WOW2 is now a four-times-a-month sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers trailblazing women and events from October 8 through 15.

The next WOW2 edition will post
on Saturday, October 16.

The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark moments in women’s history. It also serves as a reference archive of women’s history. There are so many more phenomenal women than I ever dreamed of finding, and all too often their stories are almost unknown, even to feminists and scholars.

October is
Domestic Violence Awareness Month
and Gay & Lesbian History Month

THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN

will post soon, so be sure to go there next, and
catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.

Many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And 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.

**Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History**

_{Note: All images and audios are below the person or event to which they refer}

_________________________________

October 8, 1645 – Jeanne Mance, French nurse opens the first hospital in Montréal, the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal. She was a pioneering settler in Quebec province, and one of the founders of the city of Montréal. Mance served as the hospital’s director for the next 17 years. The site of Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal is still in use as a hospital today, as part of the University of Montreal hospital system.

October 8, 1807 – Harriet Taylor Mill born, English philosopher and women’s rights advocate; the second wife of John Stuart Mill, she influenced his views on the status of women. Most of her own work, mainly articles and essays, were published either anonymously or under pen names. Taylor was already married when she and Mill met, and they became close friends and frequent correspondents, including a pair of lengthy essays, On Marriage, discussing the ethical questions of marriage, separation, and divorce in 1833. The Taylor marriage suffered, and there were trial separations, until her first husband died in 1849. She and Mill waited through a two-year mourning period before marrying in 1851. Mill referred to her in his Autobiography as “the most admirable person I had ever known.” She was co-author with Mill of “The Enfranchisement of Women,” published in 1851.

October 8, 1826 – Emily Blackwell born, sister of Elizabeth Blackwell, third woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree. She was rejected by Geneva Medical College, her sister’s alma mater, and several other medical schools, before she was accepted by Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1853. But when male students complained about having to study with a woman, the Illinois Medical Society canceled her admission. She was finally admitted by the Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and earned her medical degree in 1854. After further studies in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, in 1857 she joined her sister and Marie Zakrzewska in opening the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. Emily acted as the infirmary’s manger and chief fundraiser. She successfully lobbied the New York state legislature for funding to insure long-term financial stability, and was a major force behind transforming the infirmary from a rented house to a full-fledged hospital. By 1874, they were caring for over 7,000 patients annually. During the U.S. Civil War, Emily helped organize the Women's Central Association of Relief, which selected and trained nurses for service in the war. Emily and Elizabeth Blackwell and Mary Livermore also played an important role in the development of the United States Sanitary Commission. In 1868, the Blackwell sisters established the Women's Medical College in New York City. Emily became professor of obstetrics. In 1869, Elizabeth moved to London to help form the London School of Medicine for Women, and Emily became dean of the college. In 1876, it became a three-year institution, and by 1893, it was a four-year college, ahead of much of the profession. By 1899, the college had trained 364 women doctors. Emily retired the turn of the century, and died at age 83 in 1910.

October 8, 1847 – Rose Scott born, Australian women’s rights, suffrage activist, and speaker in New South Wales; co-founder of the Women’s Literary Society in Sydney, first President of the Women’s Political Education League; successfully worked for the Early Closing Act of 1899, which gave shorter evening hours to shop girls, as well as working for appointment of matrons at police stations and women inspectors in shops and factories, improving conditions for women prisoners, and New South Wales legislation raising the age of consent from 14 to 16; president of women's committee of the Prisoners' Aid Association.

October 8, 1872 – Kristine Bonnevie born, Norwegian zoologist and geneticist who in 1911 became the first woman admitted to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 1912, the University of Oslo appointed her as Norway's first woman professor. One of her students in the 1930's was Thor Heyerdahl, who later organized and led the famous Kon-Tiki (1947) transoceanic scientific expedition.

October 8, 1872 – Mary Engle Pennington born, American bacteriological chemist and refrigeration engineer; first head of the Food Research Laboratory of the USDA (1907), developed safety standards for food processing and shipping; founder of the Household Refrigeration Bureau in 1923 to educate consumers on safe practices in domestic refrigeration, publishing pamphlets such as The Care of the Child’s Food in the Home (1925) and Cold is the Absence of Heat (1927).

October 8, 1881 – Esther Lape born, co-founder League of Women Voters, championed U.S. participation in the Permanent Court of International Justice, which failed by 7 votes in the Senate (1935), worked for compulsory health insurance, which was supported by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower but defeated by the AMA.

October 8, 1891 – Ellen Wilkinson born, British Labour MP, the only woman on the Jarrow March; served as a junior minister in the WWII Ministry of Home Security, then Minister of Education until her death (1945-1947).

October 8, 1902 – Marina Tsvetaeva born, notable Russian poet who committed suicide in 1941 after her husband was executed by the Soviets on espionage charges.

October 8, 1929 – Betty Boothroyd born, English academic and politician, Labour MP for West Bromwich (1973-1992), first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Commons (1992-2000); currently President of NBFA Assisting the Elderly.

October 8, 1930 – Faith Ringgold born, African American artist, noted for her narrative quilts, masks, and sculptures. She was also an activist for civil and women’s rights, and was a member of Women Artists in Revolution (WAR), and co-founded Women Students and Artists for Black Art Liberation (WSABAL). In 1950, she had enrolled at City College of New York, but was not allowed to major in art because at the time art education was the only art-related major open to women at CCNY. She got her BA in 1955, and began teaching in NY public schools, and earned her Master’s in 1959. A trip to Europe that year, and two trips to West Africa in 1976 and 1977, all had a profound impact on her work. She also wrote and illustrated 17 children’s books.

October 8, 1937 – Merle Park born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), British prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet, where she started in the corps de ballet in 1954, then became a soloist in 1958, and a principal dancer in 1962; best remembered for Giselle, but was often paired with Nureyev, Anthony Dowell, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

October 8, 1946 – Hanan Ashrawi born, Palestinian Third Way politician, activist, and scholar, a leader during the First Intifada, and the Palestinian Delegation spokesperson during the Middle East peace process. She was the first woman elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council; also served on advisor boards for the World Bank, the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), and the International Human Rights Council; chair of the English Department at Birzeit University (1973-1978 and 1981-1984) and Dean of its Faculty of Arts (1986-1990); founder in 1974 of the Birzeit University Legal Aid and Human Rights Action Project; awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2003.

October 8, 1946 – Bel Mooney born, English journalist, broadcaster, author, and columnist; has written for Nova magazine, New Statesman, Daily Mirror, The Sunday Times, and is a weekly columnist for the Daily Mail; Mooney was a broadcaster for BBC Radio 4 (1982-2008), notably for Devout Sceptics; novelist and children’s author, known for her best-selling children’s series Kitty and Friends, and her children’s novel The Voices of Silence, awarded a New York Public Library Book of the Year citation.

October 8, 1949 – Ashawna Hailey born as Shawn Hailey, American computer scientist, creator of the HSPICE program used by much of the semiconductor industry to simulate and design silicon chips; founder of Meta-Software, which later became part of Synopsis; she was a trans woman; noted as an activist for the reform of laws on recreational drugs; after her death in 2011, a $10 million USD bequest was shared between Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. The ACLU, Drug Policy Alliance, Marijuana Policy Project, and Second Harvest Food Bank.

October 8, 1949 – Sigourney Weaver born as Susan Weaver, American actress and three-time nominee for Academy Awards; environmental activist who was spoken out on threats to the oceans from deep-sea trawling, and she is the honorary chair of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

October 8, 1951 – Shannon C. Stimson born, American political theorist, philosopher, and economics historian; Professor of Political Science at University of California Berkeley since 1991, and presently serves on the editorial board of the Adam Smith Review; author of The American Revolution in the law: Anglo-American jurisprudence before John Marshall, and co-author of After Adam Smith: a century of transformation in politics and political economy.

October 8, 1956 – Janice E. Voss born, American electrical engineer with a doctorate in aeronautics & astronautics from MIT; NASA astronaut (1990 group), who flew in space as a mission specialist on five missions, and participated in the first Shuttle rendezvous with the Mir Space Station in 1995; she died in 2012 from breast cancer.

October 8, 1958 – Ursula von der Leyen born in Belgium, German Christian Democratic Union politician; President of the European Commission (the EU’s executive branch – since November 2019); first woman Minister of Defence for Germany (2013-2019); Deputy Leader of the CDU party since 2009; Minister for Labour and Social Affairs (2009-2013); Minister of Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (2005-2009), where she instituted extensive blocking of child pornography on the internet, which was overturned as censorship by the federal criminal police office, Bundeskriminalamt (BKA); Member of the Bundestag for Lower Saxony since 2009; noted for support of equal opportunities for women in politics, and in favor of same-sex marriage/adoption rights.

October 8, 1966 – Karyn Parsons born, African-American actress, author, comedian, and producer; best known for playing Hilary Banks on the TV sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-1996). Author of the children’s books How High the Moon and Flying Free, a picture-book biography of aviator Bessie Coleman. She is the founder and president of the Sweet Blackberry Foundation, which produces animated films about unsung black heroes to inspire and empower children, narrated by well-known performers.

October 8, 1971 – P1nar Selek born, Turkish sociologist, feminist, and author; advocate for the rights of vulnerable communities in Turkey, including women, the poor, street children, sexual minorities, and Kurdish communities. She is the author of several books published in Turkish, German, and French, and is one of the founding editors of Amargi, a Turkish feminist journal. Selek is currently living in exile in France, because of a 20-years series of prosecutions connected to a 1998 explosion in Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar which killed 7 people and wounded about 100 others. The arrest is widely considered as motivated by her work with the Kurds, particularly her contact with the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Her academic research papers were confiscated, and she refused to name the individuals she had interviewed for her project. She spent two and a half years in prison, ill-treated and tortured, but was released in 2002 when a team of experts issued reports which concluded that the explosion had been caused by the accidental ignition of a gas cylinder, not a bomb. She has since been tried and acquitted of all charges in four trials, in 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014, but in 2017 the Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court demanded that her most recent acquittal be reversed, and her case again was being considered, at stake is a sentence of life imprisonment — so Selek fled to France; Interpol is ignoring the warrant issued by the Turkish government for her arrest.

October 8, 1984 – Anne Murray becomes the first woman to win the Country Music Associations Album of the Year Award for A Little Good News. The Anne Murray Centre, located in her hometown of Springhill, aims to foster tourism in the area and promote awareness of the music of Nova Scotia and Canada. All the revenue generated from its operation is used to provide employment for local people and for its ongoing maintenance.

October 8, 1991 – International Lesbian Day is started in Australia and New Zealand.

October 8, 1993 – Toni Morrison becomes the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

October 8, 2018 – Thirty-six schoolgirls in India were treated in the hospital after they were attacked by a large crowd of teenage boys and their parents because they complained about sexual harassment. Six boys and one woman have been arrested after the attack at a state boarding school for girls. The girls, ages 10 to 14, had been playing in a sports area two nights earlier when a group of teenage boys began making lewd comments. The girls argued back and the teenage boys left, but came back with some of their parents about 20 minutes later carrying bamboo sticks and iron rods. “They dragged us by our ponytails, assaulted [us] with bamboo sticks and kicked and punched,” said Gudia, one of girls who was hurt during the attack. “We were totally unarmed and had nothing to protect us.” She said, “They had been always teasing us and scribbling dirty words on the walls of our school,” and added that she and other girls had tried to report the harassment to local government officials but were not taken seriously. District magistrate Baidyanath Yadav said of the victims, “Apparently, they are suffering from psychological fear, but we are arranging shows of good entertaining movies on the campus to calm down their tension and dispel any such fear from their minds. We are also counseling them so that they could get better soon.” Yadav said police were being deployed and that a higher fence would be put up around the school to prevent outsiders from entering the campus. India has been dealing with sexual assault since a 2012 gang-rape and murder that galvanised women’s movements and led to an overhaul of rape laws. Activists say attitudes are slowly changing, particularly in large cities, but that conditions are often worse for women in remote and rural areas.

October 8, 2019 – Tondalao Hall had served half of a 30-year sentence for ‘failure to protect’ her children because she didn’t report her boyfriend, the children’s father, to authorities for abusing the children. The abuser, after pleading guilty, only served two years in prison before being released on parole. Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously to recommend that Hall’s 30-year prison sentence be commuted to time served. Republican Governor Kevin Stitt approved the board’s request, and Hall was released on November 8, 2019. “This case is critically important because it is an example of the injustice done within the Oklahoma criminal justice system, specifically against women,” said Megan Lambert, an ACLU attorney who helped with Hall’s case. “And it’s a good example of why Oklahoma has a higher rate of female incarceration than anywhere else in the world, and that is because we impose harsh sentences upon women for the crimes of their male romantic partners.” A BuzzFeed investigation in 2014 revealed that there were 28 mothers in 11 states who had been sentenced to 10 years or more for ‘failure to protect.’ In all of the cases, including Hall’s, there was evidence that the women were also being abused by the men. There were two other women whose sentences were longer than the sentences of the men who actually abused their child(ren).

October 8, 2019 – The English National Opera (ENO) announced that Annilese Miskimmon, the Belfast-born opera director who has drawn influences from Sondheim, Shakespeare, Alfred Hitchcock, and the Muppets, would be the company’s new artistic director, after a search to replace Daniel Kramer who recently retired. She was previously director of opera at the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet.

October 8, 2020 – The Italian women’s group Differenza Donna filed a complaint with prosecutors in Rome on behalf of over 100 women, to investigate who is behind the burial of foetuses in graves marked with the names of their mothers in a Roman cemetery, saying that this violates the women’s human rights and privacy. One of the women, after reading about the so-called “fields of angels” in local newspapers, discovered a plot with a wooden cross bearing her name and the date on which the foetus was buried at Prima Porta cemetery. She posted her story on Facebook. Over 100 women have since come together for a potential class action suit in a scandal that has also reignited the debate in Italy over the difficulties women face in obtaining safe abortions despite the procedure being legalised in 1978. Seven out of 10 doctors in Italy refuse to terminate pregnancies for “moral reasons.” Francesca, age 36, discovered a plot containing remains of her unborn daughter with her name on it. She ended the pregnancy at six months after being told the foetus was malformed and unlikely to survive the full term. It took 10 days before a hospital agreed to carry out the procedure in September 2019. The date on the grave was in December 2019, three months after the abortion. She, and all the other women, never consented to a burial. In Italy, the foetuses of pregnancies terminated after three months in hospitals can be buried, but only with the mother’s permission. “After the immense pain of losing my daughter, to discover this beastly act was awful,” Francesca, who asked her surname not be published by newspapers. “I repeatedly asked the hospital what happened to the foetus and they made me believe it had been thrown away. So where was it for three months? Then for it to be buried with the symbol of a cross, which I don’t adhere to, and with my name on it – it felt like a punishment.” Rome’s San Camillo hospital, where the woman who first exposed the discovery had an abortion, has denied responsibility, saying that the remains of foetuses were identified with the mother’s name only for the purposes of drafting transport and burial permits. These details were then given to Ama, the public services firm that manages Rome’s cemeteries, but Ama also denied responsibility, saying it carries out burials following the health authority’s instructions. Livia Turco, a former health minister, believes anti-abortion groups are behind exposing the mother’s names on the graves. The burials are permitted because of a law updated in 1990 from one that was created over 50 years earlier by Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. Anti-abortion, Catholic, and far-right groups have for years pushed for the creation of “fields of angels.” Women can access abortions at just five hospitals in Rome and none in the wider Lazio region, due to lack of medical perosnnel who will perform them. “I was in so much pain after my abortion, I screamed and shouted for seven hours, but nobody came into the room to help as they were all moral objectors,” said Francesca. “In Italy you can’t abort in a civilised way despite the law being there – and this is what we need to be discussing more.”

Crossesmarkingfoetusburials-PrimaPortacemetery-photoAngelaGiuffrida.jpg — Crosses marking foetal burials at Prima Porta cemetery - photo by Angela Giuffrida

_________________________________

October 9, 1823 – Mary Ann Shadd Cary born, American-Canadian abolitionist, journalist, suffragist, and the first black woman newspaper editor in North America, of the Provincial Freeman, in Windsor, Canada, which helped freed slaves to know their rights. During the Civil War, she was in America, working as a Union army recruiting officer for black volunteers in Indiana. After the war, she taught in black schools, and wrote for newspapers. In 1880, she organized the Colored Women's Progressive Franchise, and campaigned for suffrage. Shadd Cary graduated with law degree from Howard University School of Law at the age of 60 in 1883, becoming the second black woman in the United States to earn a law degree.

October 9, 1830 – Harriet Hosmer born, American sculptor who worked in Rome, one of the few women to win complete financial independence through her artistic work. She was part of an ex-pat American and British community of writers and artists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, Vinnie Ream and Anna Stebbins.

October 9, 1883 – Maria Filotti born, Romanian actress and director of the "Teatrul Comunal" ("The Communal Theatre") in Brăila, Romania, and renamed the Maria Filotti Theatre in her honor in 1969. She had a distinguished stage career, where she was regarded as one of the “prestigious actors of the great realistic school," and also appeared in several silent films. Her autobiography, Am ales teatrul (I Chose the Theatre), was published in 1961, five years after her death.

October 9, 1884 – Helen Deutsch born in Poland, Polish-American Freudian psychoanalyst, one of the first psychoanalysts to specialize in women; author of the 2-volume The Psychology of Women, with an emphasis on motherhood; many of her ideas are now considered out-of-date.

October 9, 1890 – Aimee Semple McPherson born in Canada, Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity who skillfully used radio to build up her image; there are still unresolved questions about whether or not she engineered her own kidnapping in 1926 when she disappeared for five weeks, causing an all-out media frenzy.

October 9, 1892 – Abigail Eliot born, American authority on early childhood education; founding member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which established standards, and monitors the quality of education; founder of the Ruggles Street Nursery school in 1922, which also trained teachers in early childhood education, later became the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study at Tufts University. The Eliot-Pearson Award, known as the “Abby,” honors outstanding contributions to children’s media.

October 9, 1901 – Alice Mae Lee Jemison born, member of the Seneca tribe, Indian nations rights activist, journalist, and outspoken critic of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Alice Jemison testifying before Congress

October 9, 1915 – Belva Plain born, best-selling American novelist of popular and historical fiction; known for the Werner Family Saga.

October 9, 1926 – Danièle Delorme born as Gabrielle Danièle Girard, French actress and film producer; she appeared in over 60 films, including the title role of Gigi in the original 1948 French film, and co-founded Renn Productions in the 1970s with her second husband, actor/filmmaker Yves Robert. Delorme served on the Caméra d'Or jury at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.

October 9, 1930 – Aviator Laura Ingalls (not the author) becomes the first woman to fly across the U.S., completing a nine-stop journey from New York’s Roosevelt Field to Glendale CA. She also holds several other records, including first woman to fly solo over the Andes.

October 9, 1934 – Jill Ker Conway born in Australia, academic, historian, and author. Though Smith College opened its doors as a college for women in 1875, Conway was the school’s first woman president (1975-1985). She notably engaged in creative circumvention of Massachusetts welfare laws so single-parent scholarship students would not have to choose between welfare benefits to support their families or scholarships to continue their education, leading to a change in Massachusetts welfare laws to enable students to keep both their benefits and their scholarships. She is the author of a trilogy of memoirs, The Road from Coorain, Truth North, and A Woman’s Education, as well as historical feminist works like Modern Feminism: An Intellectual History and The Female Experience in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century America: A Guide to the History of American Women (which she co-authored with Linda Kealey and Janet E. Schulte).

October 9, 1944 – Rita Donaghy born, British academic administrator, trade unionist, Labour life peer of the House of Lords; President of the trade union NALGO (National and Local Government Officers’ Association – 1989-1990).

October 9, 1944 – Nona Hendryx born, American vocalist, songwriter, and record producer; member of Labelle and Talking Heads, as well as transitioning into a successful solo career. She has openly discussed her bisexuality, and is a LGBT rights activist. In 2008, she joined Cindi Lauper on her True Colors Tour, to raise awareness of the discrimination against the LGBTQ community.

October 9, 1950 – Jody Williams born, American academic, author, and political activist for human rights and women’s rights; founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), and winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her campaign to ban anti-personnel mines.

October 9, 1961 – Ellen Wheeler born, American actress, television director, and producer, primarily working on soap operas.

October 9, 1970 – Annika Sörenstam born, Swedish professional golfer and golf course designer. Considered one of the best women golfers in history, winner of 90 international tournaments and 72 LPGA events, including ten of the major events. Since 2006, she has held dual U.S. and Swedish citizenship. Sörenstam has designed golf courses in the U.S., China, South Africa, Canada, South Korea, and has a project in the works in Malaysia. The ANNIKA Academy golf school opened in Florida in 2007, with a golf clinic she conducted for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Sörenstam is a U.S. ambassador for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and also frequently holds clinics for girls from all different backgrounds who are promising young golfers.

October 9, 1980 – Lucy Akello born, Ugandan social worker and Forum for Democratic Change politician; current member of the Ugandan parliament, since 2016. In 2005, she was hired by Justice & Peace Commission (JPC), a local non-government organization within the Catholic Church that promotes peace and reconciliation in war-torn Northern Uganda. She worked there for ten years, beginning as a program officer, then as a program manager, and executive director (2006-2014). She has focused on the rights of women and children, human rights, and land rights.

October 9, 1980 – Sarah Lovell born, Australian Labor politician; member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council for Rumney since 2017; before running for public office, she was a union representative for United Voice (a large trade union representing workers in a wide range of occupations).

October 9, 1982 – Leila Janah born, daughter of immigrants from India; American businesswoman; founder and CEO of Samasource (since 2008) a company with social mission to end global poverty by giving work to people in need. In 2013, she founded Samaschool to teach digital skills to low-income students in the U.S. and Africa. Janah won a scholarship at age 17 through American Field Services, and spent six months teaching in Ghana during her senior year of high school. She graduated from Harvard in 2005 with a degree in African Development Studies, after conducting fieldwork in Rwanda, Mozambique, and Senegal. During her college years, she also wrote papers on social and economic rights for the World Bank’s Development Research Group and the Ashoka organization.

October 9, 2012 – The Pakistani Taliban made a failed attempt to assassinate 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out for the rights of girls to an education; her survival in spite of severe injuries, and courage in continuing to speak out, sparked international support for her and her cause.

October 9, 2019 – Iranian women are able to enter a football stadium for the first time in decades, after FIFA, world football’s governing body, threatened to suspend the Islamic republic because of its controversial male-only policy. For the last 40 years, Iran has been the only country to ban women spectators from football and other stadiums, with clerics arguing they must be shielded from the masculine atmosphere and the sight of semi-clad men. FIFA ordered Iran in August 2019 to allow women access to stadiums without restrictions, and in numbers determined by demand for tickets. The directive came when a fan dubbed “Blue Girl” committed suicide by setting herself on fire because of her fear of being jailed after she was caught at a match disguised as a boy. Women were quick to get their hands on tickets to attend Iran’s qualifier against Cambodia for the 2022 World Cup, being held at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium. The first batch sold out in under an hour, then additional seats were also quickly snapped up. Women ticketholders lucky enough to attend will be segregated from men and watched over by 150 women police officers, according to Fars news agency.

October 9, 2020 – Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who was the target of a foiled rightwing terrorists’ kidnapping plot revealed by the FBI on October 8, called out Donald Trump for his rhetoric, saying it “incites more domestic terror,” after he posted a series of aggressive tweets seeking to shame her. Thirteen men have been charged in a conspiracy to kidnap Whitmer before the November 3 election. Several of the men are members of a far right self-styled militia. Trump has criticized Whitmer for months over such measures as stay-at-home which she instituted to stem the spread of the coronavirus, claiming she has done “a terrible job.” Whitmer said his attacks on her and other Democratic governors were “creating a very dangerous situation.” She told reporters, “Each time he has tweeted about me, each time that he has said ‘liberate Michigan’ and said I should negotiate with the very people who are arrested because they’re ‘good people’, that incites more domestic terror. And I am not the only governor going through this. Certainly it’s been worse for me than most, but it is not unique to me, it is not even unique to Democrats. This White House has a duty to call it out and they won’t do it – in fact, they encourage it.” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Whitmer and her family were moved around by authorities as law enforcement tracked the men who allegedly plotted for months to kidnap her. In April, 2020, thousands of protestors, many of them armed with long guns, besieged and invaded the state capitol as lawmakers were debating Whitmer’s request to extend her emergency powers to combat the pandemic. Democratic state senator Dayna Polehanki posted on Twitter a photo of men with rifles in the gallery above the lawmakers shouting at the lawmakers, “Some of my colleagues who own bullet-proof vests are wearing them.” In July, one of the conspirators unwittingly told an FBI informant, “Snatch and grab, man. Grab the fuckin’ governor. Just grab the bitch. Because at that point, we do that, dude – it’s over.” Of Trump’s response to the revelations, Whitmer said: “A decent human being would pick up the phone and say, ‘Are you OK? How’s your family doing?’ That’s what Joe Biden did. And I think it tells you everything you need to know about the character of the two people that are vying to lead our country for the next four years.”

_________________________________

October 10, 1567 – Catalina Micaela of Spain, Duchess consort of Savoy (1585-1597); after her marriage to Duke Charles Emmanuel I, she was initially unpopular in Savoy because of her attempts to introduce Spanish pomp, ceremony, and fashion to the court in Turin, but she soon gained respect because of her political and diplomatic skill, which she used to defend the autonomy of Savoy against Spain. She refused the Spanish offer to install a Spanish garrison from Milan in Turin with the excuse of giving her a life guard. As Catalina Micaela gained influence over Charles Emmanuel I, she is said to have reformed him for the better. She also served as regent several times during the absence of her husband on military campaigns, including the Lyon campaign in 1594. Catalina Micaela also benefited the cultural life in Savoy, commissioning a number of new buildings, including an art gallery. She was pregnant ten times, and give birth to nine children who all lived at least into their teens, but she never recovered from the miscarriage of her last child, and died at age 30 in November of 1597.

Catalina Micaela of Spain —
by Alonso Sánchez Coello

October 10, 1842 – Emily Dobson born, Australian philanthropist; she was educated at home by her father; her husband was a lawyer who was elected to the Parliament of Tasmania in 1891, and she became secretary of the Women’s Sanitary Association, which was founded to fight an outbreak of typhoid in Hobart. In 1892, she founded the Ministering Children’s League, followed in 1898 by the Ladies’ Committee of the Blind, Deaf, and Dumb Institution. During the widespread unemployment from 1892 to 11895, Mrs. Dobson’s Relief Restaurant Committee ran a soup kitchen in Hobart that supplied up to 1000 meals a day. She also supported nursing institutions, including the Tasmanian Bush Nursing Association, and was a co-founder of the New Town Consumptives Sanatorium in 1905. Dobson was vice president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Tasmania, and in 1899, became vice president of the newly founded National Council of Women of Tasmania (NCWT), which she represented at that year’s meeting of the International Council of Women in London. She was also a delegate to the 1908 International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Amsterdam. The NCWT established the Emily Dobson Philanthropic Prize in 1919 in her honor. She died at age 91 in 1934.

October 10, 1870 – Louise Mack born, Australian poet, novelist, journalist, columnist, pioneering woman war correspondent, and eye witness to the WWI German invasion of Antwerp. She was under shell-fire for thirty-six hours in Antwerp, then stole through the German lines to Brussels. Her fearlessness earned her great fame in Australia, and many audiences came to hear Mack’s lectures about her war experiences, and when she spoke at fundraisers for the Australian Red Cross Society. She died at age 65 in 1935.

October 10, 1888 – Dorothy Ferebee born, American obstetrician and civil rights activist; she gained a medical internship at Freedman’s Hospital despite rampant sexism, then built a 47-year association with Howard University hospital and the District of Columbia; served as the second president of the National Council of Negro Women (1949-1953).

October 10, 1898 – Lily Daché born in France, American fashion designer, entrepreneur, and author, noted for her hat designs; author of Lilly Daché's Glamour Book and her autobiography, Talking through My Hats.

October 10, 1900 – Helen Hayes born as Helen Hays Brown, American actress of stage, screen, and television, whose career spanned 80 years, dubbed the “First Lady of the American Theatre.” She is one of only 15 performers who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the National Medal of Arts. In 1982, she was a co-founder with Ladybird Johnson of the National Wildflower Research Center. Hayes was a notable philanthropist, donating time and money to several causes, especially New York’s Riverside Shakespeare Company, and the Helen Hayes Hospital, a physical rehabilitation hospital, which was renamed in her honor in 1974, after she had served on its Board of Visitors since 1944, advocating tirelessly for the hospital and raising funds.

October 10, 1903 – The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) is founded by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia in Manchester. They later moved operations to London, becoming more militant in their campaign for suffrage for British women. The slogan of the WSPU was “Deeds, not words.”

WSPU poster — WSPU banner for the Hammersmith branch — WSPU pin

October 10, 1905 – Aksella Luts born as Aksella Kapsta, Estonian actress, screenwriter, dancer, choreographer, film editor, and photojournalist. She and her husband Theodore Luts founded the Tartu Filmiühing (Tartu Film Society), and co-authored the script for Estonia’s first feature-length dramatic silent film, Noored kotkad (Young Eagles), about the 1918-1920 Estonian War of Independence, and the script for the 1932 melodrama Päikese lapsed (The Children Of The Sun). The film was Estonia's first feature-length Estonian language sound film, for which Aksella Kuts choreographed a dance sequence. They moved to Finland in 1938, and Aksella worked as screenwriter for Fenno-Filmi OY under the masculine pen name Antti Metsalu. In 1944, they moved to Stockholm, Sweden, where she worked as a librarian and archivist for the Folk Universitetet. After WWII and the Soviet annexation of Estonia, they relocated to Brazil, where they founded a new film company, Theodor Lutsu firma, and she also worked other jobs, including film editing for another company. Her husband died in 1980, and in 1996, she returned to Estonia, where she gave television and radio interviews until her death in 2005 at age 99.

October 10, 1908 – Mercè Rodoreda born, Spanish author, notable Catalan-language novelist and short story writer; Catalan is spoken primarily in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands.

October 10, 1911 – Clare Hollingworth born, British journalist and author; in 1939, as a reporter for The Daily Telegraph traveling from Poland to Germany, she saw and reported German forces massed on the Polish border, and became the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of WWII; she was at the scene when the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed in 1946, and reported on the Algerian War in the early 1960s; she broke the story of Kim Philby’s defection to the Soviet Union in 1963, and covered the Vietnam War beginning in 1967.

October 10, 1924 – Ludmilla Tchérina born in Paris to an exiled Circassian noble and a French mother; French prima ballerina, choreographer, artist, and author of two novels.

October 10, 1931 – Alice Munro born, Canadian author, primarily known for her collections of short stories. She won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature, as a “master of the contemporary short story,” and the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her body of work, which includes Dance of the Happy Shades; Who Do you Think You Are?; and The Love of a Good Woman.

October 10, 1935 – Judith Chalmers born, British radio and television presenter; best known for presenting ITV’s travel programme Wish You Were Here, from 1974 to 2003. She began working for BBC Radio at age 13, on the BBC Northern Children’s Hour (1948). In the 1960s she was a presenter on BBC Radio’s Family Favourites, and Woman's Hour.

October 10, 1938 – Gloria Coates born, composer of 16 modern symphonies, as well as chamber music and works for solo instruments.

x

x

YouTube Video

October 10, 1938 – Lily Tuck born, American author; her novel The News from Paraguay won the 2004 National Book Award for Fiction.

October 10, 1948 – Sue Campbell born, Baroness Campbell of Loughborough, crossbencher in the House of Lords since 2008; chair of UK Sport (2003-2013), and presided over the Paralympics GB's performance at the London 2012 Olympics. She had also been an adviser to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (2000-2003).

October 10, 1950 – Eleanor Robertson born, prolific American novelist who writes primarily romance and suspense novels under the pen name Nora Roberts, and a futuristic mystery series as J.D. Robb. She founded the Nora Roberts Foundation to promote literacy and the arts, assist children in need, engage in humanitarian efforts, and fund an academic scholarship program.

October 10, 1950 – Dame Dela Smith born, British educator and authority on special needs education; Headteacher at the special education school of Beaumont Hill Technology College (1992-2010), where students are ages 5 to 19, with a wide range of special education needs.

October 10, 1953 – Fiona Rae born in Hong Kong, British artist, part of the visual arts group, Young British Artists, who first exhibited together in 1988; she was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2002.

‘She Pricked Her Finger Cutting the Clouds’ — by Fiona Rae

October 10, 1958 – Julia Sweeney born, American comedian, actress and writer; Saturday Night Live cast member (1990-1994); alumna of The Groundlings improvisational troupe’s Sunday Company (1988-1989); co-star of the Hulu comedy web TV series, Shrill, which premiered in March, 2019; noted for writing monologues, including God Said Ha!; In the Family Way; and Letting Go of God. She is on the Boards of the Secular Coalition for America, Freedom from Religion Foundation, and the Center for Inquiry.

October 10, 1969 – Dilsa Demirbag-Sten born, Kurdish-Swedish author and journalist; she is Secretary General of Berättarministeriet, a foundation to enhance education for children and young people she co-founded together with Robert Weil and Sven Hagströmer in 2011. Demirbag-Sten is a member of the Swedish Press Council, and frequent contributor to Swedish newspapers. In 2018, she was awarded the St. Erik medal for her contributions to Stockholm county. Her books include Stamtavlor (Pedigress) and Fosterland.

October 10, 1974 – Lucy Powell born, British Labour and Co-operative politician; Member of Parliament for Manchester Central since 2012.

October 10, 1978 – Naomi Levari born in the U.S., her family moved to Jerusalem when she was age 5; Israeli film producer and director; co-founder of Black Sheep Productions; Levari is dedicated to improving the status and representation of women in the Israeli film industry, and is the founder of the Center for Equal Opportunities in the Film and Television Industry. Noted for her documentaries, Blue White Collar Criminal; Ameer Got His Gun; and Teacher Irena, and as co-producer on Farewell Herr Schwarz, a multiple award-winner.

October 10, 1983 – Dr. Barbara McClintock wins Nobel Prize for Medicine, for discovery of mobile genetic elements.

October 10, 1989 – Emer Kenny born, British actress and television writer; noted for writing several episodes of the long-running EastEnders series between 2012 and 2014.

October 10, 2005 – Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union party, becomes Germany’s first woman chancellor.

October 10, 2014 – Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani girls’ education activist, wins the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Indian child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi.

October 10, 2017 – New Yorker magazine publishes allegations of 3 women that Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein had raped them, and statements of 10 more women that Weinstein had sexually assaulted or harassed them. Weinstein’s wife Georgina Chapman announced she is leaving him, calling his reported actions “unforgivable.” This followed an October 5 report published in the New York Times, detailing allegations of decades of sexual harassment by Weinstein, including statements by actresses Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd, and the October 8 firing of Weinstein by his company’s board.

October 10, 2019 – After a making a perfect 30-yard field goal and winning a year's worth of free food, California teenager instantly donated the prize to her rival high school's football coach, recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. John Langilotti coaches football at Bonita High School in La Verne, while Tiffany Gomez was a junior at Glendora High School, and a member of the Glendora girls soccer team. When the schools met for their annual football game, Gomez participated in a field goal contest during halftime. She won free food for a year from a local Chick-fil-A, but since her grandmother had cancer, she knew how hard it can hit a family, and chose to give Langilotti her prize. "For a young lady like her to come out and want to provide this generosity for a family in need just brought tears to my eyes and I was ever so grateful," Langilotti said.

October 10, 2020 – Bollywood star Rhea Chakraporty left the Byculla Women’s Prison in Mumbai, after 28 days in prison. For four months, she had been vilified in a media spectacle, accused of having something to do with the death of fellow Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput, who committed suicide in his apartment at age 34 on June 14, 2020. After news of his death broke, Rajput’s struggles with mental health began to emerge. But conspiracy theories also began to spread that Rajput had been driven to his death by the nepotism in India’s film industry, caused by hatred of him as an outsider who was not from a pure Bollywood lineage. Claims on social media that he had been murdered were seized on by politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The glare of the media then turned to Chakraborty. Rajput’s family filed a lawsuit against her, claiming she had abetted his death, and though no evidence could be presented, a campaign of hate began to build against her. In September she was arrested by the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), accused of supplying drugs to Rajput, trafficking, and being part of an “active drug syndicate.” After her arrest, the NCB also questioned some of Bollywood’s biggest names for alleged drug-related activity. But Chakraborty denied any wrongdoing, both in relation to the death of her boyfriend and the NCB’s charges, and in early October the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Aiims) released an autopsy report confirming what the police had said all along: that Rajput had died by suicide, ruling out the possibility of murder. A court in Mumbai ruled that Chakraborty, who had no criminal record, was not part of any syndicate and could not be said to have financed or supported illegal drug trafficking, as alleged by the narcotics agency. She was released on bail. A Microsoft Research India report said, “Overall, the data strongly suggest that the BJP drove the insinuation of ‘murder’” and were “instrumental in changing the discourse by referring to the case as ‘murder’ rather than ‘suicide’ . . . Over the weeks that followed, there was an increased usage of the ‘murder’ keyword repeatedly in tweets by BJP politicians.” The report noted that it appeared “far from coincidental that a lot of the celebrities being trolled in the aftermath of the suicide were among those who were critical of the government in the past.” A court date has yet to be set for Chakraborty, who is still facing drug procurement charges. Though the hearing seems to have been dropped, and no evidence of Chakraporty having connections to drugs has ever been made public, her career has been derailed. No one in Bollywood will hire her, and the release of the one film she made earlier in 2020 has been postponed again and again because of the pandemic.

_________________________________

October 11, 1793 – Maria James born in Wales, American poet; emigrated to the U.S. with her family at age 7; after she was found to make neat stitches but sewed too slowly, her apprenticeship to a dressmaker was ended, and she went into domestic service, most often as a nursery maid. She wrote poetry in her limited spare time. In 1833, Sarah Nott Potter returned from a visit to friends, and showed her husband, Bishop Alonzo Potter, a copy of a poem written by a young woman in service to the family she visited. The Bishop was intrigued, and sought more poems written by Maria James. In 1839, he arranged for the publication of Wales and other Poems, with a lengthy introduction written by himself, telling readers that Maria James “solaced a life of labor with intellectual occupations," and that "her achievements should be made known to repress the supercilious pride of the privileged and educated."

October 11, 1841 – Lucy Maria Field Wanzer born in Wisconsin; her family moved to California in 1858. She applied to the Toland Medical College in San Francisco, but was rejected. In 1873, the school was absorbed into the University of California system, and Wanzer appealed her rejection to the UC board of regents. She was admitted, after a four-month appeal that set a precedent, allowing other women to attend medical schools throughout the UC system. Even though she was hazed by some male students, and one professor told her any woman who wanted to study medicine should have their ovaries removed, to which she replied that male students should have their testicles removed, Wanzer graduated with honors in 1876. After graduation, she was admitted to the San Francisco County Medical Society, but only after threats to "blackball" her failed. Her private practice, in a series of downtown San Francisco offices, focused on obstetrics and gynecology. In 1890, she was elected president of the University of California Medical Department Alumni Society. Wanzer was also a practicing pediatrician, and helped establish the San Francisco Children's Hospital.

October 11, 1854 – Adela Zamudio born, Bolivian poet, feminist, essayist, and educator, cited as the most famous Bolivian poet, and the founder of the Bolivian feminist movement. Her first poem to be published was “Two Roses” when she was 15 years old, under her pen-name, Soledad. Her first book, Poetic Essays, wasn’t published until 1887. Zamudio taught at Escuela San Alberto, and later became a director of a girls' high school, which was renamed Liceo Adela Zamudio in her honor. She was an advocate of higher education for women, an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church’s paternalism, and campaigned for women’s rights, separation of church and state, civil marriage, legalization of divorce, and the labor movement. A Bolivian Catholic women’s group publicly condemned her. She was one of the founders of Feminiflor, a Bolivian feminist magazine, and compiled a spelling book in Quechua for use in schools, and composed many poems in the Quechua language. In 1926, she was awarded a medal by Bolivia’s president for her writing. Her birthday is now marked as Día de la Mujer Boliviana in Bolivia.

October 11, 1871 – Harriet Boyd Hawes born, American archaeologist and social activist noted for her discoveries of ancient remains in Crete. She went to Crete in 1900, and with the encouragement of Sir Arthur Evans, began to excavate a Minoan site at Kavousi where she discovered some Iron Age Tombs. From 1901-1905 she led a large team that excavated the early Bronze Age Minoan town of Gournia, becoming the first woman to head a major archaeological dig. As a community of humble artisans, Gournia was of particular interest to archaeologists, complementing as it did the more elaborate palaces being unearthed at Knossos and elsewhere. In 1908 she published her monumental work on Gournia. In 1902, she was the first woman to lecture at the Archaeological Institute of America. In 1897, she was nursing with the Red Cross during the Greco-Turkish War. In 1915-1916, she went to Corfu with the Red Cross to help nurse the Serbians, and in 1917, she set up a rehabilitation center in Northern France within sound of the front. Her biography, Born to Rebel, written by her daughter Mary Allsebrook, was published in 2002.

October 11, 1872 – Emily Wilding Davison born, British suffragette and teacher, jailed and force-fed numerous times, died from injuries caused when she stepped in front of the horse owned by King George V during the 1913 running of the Epsom Derby, trying to gain attention for the cause of suffrage.

October 11, 1874 – Mary Heaton Vorse O’Brien born, labor and human rights activist, journalist, and writer; known for Sinister Romance: Collected ghost stories.

October 11, 1884 – Eleanor Roosevelt born, civil and women’s rights advocate, author, and U.S. First Lady (1933-1945). She was the only woman member of U.S. delegation to the United Nations (1945-1952), where she served as the first chair of the Commission on Human Rights, and was deeply involved in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; she was the first First Lady to write a newspaper column, the influential nationally syndicated My Day (1935-1962), and wrote articles for several magazines. In 1999, a collection of her political writings was published as Courage in a Dangerous World.

October 11, 1913 – Dorothy Woolfolk American writer and editor; one of the first women in the U.S. comic-book industry. She was an editor at Marvel Comics in the 1940s, where she found Superman’s invulnerability boring, so she came up with the fictional metal kryptonite, a fragment of his home planet, which made its first appearance in 1949. She also helped Liz Safian and Mary Skrenes break into the male-dominated field.

October 11, 1932 – Dottie West born, American country music singer-songwriter; in 1964, she was the first woman country artist to win a Grammy Award, for singing the song “Here Comes My Baby,” which she also wrote.

October 11, 1940 – Lucy Morgan born, American newspaperwoman, and editorialist at the Tampa Bay Times; first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1985, shared with co-author Jack Reed, for their coverage of corruption in the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office in Florida.

October 11, 1946 – Elinor Goodman born, British journalist; political editor of ITN’s Channel 4 News (1988-2005); political correspondent for Channel 4 (1982-1988); since her 2005 retirement from journalism, chair of the Affordable Rural Housing Commission of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

October 11, 1950 – Patty Murray born, U.S. Senator (Democrat-WA) since 1993; has chaired the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (2011-2013) and Senate Budget Committee (2013-2015); served as Secretary of the Senate Democratic Conference (2007-2017); since 2017, Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Assistant Senate Democratic Leader.

October 11, 1952 – Paulette Carlson born, American singer-songwriter and guitarist; founder and lead vocalist of Highway 101; in honor of her brother, a Vietnam veteran, she did a series of benefits for Military Veterans in 2005.

October 11, 1957 – Dawn French born, British comedian and writer; best known for co-writing and starring in the BBC comedy sketch show French and Saunders with comedy partner Jennifer Saunders, with whom she won the 1991 Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for TV-Light Entertainment for the show.

October 11, 1969 – Merieme Chadid born, Moroccan astronomer, explorer, and researcher in Antarctica, leader of international scientific team installing a major astronomical observatory in the heart of Antarctica, first woman astronomer to work in Antarctica; her Ph.D. topic was hypersonic shock waves in pulsating stars.

October 11, 1984 – Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan, American geologist, and NASA astronaut (1978-1993), becomes the first U.S. woman astronaut to “walk” in space on the Challenger mission STS-41-G.

October 11, 1984 – Jane Zhang born, Chinese singer-songwriter, a leading contemporary Chinese recording artist, dubbed the “Dolphin Princess” for her signature whistle register; noted for her 2008 duet with Andrea Bocelli singing the song, “One World, One Dream.”

October 11, 1988 – First National Coming Out Day held on the one-year anniversary of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

October 11, 1991 – Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, law professor Anita Hill accuses Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her; Thomas reappears before the panel to denounce the proceedings as a “high-tech lynching.”

October 11, 2011 – The U.N. declares October 11 as the International Day of the Girl Child honoring efforts of the Day of the Girl youth-led movement in the U.S.

October 11, 2017 – The Salt Lake City Police Department fired Detective Jeff Payne, who was seen on video handcuffing Alex Wubbels, a nurse who refused to allow an illegal blood draw on her unconscious patient. The Hospital’s policy, in line with the law, required that the patient be under arrest, or had given consent, or that the police were in possession of a warrant in order to draw blood. The patient was the victim in a car crash and was not under arrest. Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown made the decision after an internal investigation found evidence that the detective had violated department policies when he arrested Wubbels and dragged her screaming out of the hospital to his police car. Payne told Wubbels his supervisor told him to arrest her. Payne's supervisor was demoted from lieutenant to officer. The incident set off an avalanche of criticism and prompted an apology from the police department, which changed its policies to put them in line with hospital rules, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Birchfield v. North Dakota, that blood tests could not be conducted on suspected drunk drivers without a warrant.

October 11, 2019 – Richard Ratcliffe, husband of the imprisoned British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, says his family has been caught in a “gun fight” between Britain and Iran, and he wants a meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Richard Ratcliffe was just reunited with his daughter, who had been living with her grandparents in Tehran so she could visit her mother in prison. Ratcliffe said Gabriella came home to the UK so she could start school. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was employed by the Canadian news agency Thomas Reuters when she went to Iran in 2016 with her daughter on a visit to her parents. She was arrested on spying charges, which she adamantly denies. “I spoke to Nazanin yesterday and she was reasonably distraught,” Ratcliffe told reporters at a press conference. “One of the things she really didn’t want to happen was her daughter to leave while she was still in prison.” Ratcliffe said there was a real risk his wife’s mental and physical condition would deteriorate now Gabriella had left. “If I’m honest though I think it will deteriorate anyway.” He has requested a meeting with the Prime Minister, “We will be looking to meet with Boris as soon as possible. This is an area where he can make a difference. He took responsibility for it as foreign secretary … he hasn’t yet delivered for us.” He said he was grateful to all those at the British embassy and Iranian foreign ministry who helped with his daughter’s return. Ratcliffe added: “Of course, the job is not yet done until Nazanin is home. It was a hard goodbye for Nazanin and all her family. But let us hope this homecoming unlocks another.” In a letter smuggled out of Tehran prison and published in the previous week by the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, Zaghari-Ratcliffe wrote: “In the near future my baby will leave me to go with her father and start school in the UK. It will be daunting trip for her travelling and for me left behind, and the authorities who hold me will watch on unmoved at the injustice of separation. That first day of school not for me.”

NazaninZaghari-RatcliffeshusbandRichardanddaughter-NazaninwithGabriella.jpg — Richard and Gabriella Ratcliffe in front of the Iranian embassy in London — Nazanin with Gabriella the last time they saw each other

October 11, 2020 – The British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Scottish National party MP Lisa Cameron, who chairs a cross-party group of MPs on textiles and fashion, have written to the UK Home Office urging it to act faster to protect vulnerable workers in the textiles industry. Over 80% of garment workers are women. An estimated 10,000 garment workers are being paid £3.50 ($4.74 USD) an hour, compared with the national minimum wage of £8.72 ($11.81 USD). Workers collectively were being underpaid £2.1 million (over 2.8 million USD) a week – or £27 million (over $36.5 million USD) in total since July, when retailers, MPs, and NGOs last wrote to the Home Office calling for better protection for exploited textiles employees. “This violation of workers’ rights cannot be allowed to continue, and government has a key role to play in this,” the BRC stated, and wants the government to set up a “fit-to-trade” licensing scheme that would better protect workers against forced labour and other mistreatment, as well as ensuring payment of VAT, national insurance, and holiday pay, among other entitlements. BRC CEO Helen Dickinson declared: “The BRC has repeatedly called on government to do more to prevent labour exploitation in the UK garment manufacturing industry. Despite numerous reports in the media, and a previous letter to the home secretary signed by over 50 MPs and peers and more than 40 retailers, investors and NGOs, we have not seen any significant action from government to bring this injustice to an end.”

_________________________________

October 12, 1799 – Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse becomes the first woman to jump from a balloon with a parachute, from an altitude of 2,953 feet (900 meters). In 1798, she had been the first woman to pilot a balloon solo. She would make many ascents and parachute descents in towns across France and Europe.

October 12, 1808 – Frances Dana Barker Gage born to an Ohio farming family, the 10^th of eleven children. She was an American feminist, reformer, abolitionist, and author, who worked closely with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and other early U.S. women’s rights movement leaders. Barker Gage was among the first to champion voting rights for all citizens without regard to race or gender, and was a particularly outspoken supporter of giving newly freed African American women the franchise during Reconstruction, along with African American men who had formerly been slaves. She wrote children’s books under the pen name Aunt Fanny, but also wrote essays, poetry, and novels. One of her poems became the hymn “A Hundred Years Hence.” She was a contributor to numerous publications and newspapers, including the Saturday Review and the Western Literary Magazine. Barker Gage wrote that she became a woman suffragist when she was ten years old, in 1818. She helped her father make barrels and her work was so well executed that her father praised her work, but then lamented her "accident of gender." Gage wrote that this was a turning point for her, the incident arousing hatred of the limitations of sex and laying the foundation for her later activism. She left the Unitarian church when they “refused to go with me as an abolitionist, an advocate for the rights of women, for earnest temperance pleaders . . . I have read much, thought much, and feel that life is too precious to be given to doctrines.” She married James L. Gage, an abolitionist lawyer, in 1829, and they raised eight children. Her husband supported her commitment to help others until his death in 1864. Frances Barker Gage died at age 76 in 1884.

October 12, 1840 – Helena Modjeska born, Polish actress who emigrated to the U.S. in 1876, making her debut in San Francisco in 1877; renowned for her portrayals of Shakespeare’s tragic heroines, also played Nora in the first American production of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. In 1893 Modjeska was invited to speak to a women’s conference at the Chicago World’s Fair, and described the situation of Polish women in the Russian and Prussian-ruled parts of dismembered Poland. This led to a Tsarist ban on her traveling in Russian territory. She suffered a stroke in 1897, but recovered and continued to perform. In 1905, she gave a jubilee performance in New York, then toured in 1906 and 1907, before retiring, except for a few appearances as fundraisers for charitable causes. She died in Newport Beach, California in 1909, from Bright’s disease, a kidney disease.

October 12, 1891 – Edith Stein born as a Jew, in Breslau, German Empire (now in Poland); worked as a nursing assistant in an infectious diseases hospital (1915-1916); received her doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1916. She converted to Catholicism in 1922, and taught at a Catholic school. In 1932 she became a lecturer at the Catholic Church-affiliated Institute for Scientific Pedagogy in Münster, but she was forced to resign in 1933 because of the requirement of an “Aryan certificate” under the Nazi Restoration of the Professional Civil Service Law. In a letter to Pope Pius XI, she denounced the Nazis, and asked the Pope to openly denounce the regime "to put a stop to this abuse of Christ's name." Her letter was never answered, and it is uncertain if the Pope ever read it. Stein entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne, and became Sister Teresa Benedicta, in 1934. For her safety, she was sent to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands, in 1938. The monastery was undisturbed by the Nazis after they invaded the Netherlands in 1940, but in August, 1942, Stein and other Jewish converts were arrested by the SS, and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where they probably died in the gas chamber about a week later. She was beatified in 1987 by Pope John Paul II, and canonized by him in 1998. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.

October 12, 1904 – Jiang Bigzhi born, pen name Ding Ling, notable 20^th century Chinese author and activist, frequently at odds with the Chinese government, her works are banned in 1957 and she spends 5 years in jail during the Cultural Revolution, then is sentenced to 12 years of manual farm labor before “rehabilitation” in 1978; noted for The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River and I Myself Am A Woman: Selected Writings Of Ding Ling.

October 12, 1908 – Ann Petry born, black American novelist, short story and children’s book writer; her 1946 novel, The Street, is the first novel by an African American woman to sell over a million copies.

October 12, 1915 – WWI British nurse Edith Cavell is executed by a German firing squad for aiding Allied soldiers to escape from Belgium.

**Edith Cavell — WWI propaganda postcard**

October 12, 1916 – Alice Childress born, African American playwright, author, and actress; noted for Gold Through the Trees (her first professionally-produced play), Trouble in Mind, which won an Obie for Best Off-Broadway Play of 1955-56, the first Obie given to a black woman playwright; and her YA book, A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich, which won several awards.

October 12, 1923 – Jean Nidetch born, American entrepreneur, founder of Weight Watchers.

October 12, 1923 – Domna Samiou born, Greek singer and musicologist, collected and recorded demotika, traditional Greek songs; in 1981, the Domna Samiou Greek Folk Music Association was founded to preserve and promote Greek traditional music.

x

x

YouTube Video

October 12, 1930 – Milica Kacin Wohinz born, Slovenian historian, noted for her seminal study of the forceful Italianization of the Slovene minority in Italy between 1918 and 1943, and the anti-Fascist resistance of the Slovenian and Croatian people from the 1920s into the 1940s. Because her research topic was the history of an ethnic minority and not the history of working class, her work was subjected to Marxist criticisms during Slovenia’s socialist period (1945-1991), beginning in the 196os. She was the Co-Chair, with Italian Co-Chair Sergio Barole, of the bilateral Slovenian-Italian Cultural-Historical Commission (1993-2000).

October 12, 1944 – Angela Rippon born, English broadcast journalist and writer; the first woman journalist who became a permanent presenter on the BBC national television news – there were several other women who appeared as presenters on newscasts earlier, but she was the first with a long-term position, working from 1974 to 2002 on several different programmes.

October 12, 1956 – Catherine Holmes born, Australian judge; current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland since 2015, the first woman to hold the position; appointed to the court in 2000; a founding member of Queensland’s Women’s Legal Service in 1984.

October 12, 1957 – Clémentine Célarié born, French comedian, actress, and writer; known for her one-woman show, Madame sans chaînes, and a play, Les grandes occasions.

October 12, 1957 – Annik Honoré born, Belgian journalist and music promoter; co-founder of the record labels Les Disques du Crépuscule and Factory Benelux. She left the music business in 1985, and worked as a secretary in the Research and Innovation department of the European Commission in Brussels. She died of cancer in 2014.

October 12, 1958 – Maria de Fátima Silva de Sequeira Dias born, Azorean author historian and professor in the Department of Management and Economics at the University of the Azores; authority on the history of the Azores, an autonomous region of Portugal, and of the history of Judaism in the Azores.

October 12, 1966 – Brenda Romero born, American video game designer and developer, best known for her work on the Wizardry series, and The Mechanic is the Message.

October 12, 1983 – Katie Piper born, UK television presenter, author, and activist. In March 2008, she was attacked with acid by her ex-boyfriend and an accomplice, causing major damage to her face and blindness in one eye. Piper underwent pioneering surgery to restore her face and vision. Both attackers were convicted and given life sentences. In 2018, one of the attackers was released after serving nine years in prison. In 2009, Piper gave up her right to anonymity in order to increase awareness about burn victims. Her experience was recounted in the 2009 Channel 4 documentary Katie: My Beautiful Face, part of the Cutting Edge series. Piper wrote a column for Reveal magazine (2011-2012). Her autobiography, Beautiful, was published in 2011. She also wrote Things Get Better, Start Your Day with Katie, and a second memoir, Beautiful Ever After. She was the presenter for the documentary series Bodyshockers (2014-2015), and has been a presenter on Never Seen a Doctor since 2016.

October 12, 2014 – A federal judge overturned Alaska’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Alaska’s ban on same-sex marriage was the first in the nation. Judge Timothy M. Burgess ruled the amendment unconstitutional, saying that denying same-sex couples the right to legally marry “sends the public a government-sponsored message that same-sex couples and their familial relationships do not warrant the status, benefits, and dignity given to couples of the opposite sex.”

October 12, 2019 – A discouraging report is published in the Wall Street Journal on women’s progress in the fields of Healthcare, Business and finance, and Computing and math. In healthcare, women represent 77% of the workforce, but men outnumber women 2-to-1 in getting the first promotion into management, and only 13% of CEOs are women. In Business and finance, women are 52% of the workforce now, which is a smaller percentage of women in the field than in the late 1990s. Worst of all, in the Computing and math fields, there has been a steady decline since 1984 when women were 37% of the workforce – women are now only 24% those employed in field.

October 12, 2020 – In Bangladesh, after a series of violent gang rapes, and a wave of protests across the country, the cabinet announced that a bill mandating that anyone convicted of rape would be punished with death or “rigorous imprisonment” for life was under consideration. This would be an amendment to the previous landmark Women and Children Repression Prevention bill, which stipulated a maximum life sentence for rape cases, according to Law and Justice Minister Anisul Huq.

_________________________________

October 13, 1161 – Eleanor of England born, one of the eight children of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II, King of England. Her parents arranged her marriage King Alfonso VIII of Castile to secure the southern border of the Aquitaine, while Alfonso was seeking an ally in his struggles with Sancho VI of Navarre. It proved to be a successful partnership. Eleanor bore 12 children, but five of them died in childhood. In Eleanor’s marriage treaty, and in the first marriage treaty for her first-born daughter Berengaria, Eleanor was given direct control of many lands, towns, and castles throughout the kingdom. She was almost as powerful as Alfonso, who specified in his will in 1204 that she was to rule alongside their son in the event of his death, including taking responsibility for paying his debts and executing his will. Troubadours and sages were regularly present in their court due to Eleanor's patronage. In 1179, she took responsibility to support and maintain a shrine to St. Thomas Becket in the cathedral of Toledo. She also created and supported the Abbey of Santa María la Real de Las Huelgas, which served as a refuge and tomb for her family for generations, and its affiliated hospital. Eleanor died in October 1214, just 26 days after Alfonso, at the age of 53.

October 13, 1613 – Luisa de Guzmán born, daughter of the Spanish Duke of Medina-Sidonia; she married João IV, the Portuguese Duke of Braganza in 1633. Regarded as “ambitious, willful and ruthless,” she was the stronger personality in the marriage, and was the main influence behind her husband’s acceptance of the Portuguese throne during Portugal’s revolution against Habsburg Spain in 1640. When João died in 1656, she was named Regent of the Kingdom during her son Afonso’s minority, but remained as regent even after he reached the age of 19, because a childhood illness had left him partially paralyzed and mentally unstable. Luisa defended the independence of Portugal and controlled the government with a strong hand, hoping her youngest son Pedro would take the crown when he came of age. Luisa was politically astute and mainly responsible for the diplomatic success of the new alliance with England. Her daughter Catherine married Charles II of England. Luisa is also credited with the organization of the armies that in the following years would completely ensure Portuguese independence through the victories in the Portuguese Restoration War. In 1662, Afonso took power with the help of his favorite, the Count of Castelo Melhor, and had his mother removed to a convent. She died in the convent in 1666 at age 52.

October 13, 1862 – Mary H. Kingsley born, English ethnographic and scientific writer and explorer, who had training as a nurse; her travels in West Africa, beginning with a four month journey in 1893 from Sierra Leone to Angola, and followed by an 1894-1895 trip which began in Nigeria, where she met missionary Mary Slessor, then canoeing up the Ogooué River in Gabon, and climbing Mount Cameroon, before returning to England for an extensive lecture tour. Her lectures and the publication of her books, Travels in West Africa, and West African Studies, about her experiences in Sierra Leone, Angola, Gabon, the Congo River and Cameroon, did much to shape the popular perception in Britain of Africans and the African continent.

October 13, 1901 – Edith Spurlock Sampson born, American lawyer and judge. She earned a law degree from Loyola in Chicago, worked for the Illinois social services department as a referee, and in private practice. In 1950, President Truman named her as an alternate delegate to the UN, the first black American woman to be credentialed to represent the U.S. at the United Nations. In 1962, she successfully ran for associate judge of the Municipal Court in Chicago, the first black woman judge in Illinois. In 1966, she became an associate judge for the Circuit Court of Cook County, where most of the cases were housing disputes involving poor tenants. She retired from the bench in 1978, and died in 1979.

October 13, 1905 – British Suffragettes Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney storm a political meeting in Manchester, England, demanding to know if the Liberal government will grant women the right to vote. When police forcibly remove them from the meeting, Pankhurst spits on one officer, and both women are arrested. They refuse to pay the fine, and go to jail, stirring up press attention. This is often regarded as the first militant action of the Suffragette movement. On October 17, Kenney writes to her sister Nell that she has been released from Manchester’s Strangeways Prison, where there were “over one hundred people waiting” for her. She was given a “lovely bouquet of flowers” “from the Oldham Socialists.” She also reported that over 2,000 people had attended a protest meeting on her behalf the night before. “Manchester is alive I can assure you.” Her letter was discovered in the 21st century, languishing in the British Columbia Archives, by historian Lyndsey Jenkins, who was doing research on Kenney and her family. Annie’s letter wound up in Canada because Nell emigrated there with her husband in 1909. The letter was filed under Nell’s married name, so its significance was overlooked.

Annie Kenney (left) and Christabel Pankhurst arrested

October 13, 1908 – British suffragette Margaret Travers Symons escaped from her escort and burst into the House of Commons, where she interrupted a debate, shouting “Give us votes for women!” and “Address the women’s issue!” before being escorted from the building. Major newspapers reported that she had made history as the first woman to speak in the House of Commons. In 1911, she became one of the first women to successfully divorce her husband in the grounds of adultery.

October 13, 1919 – Jackie Ronne born, American explorer; first woman to work as a member of an Antarctic expedition (1947-1949); the Ronne Ice Shelf is named for her.

October 13, 1923 – Rosemary Anne Sisson born, English author, playwright, and television scriptwriter; The Excise Man, and scripts for: The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), Elizabeth R (1971), Upstairs, Downstairs (1972–75) and The Duchess of Duke Street.

October 13, 1924 – Moturu Udayam born, Indian politician and women’s rights activist; Secretary General of the Andhra Pradesh Mahila Sangham, a women’s collective in the southeastern Indian state (1974?-1992), and vice president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (1981-2001); she and her husband were communists, and went underground twice, 1940-1945 and 1949-1951. During these exiles, she organized the first all-women Burrakatha group (a traditional form of storytelling previously only performed by men) which was part of an anti-fascist campaign. She was also the first woman in Andhra Pradesh known to have ridden a bicycle.

October 13, 1925 – Margaret Thatcher born, Conservative MP and Party Leader, dubbed the “Iron Lady.” She was the first woman to lead a major British political party, and the first female UK Prime Minister (1979-1990). She was against Trade Unions and in favour of privatization of state utilities, and did little to advance women other than herself. However, she did push for passage of the UK Environmental Protection Act 1990, supported the founding of the Hadley Centre for Climate Research and Prediction, as well as establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and UK ratification of the Montreal Protocol on preserving the ozone. Thatcher made a speech at the United Nations in 1989 calling for a global treaty on climate change.

October 13, 1934 – Nana Mouskouri born, Greek singer and politician; UNICEF spokesperson, and Greek deputy to the European Parliament (1994-1999).

October 13, 1946 – Lacy J. Dalton born, American country singer-songwriter who founded the Let ‘em Run Foundation, and campaigns for ending the slaughter of wild horses in the American West.

October 13, 1950 – Mollie Katzen born, American chef, vegetable expert and cookbook author; noted for The Moosewood Cookbook, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and the children’s cookbooks Pretend Soup and Honest Pretzels. Inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2007.

October 13, 1958 – Maria Cantwell born, American Democratic politician, U.S. Senator (Washington state, 2001 to present); served in the U.S. House of Representatives (WA - 1^st District - 1993-1995), and the Washington state House of Representatives (44^th District - 1987-1993).

October 13, 1961 – Rachel De Thame born, English Horticulturist, garden expert and BBC 2 presenter on Gardener’s World, and Small Town Gardens; co-host for the BBC’s annual coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show.

October 13, 1967 – Kate Walsh born, American actress, best known for Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, but she has also appeared in films, including Normal Life and Under the Tuscan Sun. She is an active supporter of the Narcolepsy Network, pet adoption, Planned Parenthood, and protecting endangered sea turtles. She campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008, and for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

October 13, 2011 – Helle Thorning-Schmidt, newly-elected Prime Minister of Denmark (2011-2015), presented her new coalition government; she was Denmark's first woman Prime Minister.

October 13, 2015 – Playboy magazine announces it will stop publishing photographs of fully nude women, beginning with a redesigned issue in March 2016. Chief Executive Scott Flanders explains, "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passé at this juncture." The magazine’s circulation had fallen from 5.6 million in 1975 to 800,000 in 2015, while its web traffic quadrupled after it eliminated nudity in August 2014.

Playboy — Left: October 2015 issue — Right: March 2016 issue — still passé ?

October 13, 2019 – Atatiana Jefferson, a 28-year-old black woman was fatally shot in her home by a white Fort Worth police officer in Texas. Her family demanded to know why the officer fired through a window without announcing himself as police. "There was no reason for her to be murdered," family attorney Lee Merritt said after viewing police bodycam video of the shooting. Officers went to the house because a neighbor requested a welfare check after seeing the front door was open. The Fort Worth Police Department said the officer saw someone near a window and “perceived a threat.” A gun was found in the house, but police did not say that Jefferson, who was in the house with her 8-year-old nephew, was holding it.

October 13, 2019 – The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Esther Duflo, a French-American economist, would share the Nobel Prize in Economics with her husband Abhijit Bannerjee and colleague Michael Kremer “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty,” which involves dividing this huge issue into smaller, more manageable, questions, such as what would be the most effective ways to improve education outcomes. The trio used field experiments in the 1990s to test interventions on improving school results in Kenya. Banerjee and Duflo followed with similar research in other countries, often working with Kremer. "Our approach is to unpack the problems one by one, and examine them as scientifically as possible," said Duflo, the second woman, and youngest person (age 45 at the time), to win the prize.

October 13, 2020 – After increasing waves of protests across the country, Bangladesh cabinet secretary Khander Anwarul Islam confirmed to reporters that the cabinet had approved amending the Women and Child Repression Prevention Bill to change the penalty for rape from a maximum life sentence to either the death penalty or “rigorous imprisonment” for life, which went into immediate effect. In September, 2020, footage had gone viral on Facebook which showed a young woman being violently assaulted and gang-raped by a group of men in the Noalhali district. It was released by the attackers to shame the victim. Eight suspects were arrested in connection with the case. The video sparked protests in several cities, including Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, over failures to curb the endemic problem of violence against women and rape in the predominantly Muslim country. Outrage had already been mounting after several members of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the student wing of the governing party, were arrested and charged with gang-raping a woman in the northern town of Sylhet earlier in 2020. Amnesty International pointed out that the issue in Bangladesh was not the severity of punishment for rape, but victims’ fear of coming forward, and a failure of the courts to bring convictions in the rape cases which are prosecuted. Naripokkho, a Bangladeshi women’s rights organisation, found that in six districts between 2011 and 2018, only five out of 4,372 cases resulted in a conviction. Overall, only 3.56% of cases filed under the Prevention of Oppression Against Women and Children Act have ended up in court, and only 0.37% have resulted in convictions. Between January and September 2020, at least 975 rape cases were reported in Bangladesh, including 208 gang rapes, according to statistics gathered by human rights organisation Ain-o-Salish Kendra. In over 40 of the cases, the women died.

_________________________________

October 14, 1404 – Marie of Anjou born, Queen consort (1422-1461) of Charles VII, King of France. She presided over the council of state during the king’s absence, with the power as regent to sign acts as the “lieutenant of the king.” Though she had her husband’s trust, and gave birth 14 times, and 6 of her children lived into adulthood, Charles was in love with his mistress, Agnés Sorel, whom he formally acknowledged, the first time a French King had so elevated his mistress, and Marie was eclipsed at court. She endured this humiliation with quiet dignity, and busied herself with her children, a menagerie of pets, needlework, and acts of religious piety. She had a musical chapel with two chaplains who were composers, and an astrologer in her retinue. But in 1450, Agnés died, possibly from poisoning by the mercury that was in the cosmetics of the day, after giving birth to a fourth daughter who also died. The 15^th century chronicler Robert Blondell composed the allegorical Treatise of the "Twelve Perils of Hell" for Queen Marie in 1455. Marie became Queen Dowager when Charles died in 1461, and her son was crowned Louis XI. He granted her the Chateau of Amboise and the rich income from Brabant. During the winter of 1462-1463, Marie, at age 58, made a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, in spite of bad weather and poor roads. There has been speculation that she was a secret ambassador to Spain for her son, given the political situation at the time. She became ill and died in November of 1463, worn out by her difficult journey to Spain.

October 14, 1586 – In England, Mary, the former Queen of Scots (she had been forced to abdicate in favour of her son in 1567), went on trial for treason under the Act for the Queen’s Safety before a commission of 36 English noblemen. She spoke in her own defense, protesting that she had been denied the opportunity to review the evidence, that her papers had been removed from her, that she was denied access to legal counsel, and that as a foreign anointed queen she had never been an English subject and thus could not be convicted of treason. She warned the men who sat in judgment upon her, "Look to your consciences and remember that the theatre of the whole world is wider than the kingdom of England." On October 25, she was convicted and sentenced to death. Baron Edward la Zouche was the only commissioner who offered any dissent against her conviction and death sentence. Still, Queen Elizabeth I hesitated to order Mary’s execution, even under pressure from Parliament. She feared the execution of a queen would set a dangerous precedent, and worried that Mary’s son James would form an alliance with the Catholic powers and invade England. Elizabeth must also have thought of her own mother’s execution. She probably had few if any memories of Anne Boleyn, since she was a two year old child at the time, but her life after that was much more precarious until the death of her half-sister Mary I put her on the throne. Elizabeth finally signed this Mary’s death warrant on February 1, 1587, and Mary was executed on February 8, 1587.

October 14, 1630 – Sophia of the Palatinate born, who became Electress consort of Hanover (1692-1698) and Duchess consort of Brunswick-Lüneberg (1679-1698). She was the second cousin of Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland. Under the Settlement Act of 1701, she became the heir presumptive to Anne’s throne, but she died two months before she would have become queen, so her son became King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. Sophia was a friend and admirer of the German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and their substantial correspondence was eventually published in the 19^th century. It revealed Sophia to be well-read, with exceptional intellectual ability and curiosity. She bore 7 children who reached adulthood. She lived to the age of 83, a very advanced age for the day.

October 14, 1861 – Julia A. Ames born, American journalist, editor, and temperance reformer; associate editor of the Women’s Temperance Publishing Association’s Union Signal and a volunteer at “The Anchorage,” a mission in Chicago for outcast women run by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She died at age 30 of typhoid pneumonia in 1891.

October 14, 1888 – Katherine Mansfield born as Kathleen Mansfield in New Zealand, noted primarily for short stories and essays; Bliss and Other Stories and The Critical Writings of Katherine Mansfield.

October 14, 1893 – Lillian Gish born, legendary American screen, stage and television actress, director, and writer. She was a pioneer in film whose career spanned 75 years, from silent short subjects in 1912, to co-starring with Bette Davis in the 1987 film The Whales of August. She is credited with developing fundamental techniques for performing before the motion picture camera. In the early days of silent films, she found costumes and props, wrote dialogue cards, edited film, directed, and performed all her own stunts, nearly losing her life shooting the famous scene in 1920’s Way Down East, lying on a piece of real ice in a real freezing river about to plunge over a real waterfall; The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me is her autobiography, written with Ann Pinchot. Because of her close association with D.W. Griffith (he cast Gish in her first starring role in the 1912 silent, An Unseen Enemy), and her appearance in his infamous 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, she has recently become a somewhat controversial figure.

October 14, 1894 – Victoria Drummond born, first British woman marine engineer and first woman member of the Institute of Marine Engineers, served at sea during WWII as an engineering officer in the British Merchant Navy, frequently cited for bravery under fire; retired after making 49 voyages in her 40-year career.

October 14, 1897 – Alicja Dorabialska born, Polish chemist; her family moved to Moscow during WWI, from 1915 to May, 1918, then returned to Warsaw. She became an assistant in the Institute of Physical Chemistry at Warsaw University of Technology in 1918. In 1925, Maria Skłodowska-Curie came to Warsaw for the foundation stone ceremony for the Radium Institute. They met at a Polish Chemical Society banquet honoring the Nobel laureate. Madame Curie invited Dorabialska to Paris, where she studied under Curie. Dorabialska was the first woman appointed as an assistant professor in the department of physical and inorganic chemistry of Lviv Polytechnic in 1934. She spent most of WWII with her mother and sister in Warsaw, which saved her from being shot, as many of her colleagues were. She secretly hid a Jewish woman in her apartment, and also continued teaching in secret. In 1945, Dorabialska was promoted to full professor at Lviv Polytechnic, and served as dean of the chemistry department (1945-1951).

October 14, 1906 – Hannah Arendt born in Germany, notable American political theorist who escaped from Germany after being arrested and briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo for being Jewish in 1933; she fled to Switzerland, then France, and came to America in 1941 on a visa illegally issued by Hiram Bingham, the U.S. Vice Consul in Marseilles, who gave about 2,500 Jewish refugees unauthorized visas.

October 14, 1908 – Ruth Hale born, American playwright, director, producer, and actress; she moved from Utah to California, and co-founded the Glendale Centre Theatre with her husband James. Hale wrote several plays for the venue, including Handcart Trails, How Near the Angels, and A Choice Land, which she also produced and directed. Ruth and James Hale opened arena-style theatres in Utah and Arizona.

October 14, 1909 – Dorothy Kingsley born, American screenwriter for film, radio, and television. She was a “script doctor” at MGM, sometimes uncredited, and often re-wrote the ‘books’ (plots and dialogue) for MGM musicals, including Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Pal Joey.

October 14, 1938 – Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll born, British librarian and museum director; first woman appointed as a director of a national arts collection, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (1987-1994); Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia (1995-1997), resigned after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

October 14, 1938 – Shula Marks born, South African history professor and author; School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London; a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO, 1977-1980), and co-author of a monograph for WHO on Health and Apartheid. Marks is currently working on the public health campaign against the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. Honored in 2002 with the Distinguished Africanist Award by the African Studies Association of the UK. Noted for her books on South Africa, including Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women.

October 14, 1949 – Katha Pollitt born, American feminist poet, essayist, and critic; She writes frequently on abortion rights, racism, welfare reform, feminism, and poverty. Noted for her essay collection, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism.

October 14, 1955 – Iwona M. Blazwick born, British art critic and lecturer; Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery since 2001; supporter of young artists’ work; author of numerous monographs and articles on contemporary artists, art movements, and art history.

October 14, 1956 – Jennell Jaquays born as Paul Jaquays, American game designer; noted for work on The Dark Tower module for Dungeons & Dragons, and on conversions of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong to video game system versions. More recently, worked on the Age of Empires series and Quake III Arena. She is the creative director for The Transgender Human Rights Institute in Seattle, and campaigned for passage of “Leelah’s Law” to outlaw “conversion therapy” of LGBTQ youth.

October 14, 1965 – Karyn White born, African-American R&B singer-songwriter, best known for her song “Romantic,” which was a US Hot 100 #1 single in 1991.

October 14, 1979 – 200,000 people join the first Washington DC March for Lesbian and Gay Rights.

October 14, 1991 – Burmese (Myanmar) opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi named as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But by 2018, there were calls for her to be stripped of the prize because of her inaction and denial during the Rohingya genocide carried out by Myanmar’s military. The Nobel committee said the prize was awarded for her fight for democracy and freedom up until 1991, the year she was awarded the prize, and would not be withdrawn.

October 14, 2017 – Producer Harvey Weinstein is expelled by AMPAS (the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) after multiple news sources publish dozens of accusations of sexual harassment and rape.

October 14, 2019 – Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo were announced as the joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize. "We were told quite firmly that the rules state that you can only have one winner," Peter Florence, the chair of the judges, said. However, "the consensus was to flout the rules and divide this year's prize to celebrate two winners." Atwood won for The Testaments, the sequel to 1985's The Handmaid's Tale; she had also received the literary award in 2000 for The Blind Assassin. Evaristo won for Girl, Woman, Other, becoming the only black woman to win the Booker Prize. "I hope that honor doesn't last too long," she said.

**Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo**

October 14, 2020 – The Mathematical Association of America announced it is partnering with AwesomeMathGirls.org, The D.E.Shaw Group, Jane Street Capital, and Two Sigma to expand its American Mathematics Competition (AMC) Awards and Certificate Program as part of their commitment to closing the gender gap in mathematics, by recognizing young women for their achievements on the AMC exams. The exams are given to middle school and high school students. The 20 top-scoring young women will each receive a $1,000 scholarship, and the 580 top-scoring women will receive Certificates of Excellence. "Dr. Mirzakhani continues to be an inspiration for many aspiring mathematicians around the world. It is my sincere hope that with this award, we can continue to motivate the next generation of female mathematicians." - Meera Desai, founder of Awesomemathgirls.org.

_________________________________

October 15, 1701 – Saint Marie-Marguerite d'Youville born, French Canadian widow who in 1737 founded, with three women, the Order of Sisters of Charity of Montreal, better known as the Grey Nuns, to provide a home for the poor of Montreal. At the beginning, they were mocked for their efforts, and called “les grises” which translates as “the grey women,” but in slang meant “drunken women.” They raised money and expanded the home. By 1744 their association had been accepted as a Roman Catholic religious order. In 1747, they were granted a charter to operate the General Hospital of Montreal, which was in ruins and heavily in debt. They brought the hospital back into service, but it was destroyed by fire in 1765. On the downside, Marie d'Youville and her order were slave holders, buying and selling Indian slaves, and using British prisoners of war. The prisoners mostly worked in the hospital, and on rebuilding it after the fire, but probably had a better chance of survival as slave labor than in the prisons, notorious for unchecked pestilence, where their comrades were held. Marie d'Youville died in 1771. In 1959, she was beatified by Pope John XXIII, who called her "Mother of Universal Charity", and was canonized in 1990 by Pope John Paul II. She is the first person born in Canada to be elevated to sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church.

October 15, 1793 – French Queen Marie Antoinette is put on trial by the Revolutionary Tribunal for everything from misappropriating Treasury funds to accusations of incest with her son Louis Charles.

October 15, 1830 – Helen Hunt Jackson born, American author, poet, and activist for improved treatment of Native Americans by U.S. Government; author of Ramona, and A Century of Dishonor.

October 15, 1831 – Isabella Bird born, intrepid British explorer, writer, naturalist, and photographer; co-founder with Fanny Jane Butler of the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar. In 1890, she was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Bird was also elected to the Royal Photographic Society in 1897. Her many books include: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan; A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains; the 2-volume Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan; and Among the Tibetans.

October 15, 1860 – Grace Bedell, 11 years old, wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, telling him he would look better if he grew a beard.

October 15, 1880 – Marie C. C. Stopes born, Scottish palaeobotantist and poet; advocate of birth control, women’s rights, and eugenics. In 1902, she earned her doctorate at Munich University‎, for work on fossilized plants. She became the first woman academic on the faculty of the University of Manchester. Stopes was the editor of Birth Control News, and author of Married Love, a controversial but influential sex manual published in 1918; she opposed abortion, arguing that it would not be needed if contraceptives prevented unplanned pregnancies. Her campaign was largely responsible for the founding of Britain’s first family planning clinic in Holloway, north London, without publicity in March 1921. The clinic offered a free service to married women only. Its aim was two-fold: first, to reach the poor and give them access to birth control, and second, to gather scientific data about contraception. Her reputation was later hurt by her eugenic concerns of “impending racial darkness.”

October 15, 1906 – Alicia Patterson born, American publisher, founder, and editor of Newsday.

October 15, 1906 – Victoria Spivey born, record producer, songwriter, 1920s blues singer. She was a member of the all-black cast of the 1929 film Hallelujah. In 1961, she founded Spivey Records, a low-budget label dedicated to blues, jazz, and related music.

x

x

YouTube Video

October 15, 1922 – Agustina Bessa-Luís born, Portuguese writer and executive; director of the daily newspaper, O Primeiro de Janeiro, (1986-1987); director of the D. Maria II National Theatre in Lisbon (1990-1993); noted for her novel, translated as The Lands of Risk.

October 15, 1924 – Marguerite Andersen born in Germany, Canadian French-language author, noted for Le Figuier sur le toit, which won a 2009 Trillium Award.

October 15, 1943 – Penny Marshall born, American actress, producer, and director, noted for directing Big, the first film directed by an American woman to gross over $100 million USD in the U.S.; her other films include Awakenings; A League of Their Own; and Renaissance Man.

October 15, 1948 – Dr. Frances L. Willoughby becomes the first woman doctor in the regular U.S. Navy.

October 15, 1951 – I Love Lucy premieres on CBS-TV; co-produced by and starring Lucille Ball.

October 15, 1954 – Julia Yeomans born, British theoretical physicist and academic; active in the fields of soft condensed matter and biological physics.

October 15, 1955 – Emma Chichester Clark born, British children’s book author and illustrator, known for her Blue Kangaroo series.

October 15, 1957 – Mira Nair born in India, Indian-American filmmaker; she came to the U.S. when she was 19, on a full scholarship to Harvard University, where she performed in plays, but chose film directing over acting, photography or writing, because she likes working collaboratively with people and using all her talents. Her production company, Mirabai Films, produces documentaries and films for international audiences on Indian culture. Known for her feature films Salaam Bombay!; Mississippi Masala; Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love; The Namesake; and Monsoon Wedding, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. In 2016, she directed Queen of Katwe, a biographical feature about Phiona Mutesi, a girl from the slums of Kampala, Uganda, who became a Woman Candidate Chess Master in 2012.

October 15, 1970 – Pernilla Wiberg born, Swedish alpine ski racer, winner of two Olympic gold medals at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics, and a silver medal at the 1998 games, four World Championships, and one World Cup overall title. Wiberg announced her retirement in 2002, after undergoing knee surgery. She served on the International Olympic Committee (2002-2010), and is a member of Champions for Peace, a group of famous elite athletes committed to advancing world peace through sport.

October 15, 1994 – Europa Donna, the European Breast Cancer Coalition, founded by affiliated groups from 47 European countries, becomes the sponsor of Breast Health Day.

October 15, 2007 – U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution designating October 15 as International Day of Rural Women.

October 15, 2018 – Jayme Lynn Closs, age 13, was kidnapped by the man who invaded her family home in Barron, Wisconsin, and fatally shot both her parents. The kidnapper believed that Closs was too afraid of him to make any escape attempts, so he never put special locks on doors of his cabin. They also slept on the same bed. He would only let Closs out for brief walks on the lawn after checking for bystanders. After 88 days, on January 10, 2019, he told Closs he was leaving for a couple of hours. He put her under his bed before boxing her inside with his belongings, per his usual routine. After he left, Closs pushed out the objects around the bed. She ran from the house and found a local woman, Jeanne Nutter, walking her dog. Nutter recognized Closs from news reports and immediately took her to a neighbor's house. After police were called, Closs told them "Jake Patterson" had killed her parents, taken her, and kept her prisoner just a few doors away from the neighbor’s house where Nutter had taken her. The neighbors described Closs as calm but dazed, and surprised that they recognized her from news coverage. She now lives with her aunt and uncle.

October 15, 2019 – When Endzela Dvali came to the UK from eastern Europe to stay with a family friend she had no idea that her virginity would be sold to a stranger for £5,000. She was drugged and raped repeatedly over three weeks by a Russian man old enough to be her father. It had been arranged by the woman she was staying with, who had taken all Dvali’s personal belongings and locked her in the house. When the man left, Dvali went downstairs, where the woman procurer was passed out drunk on the sofa. She broke a window and escaped. A passerby saw Dvali crying, gave her some money, and pointed her toward the nearest police station. Four years later, she lives in a flat provided by the Amari project, which offers up to a year of supported accommodation in London for survivors of sexual trafficking and exploitation while they recover and develop skills needed to transition into the general workforce. The project is part of a strategic partnership of Solace Women’s Aid and Commonweal Housing, with funding from London Councils. The applicants have already maintained a first stage tenancy, then go through an assessment process, and are deemed ready to live independently, either on their own, or with their children up to 2 years old.

October 15, 2020 – After a month’s delay caused by another coronavirus outbreak in Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, a record one million New Zealanders had cast their ballots in advance. There was a lack of excitement and muted atmosphere because of the global pandemic, and the expected win by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, after her extraordinary success in managing the Covid-19 pandemic in New Zealand. Many New Zealanders struggling with job losses and economic uncertainty expressed a wish for the election to be over, and a swift return to their old lives. While the New Zealand Labour Party was criticised for its vague language, and failure to deliver a clear mandate or a cohesive Covid recovery plan, Ardern’s successful handling of a series of major disasters, and her “politics of kindness” kept her party at record highs in the poles. When New Zealand had closed its borders in mid-March and entered lockdown soon after, Ardern urged New Zealanders to “be kind” to one another. “Check on your neighbours,” she said. “Call your grandma.” The NZ Labour Party did win a majority of 65 seats out of the 120 that were up for election, a gain of 19 seats over the previous election — enough seats to govern alone, which hadn’t happened since 1996. The National Party lost 23 seats. The Green Party and the Maōri Party both picked up two additional seats. The Labour Party formed the government, with the cooperation of the Greens, who filled two cabinet positions. "Tonight, New Zealand has shown the Labour Party its greatest support in at least 50 years," Ardern said in a powerful victory speech where she referred to the difficult times ahead for New Zealand. "And I can promise you: we will be a party that governs for every New Zealander."

_________________________________

Sources

http://www.nwhp.org/events/october/
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/important-dates-us-womens-history
www.historyplace.com/...
www.onthisday.com/...
Women Trailblazers of California: Pioneers to the Present, © 2012 by Gloria G. Harris and Hannah S. Cohen — The History Press
todayinsci.com
A Book of Days for the Literary Year, edited by Neal T. Jones
The Music-Lover’s Birthday Book, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thanks to WineRev — www.dailykos.com/…
The Guardian newspaper — Top Stories and International sections

_________________________________

A typo resulted in “Feminist Cat” coming up on Google Images — too good not to share!