of women and girls in Texas who embroidered little girls’ dresses that were sold in major department stores like Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Wannamaker’s, and Marshal Field.
- January 14, 1922 – Diana McConnel Wellesley born, later Duchess of Wellington; WWII British intelligence officer, who foiled a bomb plot aimed at her wedding at St. George’s Cathedral on January 28, 1944; she didn’t tell her groom of the near-miss, and he assumed they had a police escort because she was the daughter of a general, and he was the heir to the Dukedom.
- January 14, 1925 – Moscelyne Larkin born, one of the “Five Moons” Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma. She danced with the original Ballet Russe, and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. She and her husband settled in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they founded the Tulsa Ballet and its associated school in 1956. It became a major regional company in the American Southwest, and made its New York City debut in 1983.
- January 14, 1927 – Zuzana Růžičková born, Czech harpsichordist of Jewish heritage; between 1965 and 1975, she became the first harpsichord player to record the complete keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach. As a teenager, she was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps at Terezin and Auschwitz, then transported to the Bergen-Belsen death camp, but it was liberated in April, 1945, and she survived. When she and her husband, Czech composer Viktor Kalabis, refused to join the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1950s, they faced political persecution. After they began to get recognition outside of Czechoslovakia, they were invited to study in Paris, but were not allowed to travel abroad together. She allowed to travel without her husband because she was highly paid for performances across Europe, but most of the foreign currency she earned was confiscated by Czech authorities. She was not allowed to teach music to Czech students at home, and her participation in the Czech Philharmonic was restricted because of her Jewish background. After the death of Joseph Stalin, some of the travel restrictions were eased, but the family members of Růžičková and Kalabis still in Czechoslovakia kept them from defecting. In 1962, she co-founded the Prague Chamber Soloists with conductor Václav Neumann. After the Prague Spring of 1968, the Czech government forced her to publically accept state-sponsored awards as propaganda for the regime. During the Velvet Revolution in November, 1989, she joined in the anti-government protests, and went on strike. When the Communist regime was overthrown, she finally became a full Professor at the Academy of Music, and established a harpsichord class at the Music Academy of Bratislava. She and Viktor Kalabis were married for 54 years, until his death in 2006.
- January 14, 1943 – Shannon Lucid born, American biochemist and NASA astronaut, who set the records for longest stay in space by an American, and by a woman, on a mission aboard the Mir space station. She was the only American woman to serve aboard Mir. In 1976, when NASA announced that it would begin accepting women into the space program, Lucid immediately applied. Her first shuttle flight was in 1985 on the Discovery, followed by the Atlantis in 1989 and 1991, where she conducted a variety of biomedical experiments. In 1993, she became the first woman to travel into space on four separate occasions on the Columbia, setting a record for the most total flight time accumulated by a female astronaut on the shuttle (838 hours, 54 minutes). On Mir, she performed experiments, mostly on the effects of longterm space flight on the human body.
- January 14, 1943 – Holland Taylor born, American actress; noted for researching, writing, and producing her one-woman show, Ann: An Affectionate Portrait of Ann Richards, which played in 2011-2012 at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and on Broadway in 2013. Holland was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance. In a 2015 interview, she revealed she was in a serious relationship with a woman, and her partner, Sarah Paulson, later confirmed their relationship. Holland is a long-time supporter of Aids for AIDS in Los Angeles, serving on their Honorary Board and appearing in their annual fundraiser, Best in Drag Show.
- January 14, 1944 – Nina Totenberg born, American legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), primarily reporting on the U.S Supreme Court; panelist on Inside Washington (1992-2013); honored seven times by the American Bar Association for excellence in legal reporting; recipient of the first-ever Toni House Award for body of work by the American Judicature Society; she was the first radio journalist named as Broadcaster of the Year by the National Press Foundation. Her reporting on Anita Hill’s testimony during the Clarence Thomas hearings became part of the Jewish Women’s Archive’s online exhibit of Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution.
- January 14, 1945 – Maina Gielgud born, British ballet dancer and administrator; a principal artist with the Sadlers Wells Royal Ballet (1976-1978), and Première Danseuse of the Ballet Classique de France (1963-1967). Gielgud was also a frequent guest artist with other companies. After her retirement from the stage, she became artistic director of the Australian Ballet (1983-1996), and then director of the Royal Danish Ballet (1997-1999). Since 1999, she has been coaching, and staging works as a freelancer for companies around the world.
- January 14, 1949 – Mary Robison born, American novelist and short story writer; her novel, Why Did I Ever, won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
- January 14, 1952 – Maureen Dowd born, American columnist for the New York Times since 1995, noted for her acerbic wit, and for bashing politicians on both the Left and the Right.
- January 14, 1957 – Anchee Min born in Shanghai; Chinese-American author and memoirist; noted for Red Azalea and The Cooked Seed: A Memoir, and six historical novels, including The Last Empress, based on the life of Empress Dowager Cixi.
- January 14, 1972 – Queen Margrethe II of Denmark ascends the throne, the first Queen to rule Denmark since 1412, and the first Danish monarch not named Frederick or Christian since 1513.
- January 14, 1993 – In Hargeisa, Somalia, five women accused and convicted of adultery were publicly stoned to death by cheerful villagers shortly after evening prayers. UN officials who stood by and witnessed the stoning feared for their lives if they tried to interfere.
- January 14, 2020 – British whistleblower Maggie Oliver, a former Greater Manchester detective constable in charge of investigating child sexual exploitation, resigned in 2012 after 15 years on the force, and went public with claims that victims’ reports of rape and sexual abuse were not being recorded by Manchester police officers. She said the force had spent years trying to cover up its failures. Operation Augusta, set up to investigate child sexual exploitation, was shut down prematurely partly because senior officers had prioritised solving burglaries and car crime. Oliver said that a new report in 2020, revealed in national newspapers, showed that up to 52 children may have been victims of a sexual exploitation ring in Manchester. She said this confirmed her assertions, but “what we need is action and not just from GMP, this is a national issue. Multiple rapes of vulnerable young children – 11- and 12-year-olds – deserve action and those who should take that action are senior police officers. This needs to come from the top of government, they need to be forced to address it properly.” In December 2020, a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) criticised GMP for failing to report over 80,000 crimes in the first half of 2020.
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- January 15, 1559 – Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England in London’s Westminster Abbey.
- January 15, 1803 – Marjorie Fleming born, Scottish poet and author; noted for her journal, which was a child’s eye view of life in 19th century Scotland. She died in 1811, a month prior to her 9th birthday.
- January 15, 1811 – Abigail Kelley Foster born, American abolitionist, feminist orator, and reform lecturer. She was secretary (1835-1837) of the Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society, and one of the co-founders with William Lloyd Garrison of the New England Non-Resistance Society, a peace group that opposed war, the death penalty, and favored dissolution of the union with Southern slave states instead of war. In 1838, she made her first public speech at the second Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Philadelphia, and later, her first speech to a mixed audience of men and women, after resigning her teaching position. She began a stormy career as a reform lecturer, denounced regularly from pulpits as “immoral” for daring to speak on a public platform, especially before mixed-gender audiences. Her almost ceaseless lecturing took her as far west as Indiana and Michigan, and her travels were marked not only by personal abuse and sometimes even violence, but also by frequent hardship. In 1845 she married Stephen S. Foster, a companion on the abolitionist lecture circuit. They continued to travel and lecture together until 1861, although after 1847 Abigail Foster spent much of each year at their Worcester, Massachusetts, farm. During the 1850s she added appeals for temperance and women’s rights to her addresses. She was outspokenly anti-clerical, which added to the ire against her. After the U.S. Civil War, ill-health curtailed her travel and speaking engagements, but she made a fund-raising tour of New England on behalf of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1870. On three occasions in the 1870s, she and her husband refused to pay taxes on their farm on the grounds that she had been taxed without representation, because as a woman she was denied the vote. On each occasion the farm was bought by friends at public auction, and then returned to them.
- January 15, 1836 – Constance Faunt Le Roy Runcie born, American pianist-composer, lecturer, and author. She promoted women’s literary clubs in the Midwest; noted for her non-fiction work The Burning Question, and for her hymns, as well as compositions for orchestra and chamber ensemble.
- January 15, 1842 – Mary MacKillop born, co-founder with Julian Tenison Wood of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites), religious sisters who established schools and welfare institutions throughout Australia and New Zealand, mainly to educate the rural poor; she was canonized as the first Australian Roman Catholic saint in 2010.
- January 15, 1850 – Sofia Kovalevskaya born, first Russian woman mathematician, and one of the first woman editors of a scientific journal. At university, she could only attend lectures unofficially, since women were not allowed to matriculate at Heidelberg. Nevertheless, by 1889, she became the first woman full professor in Europe. She made valuable contributions to the theory of differential equations. At the age of 41, while still at the peak of her mathematical ability and renown, Kovalevskaya died of influenza complicated by pneumonia.
- January 15, 1878 – Johanna Müller-Hermann born, Austrian composer; noted for lieder, and for an oratorio, Lied der Erinnerung: In Memoriam, to a text by Walt Whitman, which requires a large orchestra, a chorus, and several solo voices.
- January 15, 1879 – Mazo de la Roche born, Canadian novelist, short story writer, and playwright; known for her Jalna series of 16 novels, which became hugely popular.
- January 15, 1892 – Jane Hoey born, Bureau of Public Assistance director, for the Social Security Board (1936-1953). She helped states develop assistance programs, especially mothers’ aid programs, and bequeathed millions to Trinity College, and Columbia University’s School of Social Work.
- January 15, 1894 – Ecaterina Teodoroiu born, Romanian heroine of WWI; she was the guide of a patrol of scouts and guides of Cercetașii României, the Romanian Scouting movement. Many Scouts helped to transport the wounded from the front, and were often killed during air attacks. Teodoroiu became a nurse, but soon insisted on becoming a frontline soldier after her brother, a Sergeant in the Romanian army, was killed. The Romanian Royal family supported her resolve because while she was still a nurse, she had joined with civilians and reserve soldiers in a fight to repulse the attack of a Bavarian company of the German Army at Târgu Jiu in Romania’s Oltenia region, and they were impressed by her bravery. She is credited with saving her company from capture by the enemy using a ruse. She was captured in early November, 1916, but escaped by killing a German guard with a concealed revolver. Fighting near Filiasi, she was wounded in both legs and evacuated, then sent on to hospital in Bucharest. Released in January 1917, she joined an infantry regiment as a voluntary nurse, but soon was put in charge of a 25-man platoon. When her regiment was called up to the frontlines in August, General Ernest Broșteanu asked her to stay at the mobile hospital, but she firmly stated her desire to be allowed to stay with her platoon in the coming battle. She was killed on September 3, 1917, by machine gun fire while leading her platoon in a counter-attack. Her last words were recorded as “Forward, men, don’t give up, I’m still with you!” She was awarded Military Virtue Medal, first and second class, posthumously.
- January 15, 1898 – Irene Kuhn born, journalist and columnist who scooped the world when a tidal wave hit Honolulu in 1923; war correspondent for NBC radio (1940-1949) in the China-Burma-India Theater. She wrote a conservative nationally syndicated column.
- January 15, 1913 – Miriam Hyde born, Australian composer, pianist, and poet; she composed over 150 works for piano, including Sonata in G minor for piano, and Valley of Rocks; 50 songs; several other instrumental works; as well as several books of poetry.
- January 15, 1922 – Sylvia Lawler born, English geneticist, noted for her work on the rhesus blood-group system; and joined the world’s first department for the study of human genetics, Galton Laboratory, at University College, London. Lawler published A Genetical Study of the Gm Groups in Human Serum in 1960, and Human Blood Groups and Inheritance in 1963. Appointed as research scientist at the Institute of Cancer Research in London in 1960 and became the institute's first woman professor in 1980, and made major contributions to the development of malignant tissue-typing techniques, laying the scientific foundation for bone marrow transplantation. Lawler was a founding member of the International Workshops on Chromosomes in Leukaemia, and she also established the first national fetal tissue bank in the UK. The Royal Society of Medicine named their annual Sylvia Lawler Prizes for best scientific paper and best clinical paper in her honor.
- January 15, 1925 – Ruth Slenczynska born, American child prodigy, pianist, and author; made her Paris debut as a guest soloist with an orchestra at age seven; author of Music at Your Fingertips: Aspects of Pianoforte Technique.
- January 15, 1929 – Ida Lewis “Queen Ida” Guillory, American accordion player, first woman accordion player to lead a Zydeco band.
- January 15, 1943 – Dame Margaret Beckett, English metallurgist and Labour politician; Minister of State for Trade and Housing (2008-2009); first woman to serve as British Foreign Secretary (2006-2007); first woman Deputy Leader of the Labour Party (1992-1994)
- January 15, 1944 – Jenny Nimmo born, British author of children’s and fantasy books; The Magician Trilogy, which won a Smarties Book Prize, and Children of the Red King.
- January 15, 1947 – Andrea Martin born, Canadian-American comedian, actress, and writer; best known for her work in the television series SCTV, and her performances in the films Wag the Dog; My Big Fat Greek Wedding; and Little Italy. She has also two Tony Awards for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for My Favorite Year, and the 2013 revival of Pippin. Martin is a prominent spokesperson for the Children of Armenia Fund (COAF) and a host of their annual gala, and an active member of Artists Against Racism.
- January 15, 1956 – Mayawati Das born, Indian politician; National President of the Bahujan Samaj Party since 2003; Member of Rajya Sabha (Parliament’s Upper House – 2012-2017); Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh four separate times: 2007-2012, 2002-2003, 1997-1997, and 1995-1995. In 1995, she was the first woman Dalit Chief minister in India, and the youngest to that time.
- January 15, 1971 – Regina King born, African American actress and director; she won the 2019 Oscar for best Supporting Actress in If Beale Could Talk, and she won a 2020 Emmy for Lead Actress in a limited series for Watchmen. After directing several episodes of series television, King made her film directing debut with the Amazon original movie, One Night in Miami.
- January 15, 2017 – Loretta Lynch, in her final speech as the first African American U.S. Attorney General, commemorated Martin Luther King Day, saying that despite progress on civil rights "our work is not finished. I know that while our accomplishments make us proud, they must not make us complacent." Lynch made the remarks at Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, where four black girls were killed in a 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing. The church is in Birmingham's Civil Rights District, which Barack Obama named as a national monument in one of his final acts as U.S. President.
- January 15, 2020 – Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an academic with dual British and Australian citizenship who specializes in Middle East politics and Islamic studies, pleaded in a letter for the Australian government to secure her release from Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where she has been incarcerated, much of the time in solitary confinement, since September, 2018. She was arrested at Tehran airport by the intelligence arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards when she was about to board a flight to leave the country after attending an academic conference because she was flagged as “suspicious” by a fellow academic. She was tried and convicted in secret in 2019 on charges of espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison. An appeal against her sentence failed. No charges against her were made public. Moore-Gilbert went on five separate hunger strikes as her only means of attracting attention to her plight. The Australian foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said the Australian government was working “every day with our agencies here and with counterparts in Iran to … secure Dr Moore-Gilbert’s release.” A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry said, “Iran will not submit to political games and propaganda” in response to media reports of diplomatic pressure. Jasmin Ramsey, communications director with the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, said, “Kylie’s case is unusual. She has been in prison for a long time, she’s been charged and sentenced, and then they threw out her appeal. It’s contrary to Iranian law to keep her in solitary. She should be moved to the women’s ward for political cases but that’s not happened ... She remains isolated and it is, as she described in her letter, a form of psychological torture.” Moore-Gilbert was finally released in a “prisoner swap” in November 2020, in exchange for three Iranian prisoners in Thailand, two of whom had been convicted in connection with the 2012 Bangkok bomb plot.
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- January 16, 1634 – Dorothe Engelbretsdatter born, Norway’s first recognized woman poet whose pen name was “Bergens Debora” considered a proto-feminist for her defense of female creative power; her first book, a collection of verses, hymns and devotional pieces, Siælens Sang-Offer, was her most successful.
- January 16, 1837 – Ellen Russell Emerson born, American ethnologist, noted for her extensive examinations of Native American cultures, especially in comparison with other world cultures.
- January 16, 1882 – Margaret Wilson born, American novelist, short story writer, Presbyterian missionary in the Punjab region of India (1905-1910), and high school teacher; awarded the 1924 Pulitzer Prize for The Able McLaughlins. After her marriage to George Douglas Turner, a Scotsman she met in India, she moved to England. After he became the warden of Dartmoor Prison, Wilson wrote a non-fiction study on prison reform, The Crime of Punishment.
- January 16, 1898 – Margaret Booth born, American film editor and executive producer, whose career stretched from editing silent films for D.W. Griffith beginning in 1915, to editing Greta Garbo pictures including Camille at MGM, to executive producer on The Slugger’s Wife in 1985 at age 87; received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in Editing in 1978, and lived to be 104 years old.
- January 16, 1900 – Kiku Amino born, Japanese author and translator of English and Russian literature; recipient of the 1947 Women’s Literature Prize for Kin no kan (A Golden Coffin), the 1967 Yomiuri Prize and the Japan Academy of the Arts prize for Ichigo ichie (Once in a Lifetime).
- January 16, 1901 – Laura Riding born as Laura Reichenthal, American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer. Her first poems were published in The Fugitive magazine (1922-1925). She published her first collection of poetry, The Close Chaplet, in 1926.
- January 16, 1918 – Nel Benschop born, Dutch Christian poet and teacher, Benschop became the best-selling poet in the Netherlands, after her first volume of poetry, Gouddraad uit vlas (Gold thread from flax) was published in 1967.
- January 16, 1927 – Estela Trambley born, teacher, playwright, pioneer in Latina literature, co- founder of Los Pobres, the 1st Hispanic Theater in El Paso, Sor Juana and Other Plays.
- January 16, 1930 – Mary Ann McMorrow born, American lawyer and first woman elected to the Illinois Supreme Court (1992) and its first woman Chief Justice (2002-2006); became a judge on the Illinois Appellate Court in 1985, and the first woman chair of the Executive Committee of the Appellate Court. In 1976, she was elected as a Judge of the Circuit Court. After practicing law (1953-1970?), she was appointed as Assistant State’s Attorney of Cook County, assigned to the Criminal Division, and was the first woman to prosecute felony cases in Cook County.
- January 16, 1932 – Dian Fossey born, zoologist, primatologist and naturalist notable for her years of extensive study of mountain gorilla groups in Rwanda, in central Africa. In 1963, she met Louis and Mary Leakey, who encouraged her initial interest. With additional encouragement from Jane Goodallt, she set up and directed (1967-1980) the Karisoke Research Center, Rwanda. Living a solitary life among the gorillas, she learned their habits, and gradually gained their acceptance. She wrote Gorillas in the Mist (1983) to to raise public awareness of the threats to the gorillas from poachers and loss of habitat. In 1985, Fossey’s mutilated body, hacked by machete, was found near the centre. Poachers, whose devastating attacks on the gorillas she had tried to stop, were suspected of her murder, though it remains unsolved.
- January 16, 1933 – Susan Sontag born, intellectual, critic, filmmaker, and writer; noted for On Photography, Against Interpretation, and essays, journals and diaries.
- January 16, 1938 – Marina Vaizey born, Lady Vaizey, Anglo-American art critic and author based in the UK; noted for biographies of painters.
- January 16, 1944 – Jill Tarter born as Jill Cornell, American astronomer known for her work on the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence); Chair Emeritus for SETI Research and former director of the Center for SETI Research; recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Aerospace, two Public Service Medals from NASA, Chabot Observatory’s Person of the Year award (1997), and the Tesla Award of Technology (2001). Tarter has been an AAAS Fellow since 2002 and a California Academy of Sciences Fellow since 2003.
- January 16, 1947 – Elaine Murphy born, Baroness Murphy, British independent politician, physician, psychiatrist, and academic with a PhD in Social History, she had been a Crossbencher in the House of Lords since 2004. Murphy has published works about 18th and 19th century workhouses and madhouses, and is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, which supports separation of church and state, and challenges religious privilege.
- January 16, 1948 – Ruth Reichl born, American chef, food writer, television series host, and former editor of Gourmet magazine.
- January 16, 1950 – Debbie Allen born, African American choreographer, director, producer, dancer, and actress; best known for her work on the televisions series Fame (1982-1987).
- January 16, 1952 – Julie Anne Peters born, American author of young adult fiction, often featuring LGBT characters; Luna (2004) was the first mainstream release YA novel with a transgender character.
- January 16, 1958 – Lena Ek born, Swedish lawyer and politician; Minister for the Environment (2011-2014); Member of the European Parliament (2004-2011), on the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and the delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. She was a Member of the Riksdag (Swedish parliament, 1998-2004). Ek is a member of the Centre Party, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
- January 16, 1959 – Lisa Milroy born, Canadian artist; won the 1989 John Moores Painting Prize.
- January 16, 1968 – Rebecca Stead born, American author of children’s and young adult fiction; she won the 2010 Newbery Medal for When You Reach Me.
- January 16, 2006 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf sworn in as Liberia’s first woman president and Africa’s first elected woman head of state.
- January 16, 2018 – During the four-day sentencing hearing of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, nearly 90 women are expected to testify about the sexual abuse to which he subjected them. Nassar pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault, but the judge in the case is allowing any of his more than 140 accusers speak if they ask. The first accuser to speak was not one of the dozens of gymnasts who have accused him of abuse, but a family friend who said Nassar molested her at his house, causing a family rift when her parents didn't believe her. Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles said she, too, was one of Nassar's victims. Her teammates McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, and Gabby Douglas had previously disclosed that they were sexually abused by Nassar. The incidents dated back as far as 1992, and several of his victims had reported his misconduct to USA Gymnastics, but the organization took no action against him until 2015. Nassar had previously pled guilty to child pornography charges, for which he was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison, and to seven counts of sexual assault in Michigan, where he was sentenced to 175 years in state prison.
- January 16, 2020 – Evelyn Yang, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, revealed in a television interview that she has been inspired by people she met on the campaign trail to go public about being sexually assaulted by her doctor when she was pregnant with her first child. Yang said her OB-GYN, Robert Hadden, abused her in his office, touching her inappropriately in an unnecessary examination after telling her she might need a cesarean section. "I knew it was wrong. I knew I was being assaulted," she said. Yang said changed doctors, but told nobody about what happened until she learned another woman had accused the same doctor of sexual abuse. Yang and 31 other women are suing Hadden and the hospital system.
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- January 17, 1562 – In France, Catherine de’ Medici promulgates the Edict of Saint-Germain to recognize the Huguenots, giving limited guarantees of freedom of conscience and private worship, but the Parlement of Paris made remonstrances to the crown concerning conflicts with previous laws, delaying its ratification until after the Massacre of Vassy: on March 1, 1562, 63 Huguenots armed only with stones, were killed and their place of worship burned, beginning the French Wars of Religion.
- January 17, 1814 – Ellen Wood born, English novelist who published as Mrs. Henry Wood; several of her books became international bestsellers, most noted for The Channings, and East Lynne.
- January 17, 1820 – Anne Brontë born, English author and poet, the youngest of the Brontë sisters; notable for Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
- January 17, 1829 – Catherine Booth born, co-founder of the Salvation Army, with her husband William. As a young woman, she was a supporter of the national Temperance Society. She began her career as a social worker and preacher working with young people, and speaking at children’s meetings. In 1859, she wrote a pamphlet, Female Ministry: Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel, in defense of American revivalist preacher Mrs. Phoebe Palmer, whose preaching had caused a great stir in England, since only men stood in the pulpits or spoke in meetings at that time. In the pamphlet, she declares that women are neither naturally nor morally inferior to men; that there was no scriptural reason to deny a public ministry to women who felt a calling; and maintained that what the Bible urged, the Holy Spirit had ordained and blessed and so must be justified. Booth also complained that the “unjustifiable application” of Paul's advice, ‘Let your women keep silence in the Churches’ (1 Corinthians 14:34), “has resulted in more loss to the Church, evil to the world, and dishonor to God, than any of [its] errors.” She was a partner in her husband’s work, but also helped alcoholics make a new start, held cottage meetings for converts, and initiated her own campaigns, including lobbying Queen Victoria to seek legislation for safeguarding females, in the form of the "Parliamentary Bill for the protection of girls." She became an eloquent speaker, and a fine writer, proof positive of her contention that women had the right to preach the Gospel on the same terms as men. But in spite of her exhortations that women should be equal, male officers in the Salvation Army received a third more pay than women officers until just before WWII.
- January 17, 1877 – May Gibbs born in England, Anglo-Australian children’s author, illustrator and cartoonist; her family moved to Australia when she was four; she studied art in England; noted for her “gumnut babies” and the book Snugglepot and Cuddlepie; while in England, drew cartoons for the Common Cause, published by the Suffragettes.
- January 17, 1877 – Marie Zdeňka Baborová-Čiháková born, the first Czech woman botanist and zoologist.
- January 17, 1905 – Peggy Gilbert born, American Dixieland jazz saxophonist and bandleader; beginning in 1928, she appeared in movies and toured in vaudeville shows; in 1933, she founded an all-girl jazz band, which used several different names, including "Peggy Gilbert and Her Metro Goldwyn Orchestra" and "Peggy Gilbert and her Symphonics." The band often played in famous Hollywood nightclubs, including the Cocoanut Grove. She also toured in USO shows, and was an advocate for women musicians. Gilbert had several lean years after WWII, but found a new audience in the 1950s on radio and television. In 1974, at age 69, she started her last great all-female band, “The Dixie Belles,” with musicians from vaudeville and the Big Band era. The group performed on TV and at jazz festivals, and in the 1980 Rose Parade in Pasadena, California. In 1985, the band recorded “Peggy Gilbert & the Dixie Belles.” Gilbert lived to the age of 102.
- January 17, 1910 – Edith Green born, elected to Congress (Democrat-Oregon) in 1954 and served 9 terms, worked on women’s rights, education, and equal pay. Instrumental in passing 1972 Equal Opportunity in Education Act (better known as Title IX).
- January 17, 1920 – Nora Kaye born, prima ballerina, choreographer, and film producer; associated with the American Ballet company; collaborated on films with husband Herbert Ross,and served as producer on The Turning Point (1977) and Pennies from Heaven (1981).
- January 17, 1922 – Betty White born, American actress, TV personality, animal rights activist, and national treasure. Her television career is considered the longest in entertainment history, spanning over 80 years. She was also one of the first women to have control both in front of and behind the camera, and is recognized as the first woman producer of a TV situation comedy series, Life with Elizabeth (1953-1955).
- January 17, 1924 – Jewel Plummer Cobb born, American biologist, cancer researcher, professor, dean. and academic administrator; great-granddaughter of a freed slave, she earned a B.A. in biology in 1945, but had to fight for a fellowship for graduate study in biology; worked on finding a cure for melanoma as an independent researcher at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory; advocate for women and students of color being admitted to universities and graduate school.
- January 17, 1927 – Moira Shearer born, internationally renowned Scots-English ballet dancer; noted for her performance in the classic ballet film, The Red Shoes.
- January 17, 1927 – Eartha Kitt born, American multi-talented performer, peace and civil rights activist, founder of a non-profit to help disadvantaged youths in Los Angeles; her career in the U.S. took a nosedive in 1968, after Ladybird Johnson asked her about the Vietnam War and she made frank anti-war statements before the press; she was falsely branded as a “sadistic nymphomaniac” and other slanders in a CIA dossier (discovered in 1975) and blacklisted; she left the U.S to make a living in Europe and Asia; when she stepped in as a replacement in London’s West End production of the musical Follies, she stopped the show singing “I’m Still Here.” Kitt made a triumphal return to the U.S starring on Broadway in Timbuktu! in 1978.
- January 17, 1933 – Shari Lewis born as Phyllis Hurwitz, American ventriloquist, puppeteer, and pioneer in children’s television, best known as the original puppeteer of Lamb Chop. She and Lamb Chop made their debut appearance on Captain Kangaroo in 1956, and continued until the PBS program Lamb Chop’s Play Along ended in 1997. Lewis and her husband Jeremy Tarcher then created The Charlie Horse Music Pizza show (1998-1999), which was designed to teach elementary school children about music at a time when one-third of elementary schools were cutting music classes from their curriculum. The program was canceled when Lewis died at age 65, from pneumonia while undergoing chemotherapy in August, 1998.
- January 17, 1935 – Ruth Ann Minner born, American Democratic politician and businesswoman; first woman governor of Delaware (2001-2009) after serving as Lieutenant Governor (1993-2001); member of the Delaware General Assembly (1975-1982).
- January 17, 1939 – Martha Cotera born, pioneering Chicana feminist, author of 2 seminal texts — Diosa y Hembra and Chicana Feminist, founding member of TEAMS (Texans for Educational Advancement for Mexican Americans), a network of educators that mobilized support for students who participated in the high school walkouts organized by MAYO, the Mexican American Youth Organization. Founded Information Systems Development, a consulting firm in Austin, Texas, and was publisher of the Austin Hispanic Directory. Also a founding member of Texas Raza Unida Party (1969), taught courses which prepared teachers for bilingual education programs.
- January 17, 1942 – Ita Buttrose born, Australian journalist and author; founding editor of Cleo (1972-1975), magazine and editor of Australian Women’s Weekly (1975-1978); first woman editor of a major Australian newspaper, the Daily Telegraph (1981-1984).
- January 17, 1944 – Ann R. Oakley born, distinguished English sociologist, author, and feminist; Founder-Director of the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education, University of London; has published numerous academic works, but also several best-selling novels under the pen name Rosamund Clay, including The Men’s Room.
- January 17, 1945 – Anne Cutler born, Australian Research Professor at the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University and Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen; noted for Native Listening, about human listeners' recognition of spoken language, and in particular on how the brain's processes of decoding speech are shaped by language-specific listening experience; honored with the 1999 Spinoza Prize of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research.
- January 17, 1949 – Anita Borg born, American computer scientist; pioneer in email communication; founder of Systers (1987), the first email network for women; as well as the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (1994), and the Institute for Women and Technology (1997). Honored with the Augusta Ada Lovelace Award from the Association for Women in Computing for her work on behalf of women in the computing field in 1995.
- January 17, 1957 – Ann Nocenti born, American comic book editor for Marvel Comics, journalist, writer, and filmmaker; outspoken commentator on sexism, racism, nuclear proliferation, and other societal issues.
- January 17, 1964 – Michelle Obama born, American lawyer and university administrator, first African-American First Lady (2009-2017).
- January 17, 1968 – Rowan Pelling born, British journalist, broadcaster, writer, stand-up comedian, ‘editrice’ of the Erotic Review, and columnist for Independent on Sunday and Daily Mail.
- January 17, 1971 – Sylvie Testud born, French actress, writer,and film director; she made her directing debut with the 1998 short film, Je veux descendre (I Want to Get Off), and directed the 2012 feature film, La Vie d'une autre (Another Woman’s Life).
- January 17, 1992 – During a visit to South Korea, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa apologises for Japan forcing Korean women into sexual slavery as “comfort women” for Imperial Japanese troops occupying Korea during WWII.
- January 17, 1997 – An Irish court grants the first divorce in the Catholic country since it gained its independence from Britain in 1922.
- January 17, 2020 – China is trying to reverse its long-standing One Child policy, but Beijing just reported its lowest birthrate since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, Mei Fong said, “The whole policy was drafted by missile scientists. It was based around mechanical systems, where you set a target then adjust accordingly. Women’s bodies were treated like engines, you set inputs and expect to get a certain output,” she said. Only child daughters have grown up being taught that limiting family size was a path to happiness, prosperity, and social mobility, but they work in an society where women are penalised for their gender even before their first day on the job. Pregnancy and motherhood bring another level of discrimination for many. That combination of deeply sexist constraints and years of propaganda have proven powerfully effective as contraceptives for many women. Adding to the problem is that the government wants more babies, but only the ones that it considers the right kind of babies, born into a traditional marriage of a man and a woman. Same-sex marriages are illegal, and single mothers face fines or obstacles to accessing social services for their children. One woman has been suing just for the right to freeze her eggs. In the name of “ethnic equality”, the government also recently reduced the number of children ethnic minority couples are allowed, which used to be higher than for the majority Han. Urban educated working women are the ones who are going to suffer the most, they are the ones seen as the ideal birth vehicles for China’s future, the handmaidens,” said Fong. “They face all kinds of pressure from families, from society, to reproduce.”
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- January 18, 1659 – Damaris Cudworth Masham born, English philosopher, advocate for women’s education; she overcame poor eyesight and lack of formal education, and became highly regarded among eminent thinkers of her time, especially her long-time friend, philosopher John Locke.
- January 18,1884 – Elena Arizmendi Mejia born, Mexican feminist who founded Mujeres de la raza, and co-founded the International League of Iberian and Latin American Women; in 1911, during the Mexican Revolution, she started La Blanca Neutral (the Neutral White Cross) after the Red Cross refused to treated wounded and sick revolutionaries, she raised the money to set up a field hospital in Ciudad Juárez; in spite of the devastation of the city and the overwhelming number of wounded and typhus patients, La Blanca Neutral continued to expand, La Blanca volunteers racing to Iguala in June 1911 to help victims of a massive earthquake; by the end of 1911, there were 25 brigades established across Mexico; she left the organization in 1913, after some male doctors rebelled, refusing to take orders from a woman, which split La Blanca Neutral into opposing factions.
- January 18,1886 – Clara Nordström born, Swedish writer in the German language and translator. She used Nordström, her maiden name, as her penname. She published her first novel, Tomtelilla, in both Sweden and Germany in 1944. She suffered from ill health throughout her life, but completed 16 books before her death in 1962 at age 76.
- January 18, 1941 – Denise Bombardier born, French Canadian journalist, novelist, essayist, and producer; she began her career as a research assistant on the Radio-Canada program, Aujourd’hui (Today), and became a host for Trait-d’union (Hyphen, 1987-1988), and Aujourd’hui dimanche (Today Sunday, 1988–1991). She was the first woman in Quebec to host a public affairs program on television, the weekly Noir sur blanc (Black on White).
- January 18, 1943 – Kay Grainger born, U.S. Congresswoman (Republican-Texas) from 1997 to the present; formerly mayor of Fort Worth TX (1991-1995); though a conservative who consistently votes to define marriage as only permitted between a man and a woman, and received a 10% rating from NARAL, in 2016 she was one of the Republicans who opposed GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump; she has also been strong advocate for restricting the Pentagon from entering into new contracts with Russia’s state arms broker, Rosoboron export.
- January 18, 1971 – Amy Barger born, American astronomer who worked on the Morphs collaboration studying the formation and morphologies of distant galaxies, making discoveries about quasars, black holes and other far distant objects; recipient of the 2001 Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy; elected in 2017 as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
- January 18, 2018 – The Trump administration announced it will expand protections for medical professionals who object to performing such procedures as abortions and gender reassignment, or dispensing contraceptives, due to religious objections. New rules will let them stick to their objections without penalty. Civil rights, gay rights, and abortion rights groups, as well as some medical groups, criticized the move, saying the Trump administration was trying to legitimize discrimination. The Department of Health and Human Services is to create an oversight entity called the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division to oversee all matters that concern the "conscience rights" of doctors, nurses, and other health-care workers.
- January 18, 2018 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that she was expecting her first child in June. Ardern became the second elected world leader to give birth while in office. Benazir Bhutto had a daughter in 1990 while she was serving as Pakistan's prime minister. Ardern, age 37, said she would take six weeks of maternity leave, and that Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters would take over in her absence, but she would be "contactable and available" if members of her center-left coalition government need her input. Her partner, Clarke Gayford, will be a stay-at-home dad and primary care-giver. "Knowing that so many parents juggle the care of their new babies, we consider ourselves to be very lucky," she said. When two mosques in Christchurch came under terrorist attack in March, 2019, she showed extraordinary compassion and resolve in dealing with the crisis, and pushed through stricter gun control laws within days after the attack.
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- January 19, 399 – Pulcheria born, Regent of the Byzantine Empire during the minority of her brother Theodosius II; beginning in 414, when she was 15 years old, she was proclaimed “Augusta” (Empress) and took the reins of government until 416, when her brother came to power.
- January 19, 1876 – Thit Jensen born Maria Jensen, Danish novelist and outspoken feminist; founder in 1924 of Foreningen for Seksuel Oplysning (Organization for Sexual Awareness) for which birth control proponent Dr. Jonathan Leunbach performed abortions. She was personally against abortion, but felt that women needed to have a choice.
- January 19, 1889 – Sophie Taeuber-Arp born, Swiss painter and sculptor, one of the most important 20th century geometric abstraction artists.
- January 19, 1893 – Magda Tagliaferro born, Brazilian pianist, soloist-guest artist with major orchestras, taught at the Conservatoire de Paris.
- January 19, 1905 – Oveta Culp Hobby born, second woman in U.S. Cabinet (20 years after Frances Perkins), first Secretary of Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1953), awarded the Distinguished Medal of Service for her work as the first Director of Women’s Army Corps (1945).
- January 19, 1905 – Anne Hummert born, producer of popular radio programs, leading creator of daytime radio serials (soap operas) during the 1930s and 1940s, “Just Plain Bill” (1933-55), “Ma Perkins,” and “Stella Dallas” (1937-1955).
- January 19, 1921 – Patricia Highsmith born, American author of psychological thrillers; her first novel was Strangers on a Train.
- January 19, 1925 – Nina Bawden born, English novelist and children’s author; winner of the 1976 Guardian’s Children’s Fiction Prize for The Peppermint Pig, and the 1993 Phoenix Award for Carrie’s War; 2004 Golden PEN Award for “a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature.”
- January 19, 1940 – Mary Burton born in Argentina, anti-apartheid activist; after moving to South Africa in 1961, Burton was appalled by the injustice of apartheid, and joined the Black Sash, a white women’s movement against apartheid which organized demonstrations, marches, and vigils, wearing black sashes and silently holding signs standing outside public buildings in major South African cities. The organization also opened legal advice centers, and offered legal aid to victims of apartheid. Burton served as national president of the Black Sash (1985-1990). She is the author of The Black Sash. The organization remains active, and still provides free legal aid and paralegal support for cases involving discrimination or human rights abuses in South Africa.
- January 19, 1946 – Dolly Parton born, singer/songwriter, “Jolene”, “Nine to Five,” and the founder of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, an early childhood literacy program which has provided 60,000,000 books to children in U.S., Canada, and the UK. Over 1600 local community programs bring the Imagination Library to over 750,000 children every month.
- January 19, 1948 – Nancy Lynch born, American computer scientist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of Software Science and Engineering, and head of MIT’s Theory of Distributed Systems research group; Association for Computer Machinery Fellow; recipient of the 2001 and 2007 Dijkstra Prize, and the 2010 IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award; member of the National Academy of Sciences.
- January 19, 1953 – Almost 72% of all television sets in the United States tuned into I Love Lucy to watch Lucy give birth, a first on U.S. Television.
- January 19, 1954 – Cynthia Sherman born, American photographer known for conceptual portraits, frequently with herself as the model.
- January 19, 1954 – Esther Shkalim born in Iran, Israeli researcher, curator of Jewish art, and Mizrahi feminist poet. Her family immigrated to Israel in 1958, when she was four years old. She lived in the United States for four years while her husband was working in St. Louis, and she completed her MA at Washington University there. In 1953, Shkalim was the founding manager of the Center for Jewish Heritage at the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv, and also worked as a Jewish art guide for the Ministry of Education. Her book Sharkia (Fierce Eastern Wind) is included in the mandatory literature curriculum of Israeli schools.
- January 19, 1956 – Susan Solomon born, American atmospheric chemist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration until 2011, when she joined the faculty of MIT as the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Climate Science; she and her colleagues were the first to propose that the chlorofluorocarbon free radical reaction mechanism is the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole; National Academy of Science member; also serves on the Science and Security Board for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; winner of the National Medal of Science in 1999, and the 2017 Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship by the National Academy of Sciences, for substantive work in atmospheric chemistry and climate change.
- January 19, 1959 – Danese Cooper born, American computer scientist and programmer, advocate of open source software; managed teams at Symantec and Apple; chief open source proponent at Sun Microsystems, then senior director of open source strategies at Intel; board member of the Open Source Hardware Association; in 2014, she joined the PayPal company as their first Head of Open Source.
- January 19, 1964 – Janine Antoni born, Bahamian contemporary artist working with photography and sculpture.
- January 19, 1966 – Yukiko Duke born, Swedish journalist, editor, and translator; editor for the literature paper Vi laser since 2011; noted for her translations of Japanese books into Swedish; co-author with her mother of Mikaku, den japanska kokboken (Mikaku, the Japanese Cookbook).
- January 19, 1969 – Edwidge Danticat born, Haitian-American novelist and short story writer; her short story “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” won a Pushcart Prize, her novel The Farming of Bones won the 1999 American Book Award; and Brother, I’m Dying won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award.
- January 19, 2010 – Republican Scott Brown captured the U.S. Senate seat held by liberal champion Edward Kennedy for nearly half a century, defeating Democrat Martha Coakley in a special election. In 2012, Democrat Elizabeth Warren defeated Scott Brown.
- January 19, 2014 – Bernice King, Martin Luther King's daughter, urged people around the world to honor the slain civil rights leader's memory and mark his 85th birthday by making Monday a "no shots fired" day. She said in an era of frighteningly frequent school shootings and increasingly violent films and video games make the federal holiday honoring her father an important time to renew his legacy. "Dr. King's philosophy of non-violence is more relevant, I believe, than it was 10 years ago," she said.
- January 19, 2018 – Donald Trump became the first sitting president to address the annual March for Life in Washington. He spoke to a small group of activists in the White House Rose Garden, and the address was broadcast live to the larger crowd assembled on the National Mall. "As you all know, Roe v. Wade has resulted in some of the most permissive abortion laws anywhere in the world," Trump said of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision on abortion. He described the march as "a movement born out of love" and touted his executive actions on the issue.
- January 19, 2020 – The Royal Spanish Academy, Spain’s conservative language academy which has the final word on the correct use of Spanish, had been sitting on a report commissioned over a year ago by Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo concerning a proposal to rewrite the nation’s 1978 constitution using gender-neutral language. It’s been a tumultuous 12 months in Spanish politics, with two general elections and months of political manoeuvring before a government could be formed, but now that Pedro Sánchez’s leftwing coalition has been sworn in, the linguistic battle with the venerable academy is heating up. The academy’s report calls the proposed changes “grammatically unacceptable.” Carmen Calvo counters, “It’s time the constitution had a language that respects both genders. It only has masculine language and this isn’t appropriate in a modern democracy.” One solution hit upon by supporters of inclusive language is to “double up” on genders but that infuriates traditionalists, and would mean replacing about 500 words, with considerable doubling up – for example, ‘Spanish citizens’ is traditionally written as ciudadanos españolas, but would become ciudadanos/ciudadanas españoles/españolas.
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- January 20, 1840 – Anne Jemima Clough born, British suffragist and promoter of higher education for women; one of the founders in 1867 of the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women, and served as its president (1873-1874); Clough was the first principal of Newnham College, when it was founded in 1871, which was the second women’s college at Cambridge (Girton College was Cambridge’s first women’s college, founded in 1869).
- January 20, 1856 – Harriot Stanton Blatch born, American author, suffragist and women’s rights activist, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
- January 20, 1878 – Ruth St. Denis born, American modern dance pioneer; co-founder of the Denishawn School of Dance; she was the teacher and mentor of Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, and other notable American dancers.
- January 20, 1899 – Clarice Cliff born, notable English ceramic artist and modeller who founded the Bizarre line at the A.J. Wilkinson factory (Royal Staffordshire Pottery), then became the Art Director at the adjoining factories of Newport Pottery and A.J. Wilkinson.
- January 20, 1900 – Dorothy Annan born in Brazil to British parents, English painter, potter, and muralist; noted for the Fleet Building telecom murals, nine ceramic tile murals, commissioned in 1960, which were granted Grade II listed status in 2011 by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), frustrating the plans of building’s current owner, Goldman Sachs, to redevelop the site, destroying the murals in the process.
- January 20, 1908 – Fleur Cowles born, American writer, editor, columnist, and artist; associate editor of Look magazine (1947-1955); founder and creative force behind short-lived but influential Flair magazine (1950-1951).
- January 20, 1910 – Joy Adamson born in Austria-Hungary, Kenyan naturalist, artist, conservationist, and author; best known for her book Born Free: the story of Elsa, the first lioness raised in captivity to be successfully released back into the wild. Also noted for her water-colour paintings of indigenous plants during her early years in Kenya, when she collected many botanical specimens. Her records include information concerning local uses of plant parts in ritual and medicinal practices, and for insecticides, dyes, fibres and food. Early in 1956, a completely new period in her life began with the arrival of an orphan lioness cub. Her work with Elsa, and with a cheetah and a leopard, proved that by skilful and considered action wild animals raised up by humans can be taught to manage in nature independently. In 1980, Adamson was killed at age 69, in Northern Kenya by a servant during a wage dispute.
- January 20, 1927 – Qurratulain Hyder born, Indian Urdu-language novelist, short story writer, and journalist; one of the most outstanding and influential names in Urdu literature, she is best known for her historical novel, Aag Ka Darya (River of Fire), published in Urdu in 1959, then translated by the author into English and published in 1998. She was honored with the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian award. in 2005. She died at age 80 of a protracted lung disease in 2007.
- January 20, 1942 – Linda Moulton Howe born, American investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and UFO conspiracy theorist; her early work on environmental issues won the 1982 Florence Sabin Award “for outstanding contribution to public health.”
- January 20, 1944 – Pat Parker born as Patricia Cooks, African American lesbian feminist poet and activist. She wrote poetry about her tough childhood, sexual assault, her older sister’s murder, and an abusive relationship which ended with her being pushed down a flight of stairs, causing her to miscarry. She later came out as a lesbian, and became a political activist with the Black Panther Party, Black Woman’s Revolutionary Council, and was a founder of the Women’s Press Collective. Noted for her powerful poem Womanslaughter, about the murder of her sister Shirley, shot and killed by her husband. He was convicted of manslaughter, but only served a one-year sentence in a work-release program.
- January 20, 1948 – Nancy Kress born, American Science Fiction author; Beggars in Spain won both Hugo and Nebula awards; After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall and Yesterday’s Kin both won Nebula Awards.
- January 20, 1954 – Alison Seabeck born, British Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Plymouth Moor View (2005-2015); member of the feminist Fawcett Society and the Labour Women’s Network.
- January 20, 1956 – Maria Larsson born, Swedish politician; Christian Democrat MP (1998-2014); deputy party leader (2013-2014); Governor of Örebo County since 2015.
- January 20, 1959 – Tami Hoag born, American novelist, best known for her Kovac & Liska murder mystery/thriller series.
- January 20, 1973 – Mathilde d’Acoz born, Queen Mathilde of Belgium, the nation’s first Belgium-born queen. She is noted for her involvement in overcoming child poverty, promoting literacy, and improving the position of women in society. She is the honorary president of Unicef Belgium; the World Health Organization’s Special Representative for Immunization; and works with Breast International Group, which supports breast cancer research. The Queen Mathilde Fund promotes the care of vulnerable people, and awards an annual prize for good works. She is also the honorary president of Child Focus, a foundation for prevention and investigation of missing and sexually exploited children. Queen Mathilde was named a UN Sustainable Development Goal Advocate in 2016.
- January 20, 1982 – Ruchi Sanghvi born, Indian computer engineer, was the first woman engineer hired by Facebook in 2005, but left the company in late 2010 to co-found the start-up Cove, which was acquired by Dropbox in 2012; she is a founder of the 501-c4 lobbying group FWD.us, formed to promote immigration reform, improve STEM education, and facilitate technological breakthroughs in the U.S.
- January 20, 2001 – Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, first elected woman Vice-President of the Philippines, becomes its second woman President after Corazón Aquino, when President Joseph Estrada is ousted in a nonviolent four-day revolution.
- January 20, 2020 – After the passage of a new citizenship law that many believe openly discriminates against Muslims and undermines the secular foundations of India’s constitution, unrest engulfed India in December 2019 which has shown no sign of abating. Millions continued to take to the streets against the Citizenship Amendment Act, and the government has attempted to quash the protests, with bans on gatherings of more than four people and increasing police violence and torture, it has only fuelled the fire of discontent across India. 90-year-old Asma Khatun chanted exuberantly. “Azadi,” the Hindi word for freedom in Shaheen Bagh, a neighbourhood in South Delhi that over the past few weeks has become a nationwide symbol of resistance. For over 40 days, the frail but feisty 90-year-old has been camped out on the streets day and night, side by side with hundreds of women and braving Delhi’s coldest temperatures for more than a century. “I am old, my bones hurt in the cold and my children are very worried about my health, but I am sitting here because I will not stand by as Mr Modi tries to break up India, to tell me that this is not my home after 90 years,” said Khatun. Another housewife involved with politics for the first time, Nusrat Asra, age 43, a said, “I am not afraid of anything, I am not afraid of the police, I am not afraid of being beaten, I am here just to stand up for freedom,” said Asra animatedly, her face lit up in defiance. “We are not fighting for any god or any political party, we are fighting for our rights. And I have brought my 12-year-old daughter here every day to teach her to stand up and fight for her rights too.”The loudest voices of dissent have been women. From activists and lawyers to students, housewives and grandmothers, both Hindu and Muslim, women across India have been at the forefront of the resistance to the new citizenship law, and a nationwide citizenship test, known as the NRC, which could result in millions of Muslims being declared illegal aliens in their own country. For many, it is the first time they have had any political engagement at all. Numbers have continued to swell, drawing in a cross-generational, largely female crowd unlike any protest seen in India before. Karuna Nundy, one of India’s most prominent lawyers, and a vocal opponent of the new act, said, “Being a woman in India feeds into the experience of, and resistance to oppression. We know exclusion, and we know it viscerally.”
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- January 21, 1610 – Elizabeth Fones Winthrop Feake Hallett born, early Massachusetts Bay Colony settler; The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton is an historical novel of her life, and her “scandalous” third marriage without knowing for certain that her second husband, who had abandoned the family and disappeared, was dead; she was also one of the few women of the time to own property in her own name; she began life as a Puritan, but died a Quaker.
- January 21, 1675 – Sibylle. Duchess of Saxe-Lauenburg born, Margravine consort of Baden-Baden. Her husband, Louis William, died in 1707 when her son Louis George was only five years old, so she became Regent until he reached his majority in 1727. As Regent, she held a tight rein on the state finances, which had been ravaged by a series of wars with the French, and oversaw or encouraged restoration of many buildings. She also orchestrated the marriage of her daughter Johanna to Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans in 1724. She retired to Ettlingen Palace in 1727. She died in 1733 at age 58.
- January 21, 1714 – Anna Morandi Manzolini born, Italian anatomist and sculptor, lecturer in anatomy at the University of Bologna, known for anatomical wax models.
- January 21, 1804 – Eliza R. Snow born, American Mormon poet and hymnist, plural wife of Brigham Young; General President of the Second Relief Society of the LDS in Utah, a women’s auxiliary for relief of the poor.
- January 21, 1840 – Sophia Jex-Blake born, English physician, teacher and feminist advocate for women’s education, noted for her 1869 essay, Medicine as a profession for women, in which she reasoned that there was no objective proof of women’s intellectual inferiority to men, and that the matter could easily be tested by granting women “a fair field and no favour” – teaching them as men were taught and subjecting them to exactly the same examinations. Jex-Blake was the first women to apply to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. The majority of the Medical Faculty voted in favour of allowing her to study medicine, but the University Court rejected her application on the grounds that the University could not make special arrangements ‘in the interest of one lady.’ Wolfe then advertised in The Scotsman and other Scottish newspapers for other women to join her, and reapplied with four others for the right to matriculate, including attending all the classes and taking all the examinations required to earn a degree in medicine. They were joined by two others, and became known as the Edinburgh Seven, accepted to begin classes in 1869 as Edinburgh became the first British university to accept women. The women quickly showed they could compete on equal terms with the male students, and faced increasing hostility from them. In November 1870, as the women arrived for an anatomy exam at Surgeon’s Hall, a large angry mob threw mud, rubbish and insults at them. A few influential members of the Medical faculty used this incident to persuade the University to deny them graduation. Jex-Blake and some of the others completed their studies and took exams at European universities which already allowed women graduates. Jex-Blake passed exams at the University of Berne and was awarded an MD in January 1877, then qualified as Licentiate of the King’s and Queen’s College of Physicians in Dublin, and was finally registered with the UK General Medical Council. She was the third woman doctor registered in the UK, and the first practicing woman doctor in Scotland. She founded the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women in 1886. Her determined efforts were the driving force behind Parliament passing legislation in which women won the right to access to medical education.
- January 21, 1845 – Harriet Backer born, Norwegian painter and a fin de siecle pioneer in advancing art as a career for women, both in Norway and in the rest of Europe. She founded an art school (1889-1912) in Sandvika, near Christiania. Backer produced around 180 works of art, notable for her detailed interior scenes, and is regarded as a naturalist and early Impressionist. She was honored in 1908 with Kongens fortjenstmedalje i gull (King’s Medal of Merit in Gold).
- January 21, 1871 – Olga Preobrajenska born, prima ballerina of the Russian Imperial Ballet. She became a prominent ballet teacher (1921-1960) in Paris after the Russian Revolution, who taught Alexandra Danilova and Tamara Toumanova, among many others. She died in 1962 in Paris at age 91.
- January 21, 1895 – Itō Noe born (the family name comes first in Japanese), anarchist-socialist, social critic, author, and feminist. She joined Seitō-sha (Bluestocking Society), and became editor of Seitō, the society’s magazine (1914-1916), where she published stories and articles featuring abortion, prostitution, free love, and women escaping from arranged marriages, causing several issues to be banned by the government censors. Seitō ceased publication due to lack of funds after the government stopped distributors from carrying the magazine in February 1916. She was very critical of the Japanese Kotutai (which refers not only to the system of government but also the national identity, essence and character). Most Japanese deferred to the state and accepted the emperor as a god who must be obeyed unconditionally. She was constantly harassed by the police as a trouble-maker. In the chaos after the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, Noe, her lover Ōsugi and his 6-year-old nephew were arrested and killed, either by a squad of military police, or strangled in their cells. The killing of two high-profile anarchists, and such a young child, caused a national outcry. It was called the Amakasu Incident, named for Lieutenant Masahiko Amakasu, who was found responsible for the extrajudicial murders, court-martialed and sentenced to ten years in prison. But when Hirohito became Emperor of Japan three years later, Amakasu was released.
- January 21, 1905 – Agnes Mongan born, art historian, published works on artists despite restrictions (she was "Keeper of Drawings" 1937-1947 because women were not allowed to be curators until 1947, when she became one of the first U.S. women curators), director at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum (1969-71) and first woman director of a major U.S art museum. Mongan mentored many female scholars.
- January 21, 1923 – Judith Merril born, American-Canadian short story writer, novelist, anthology editor, and peace activist; co-founder in 1947 of the Hydra Club, a social organization for science fiction writers – Lester del Rey, Frederik Pohl, Damon Knight, L. Sprague de Camp, and Theodore Sturgeon were all members; Merril was inducted posthumously into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013.
- January 21, 1925 – Eva Ibbotson born in Austria, British novelist, children’s and young adult author; her historical novel Journey to the River Sea won the Smarties Book Prize for ages 9-11; Ibbotson’s The Secret of Platform 13, may have been the inspiration for “Platform 9 ¾” in the Harry Potter books.
- January 21, 1941 – Elaine Showalter born, American writer, literary critic, and pioneer in feminist literary criticism in U.S. academia; Teaching Literature and Inventing Herself: Claiming a Feminist Intellectual Heritage.
- January 21, 1943 – Dame Rosemary Butler born, Welsh Labour Member of the National Assembly for Wales (1999-2016), Presiding Officer of the Welsh National Assembly (2011-2016).
- January 21, 1946 – Gretel Ehrlich born, American poet and essayist, noted for works on nature; Islands, The Universe, Home; The Solace of Open Spaces; This Cold Heaven; in 1991, she was struck by lighting and incapacitated for some time, but later wrote about the experience in A Match to the Heart (1994).
- January 21, 1950 – Agnes van Ardenne born, Dutch politician and diplomat; Secretary General of the UNICEF National Committee of the Netherlands before entering politics; member of House of Representatives (1994-2002); Minister of Development Cooperation (2002-2007), focusing on bilateral development cooperation in Africa; went to Pakistan after the 2005 Kashmir earthquake to survey emergency aid operations; increased the Netherlands’ support for children’s education in the world’s poorest countries.
- January 21, 1962 – Isabelle Nanty born, French theatre director, actress, and screenwriter; she made her film directing debut in 1993 with The Seagull, based on the play by Anton Chekhov, and has since directed over a dozen films.
- January 21, 1987 – Aretha Franklin becomes the first woman inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.
- January 21, 2013 – Myrlie Evers-Williams becomes first woman and first layperson to deliver the invocation, at Barack Obama’s second inauguration.
- January 21, 2017 – The Women’s March, originally planned as “The Women’s March on Washington,” it quickly became a worldwide protest against Donald Trump’s political positions and derogatory remarks, in over 400 U.S. cities and 160+ countries worldwide. Marchers also called for legislation and policies regarding human rights, women’s rights, but also immigration reform, healthcare reform, reproductive rights, the natural environment, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, freedom of religion, and workers’ rights. It was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, with almost 1 million participants in Washington DC, over 5 million total in the U.S., and an estimated total of over 7 million worldwide.
- January 21, 2020 – Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed the Democrat challenging Senator Susan Collins (Republican-Maine) in her closely watched reelection race. Planned Parenthood’s endorsement of Sara Gideon, Speaker of Maine’s House of Representatives, was seen as a possible setback for Collins, who is one of the few Republicans in Congress who supports abortion rights. Collins had been supported by Planned Parenthood in the past. But the organization said Collins “abandoned” women with her vote last year to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual misconduct. Collins was re-elected by a margin of 70,422 votes over Gideon. However, this was a much closer race than 2014, when Collins won by a margin of 222,558 votes over her opponent, Maine state senator Shenna Bellows, who was just sworn in on January 4, 2021, as Maine’s first woman Secretary of State.
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Sources
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