October 2023 Women Trailblazers and Activists – 10-24 thru 10-31

admin October 28, 2023

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“Now we see, the ballot has no color line and is colorblind.”

– Marie Foster, Black American Civil Rights activist, Oct. 5, 1963

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WOW2 is a four-times-a-month sister blog to

This Week in the War On Women

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“Most of the time when “universal” is used, it’s just a euphemism for “white”;

white themes, white significance, white culture.”

– Merle Woo,

Chinese-Korean American activist, socialist-feminist, and poet

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“The core of my platform is to change the role of money in politics, support public education and break up monopoly power. All of these are fundamental prerequisites to a responsive democracy.”

– Zephyr Teachout, Democratic Socialist,

activist for public funding of elections and ending voter suppression

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The purpose of WOW2 is to learn about and honor women of achievement, including many who’ve been ignored or marginalized in most of the history books, and to mark events in women’s history.

These trailblazers have a lot to teach us about persistence in the face of overwhelming odds. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.

THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN will post shortly, so be sure to go there and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.

Many, many thanks to libera nos, intrepid Assistant Editor of WOW2. Any remaining mistakes are either mine, or uncaught computer glitches in transferring the data from his emails to DK5. And much thanks to wow2lib, WOW2’s Librarian Emeritus.

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

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October 24, 1503 – Isabella of Portugal born; upon her marriage to Charles V in 1526, she became Queen consort of Spain, Queen of the Romans, and Lady of the Netherlands. Called ‘Empress of the Carnation’ after her husband introduced the flower to Spain as a token of his love for her. When Charles became Holy Roman Emperor in 1530, she became Holy Roman Empress and Queen consort of Italy. Charles, who spent a quarter of his reign on the road, appointed her regent and governor of Spain during his frequent absences to see to the administration of his other kingdoms, and his military campaigns. She attended meetings of the governing councils and consulted with ministers. As she gained experience, she made her own decisions rather than just accepting the recommendations presented to her. The Emperor considered her deliberations “very prudent and well thought out.” She based her decisions on the common good, and organized the defense of the coasts and routes to North Africa against piracy, allowing the flow of precious metals that turned Spain into a chief source for the Imperial treasury. She negotiated the first marriage of her son, Philip, to Maria Manuela of Portugal, as well as the marriage of her daughter Maria to Maximilian II, who became Holy Roman Emperor, and her daughter Joanna to John Manuel, Prince of Portugal. During her regency, Spain was fairly prosperous, but after her death in 1539, the attempts by Charles to unify all his separate kingdoms into one united empire caused high inflation and heavy debt, and ended with the split of the Habsburgs into the Spanish line headed by their son, Philip II of Spain, and the Austrian Habsburgs, headed by Archduke Ferdinand, Charles’ brother, who had been acting regent of Austria since 1521.

October 24, 1764 – Dorothea von Schlegel born, German writer, translator, and novelist; oldest daughter of Moses Mendelssohn, a leading figure of the German Enlightenment. The novel Lucinde (1799), by poet Friedrich von Schlegel, created a scandal because it appeared to describe their affair, which began in 1797, and led her to divorce her Jewish husband (1799). She became a Protestant in order to marry von Schlegel (1804). Noted for her first novel, Florentin, published anonymously in 1801, and for “Gespräch über die neueren Romane der Französinnen” (“Conversation about recent novels of French women writers”).

October 24, 1788 – Sarah Josepha Hale born, American author, editor, poet, and activist for women’s education; first American woman magazine editor, of the Ladies’ Magazine (1828-1836); continued as editor after it merged with Godey’s Ladies Book (1837-1877), becoming the era’s most influential magazine, with over 150,000 subscribers in both North and South. Though now only remembered for “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” she was a pioneer in recording women’s achievements, compiling the Woman’s Record: or, Sketches of Distinguished Women, a 36-volume collection of profiles of women, tracing their influence through history on social organization and literature. In 1863, Hale sent a letter to President Lincoln, appealing “to have the day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival,” and asked the president to “appeal to the Governors of all the States” to follow suit. Lincoln proclaimed November 26, 1863, as a national day of Thanksgiving.

October 24, 1830 – Marianne North born, English botanist, botanical artist, and world traveler; notable for plant and landscape paintings, extensive foreign travels, her writings, her plant discoveries, and creation of her gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Marianne North — Australian Parrot Flower painting

October 24, 1830 – Belva Lockwood born, attorney; first woman admitted to practice law before Supreme Court (1879); she also ran for U.S. President in 1884 and 1888 as the Equal Rights Party candidate.

October 24, 1838 – Annie Edson Taylor born, American schoolteacher and daredevil; in 1901, on her 63rd birthday, she was the first person to survive going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. (See 1901 entry)

October 24, 1840 – Eliza Pollock born, American archer; won two bronze medals in the 1904 Summer Olympics, and a gold medal as a member of the U.S. Olympic team. The oldest woman ever to win an Olympic Gold Medal, at age 63 and 333 days when she competed.

October 24, 1868 – Alexandra David-Néel born, Belgian-French explorer, Buddhist, anarchist, and author of over 30 books about Eastern religion and her travels, including Magic and Mystery in Tibet. Disguised as a beggar, she was the first Western woman to enter the forbidden city of Lhasa. Her work influenced ‘beat’ writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, as well as Alan Watts, who popularized Eastern philosophy and poetry in the West.

October 24, 1885 – Alice Perry born, first Irishwoman to graduate with a degree in engineering, with first class honours, in 1906; she had to return home when her father died, and served temporarily in his position as county surveyor for the Galway City Council for several months, but was passed over when she applied for the permanent position; she remains the only woman to have been a County Surveyor in Ireland. She moved to London and worked as a ‘Lady Factory Inspector’ (1908-1921); retired, became a Christian Scientist, moved to America, and wrote seven books of poetry.

October 24, 1891 – Brenda Ueland born, American journalist, editor, author, essayist, feminist, animal rights advocate, and teacher; noted for If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit (1938), which Carl Sandburg called “the best book ever written on how to write,” and is still in print. She was a freelance writer for a variety of magazines, from the Saturday Evening Post to Sportsman, and a staff writer for Liberty Magazine and the Minneapolis Times newspaper. She was an editor for Crowell Publishing (1915-1917), which primarily published trade books and biographies at that time. Ueland also wrote scripts for radio shows, including Tell Me More, an advice call-in show, and Stories for Girl Heroes, a children’s program about notable women, and taught creative writing classes. A collection of her work was published in 1992 under the name Strength to Your Sword Arm, featuring many of her articles and essays on topics like children, feminism, her life in Minneapolis, animals, health, and well-being. Ueland said she lived her life by two rules: to tell the truth, and never do anything she didn’t want to.

October 24, 1896 – Marjorie Joyner born, helped develop and manage more than 200 Madam C. J. Walker beauty schools by 1919, added professional status to the occupation, and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and other leaders to advance civil rights.

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October 24, 1901 – Desiring to secure her later years financially and avoid the poorhouse, on her 63^rd birthday, Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel – the barrel was tested the previous day, going over the falls with a cat inside, who survived, bloodied and spitting mad. (See 1838 entry)

October 24, 1903 – Charlotte Perriand born, French architect and designer; a pioneer in modern design, l’esprit nouveau. In designing rooms and furniture, she preferred to use metals, especially steel, with glass, chrome, and leather. When she applied to work at Le Corbusier’s studio in 1927, she was rejected – “We don’t embroider cushions here.” But a month later, Le Corbusier visited the Salon d’Automne, where her design, Bar sous le toit (‘Bar under the roof’ – a recreation of a section of her attic apartment), was on display, and he offered her a job designing furniture. She was put in charge of the interiors work and promoting the studio’s designs through a series of exhibitions. But her contributions were credited to the Le Corbusier studio. After WWII, Perriand, an enthusiastic communist, want to turn her hand to low-cost furniture for mass production, and approached Le Corbusier, who wrote in response, “I do not think it would be interesting, now that you’re a mother … to oblige you to be present in the atelier,” he wrote. “On the other hand, I would be very happy if you could contribute to the practical structural aspects of the settings which are within your domain, that is to say the knack of a practical woman, talented and kind at the same time.” He would ultimately have Perriand develop the compact modular kitchens for the acclaimed Marseille project – and claim sole authorship of the result. Her dream of modern furniture for the masses was never fulfilled – only 170 of her chaise longues with curved tubular steel frames were sold in their first decade – today, they are reproduced under a license from Fondation Le Corbusier, and sold in upscale boutiques for over $5,000 USD (over €4,526 Euros).

**Charlotte Perriand — with chaise and installation**

October 24, 1914 – Lakshmi Sahgal born, Indian Independence movement revolutionary, physician, and officer in the Indian National Army, dubbed “Captain Lakshmi,” her rank when taken prisoner in Burma during WWII. She was Minister of Women’s Affairs during Azah Hind (Provisional Government of Free India 1943-1946). In Singapore in 1942 during its surrender to the Japanese, she aided wounded prisoners of war, many of them Indian nationalists. She was recruited by Subhas Chandra Bose into the Rani of Jhansi regiment, an all-women brigade of the Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army). The INA marched with the Japanese army to Burma, but left them before the Battle of Imphal, where the Japanese suffered heavy casualties and were driven back by an allied army which included several divisions of Indian troops. Captain Lakshmi was arrested by the British, and held in Burma from May 1945 until March 1946, when she was sent to India, where the INA trials were increasing discontent and hastening the end of colonial rule. She returned to medical practice, but also became a prominent Communist politician and labour activist. During both the Partition of India (1947) and the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), she organized aid and medical care for refugees; she was a founding member of the All India Democratic Women’s Association in 1981.

**Lakshmi Sahgal — young Captain L**akshmi

October 24, 1915 – Letitia Woods Brown born, pioneer in researching and teaching African-American history, completed her Ph.D. at Harvard in 1966; primary consultant for the Schlesinger Library’s Black Women Oral History Project; co-authored Washington from Banneker to Douglass 1791-1870.

October 24, 1915 – Marghanita Laski born, English journalist, science fiction critic, radio panelist on Any Questions?, biographer, novelist, and short-story writer. Noted for her novels Little Boy Lost and Tory Heaven, and biographies of Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Rudyard Kipling; also a prolific contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, having “carded” almost 250,000 quotations. Laski was an activist with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and an avowed atheist.

October 24, 1917 – Marie Foster born, American Civil Rights leader who helped register many African-American voters in Selma, Alabama, and helped start the Dallas County Voters League; she personally was turned away from registering eight times before she succeeded, and then began teaching other black citizens how to pass the tests being used to bar them from registering. Only one person showed up for her first class, a 70- year-old man. She taught him how to write his name. Foster was one of the main organizers of the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965; on ‘Bloody Sunday’ she was clubbed by a state trooper across the knees, but despite her injuries, two weeks later, she walked with the others the fifty miles to Montgomery in five days. She died at age 85 in 2003. A room in the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma is named the Marie Foster Room.

October 24, 1918 – Doreen Tovey born, English author and cat lover; she wrote over a dozen books about her fictionalized life with her husband, their Siamese cats, and other animals, which have sold over 150,000 copies. She was president of the RSPCA for North Somerset.

October 24, 1923 – Denise Levertov born, British-American poet, feminist, editor, and educator; her anti-Vietnam war poems include themes of destruction by greed, racism, and sexism in the 1970s; the poetry of her last years reflects her conversion to Catholicism in 1990. She won the Robert Frost Medal in 1990, and the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1993. Her many collections of poetry include: O Taste and See; Breathing the Water; A Door in the Hive; and This Great Unknowing: Last Poems. She died at age 74 in 1997, after a three year battle with lymphoma.

October 24, 1930 – Elaine Feinstein born, English poet, novelist, author of radio plays and short stories, biographer, and translator; Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1981, and recipient of the 1990 Cholmondeley Award for poetry.

October 24, 1931 – Sofia Gubaidulina born, Tatar-Russian composer and pianist; composed scores for documentary films, but was blacklisted in 1979 for participation without approval in music festivals in the West. Noted for violin concerto Offertorium, and a T.S. Eliot tribute based on his Four Quartets.

October 24, 1937 – M. Rosaria Piomelli born, Italian architect, author, and academic; a project architect for I.M. Pei and Partners (1971-1974), then opened her own firm in New York City in 1974; member of the American Institute of Architects; organized Women in the Design of the Environment, a 1974 exhibition in New York. Appointed as dean of the CCNY School of Architecture in 1980, the first woman dean of an architectural school in the U.S.

October 24, 1941 – Merle Woo born in San Francisco, Chinese-Korean American academic, poet, and activist; a leading member of the socialist feminist group Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party. She taught Lesbian Literature and other classes in the late 1960s at San Francisco State University. In 1978, she began teaching at UC Berkeley, a turbulent period during which she was fired, then rehired, and when her contract was not renewed, she won a union arbitration, and was reinstated in 1989. Later, she went back to teaching at San Francisco State. She was also part of the performance group Unbound Feet. Her essay “Letter to Ma” was included in the 1918 feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back, and her poetry collection, Yellow Woman Speaks, was published in 1986.

October 24, 1950 – Maria Teschler-Nicola born, Austrian biologist, anthropologist, and ethnologist; noted for work on a very rare genetic disorder in humans, tetrasomy 12p mosaicism; Director of the Department of Archaeological Biology and Anthropology of the Museum of Natural History of Vienna since 1998.

October 24, 1952 – Jane Fancher born, science fiction and fantasy author and artist who worked for Warp graphics in the 1980s, then did adaptations of C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine series as graphic novels in collaboration with Cherryh, whom she married in 2014. Noted for her Groundties series and Dance of the Rings trilogy.

October 24, 1956 – Margaret Towner is ordained as the first woman pastor of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.

October 24, 1958 – Nokugcine ‘Gcina’ Mhlophe born, South African storyteller, songwriter, and children’s author; she played a large role in keeping Black South African history alive and encouraging children to read.

October 24, 1959 – Ruth Perednik born in England, Israeli psychologist and a pioneer in the study and treatment of the anxiety disorder Selective Mutism (SM), which causes a person who is normally capable of speech to go mute in specific situations or with specific people, which often begins in early childhood. She taught at the Yehuda Halevi Teacher’s Training College, Argentina (1986–1987), where she lectured on Educational Psychology, and worked for Jerusalem Psychological Services.

October 24, 1959 – Michelle Lujan Grisham born, American Democratic politician; Governor of New Mexico since January, 2019; New Mexico Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (2013-2018); New Mexico Secretary of Health (2004-2007). She is pro-choice, favors a ban on assault rifles, opposes discrimination, and is an advocate for elder rights. Co-sponsor of the Student Loan Fairness Act, and pushes for green and renewable legislation and regulation in New Mexico.

October 24, 1964 – Donna Hyer-Spencer born, American litigation attorney for New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, and Democratic politician; member of the New York State Assembly (2007-2010); advocate for stronger penalties for child sex abusers, and successfully sponsored legislation to combat domestic violence, as well as a law to eliminate fees for Orders of Protection to remove financial roadblocks for victims. An advocate for education and healthcare, including opposing increases in state education tuition and Education budget cuts, and increasing income eligibility for prescription drug coverage for seniors; strong advocate on environmental issues, against hydro fracking within New York City’s watershed, and in favor of protection and public access to beaches and waterfronts.

October 24, 1971 – Zephyr Teachout born, American attorney, author, and Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University; in 2014, Teachout ran for the Democratic Party nomination for governor of New York, but lost to incumbent Andrew Cuomo. She received 34% of the primary vote. She is on the advisory board for Let America Vote, working to end voter suppression, and was treasurer for Cynthia Nixon’s campaign for New York governor in 2018; author of Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United and Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.

October 24, 1975 – Women’s Day Off: 90% of Icelandic women took part in a national ‘Women’s Day Off’ – refusing to work in protest of gaps in gender equality in Iceland. The country ground to a halt, not only because women were missing from work, but because fathers had to stay home to take over childcare and household chores. Five years later, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected as the first woman president of Iceland (1980-1996).

October 24, 1985 – South Africa ‘Purple Rain’: Hundreds of marchers, most of them women wearing “Troops Out” t-shirts, reached the Cape Town city centre to protest troops being permanently stationed in townships, and refused to obey an order to disperse. Cape Town police used water cannons to spray purple-dyed water on them, setting off a riot.

October 24, 2017 – A U.S. federal appeals court overturned a lower court ruling blocking a pregnant undocumented teenage immigrant from getting an abortion. The Trump administration blocked the 17-year-old teen, known only as Jane Doe, from leaving a government-contracted facility to have the procedure. She came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, and a few weeks ago she received a state judicial order allowing her to terminate her pregnancy without parental consent. The Trump administration argued in court that it had not “put any obstacle in her path,” but was “refusing to facilitate an abortion.”

October 24, 2019 – In Bangladesh, 16 former administrators, teachers, and pupils of the Sonagazi Senior Fazil Madrasa school were sentenced to death for the murder of Nusrat Jahan Rafi, a 19-year-old student who was burned to death in April 2019 after complaining that the school’s head teacher was sexually harassing her, and then refusing to withdraw the allegation. After she went to the police, a video leaked showing a police chief registering her complaint but dismissing it as “not a big deal.” Nevertheless, Siraj ud-Daula was arrested and sent to jail. His family pressured Rafi’s family to drop the complaint. The prosecution alleged that ud-Daula issued orders from his jail cell to accomplices – including two local ruling Awami League party leaders and several seminary students – to kill the student if she did not retract her complaint. When Rafi arrived at the school to take an exam, a classmate named Poppy lured her to a rooftop, where five others – including three of her classmates – tied her hands and feet with a scarf before setting her on fire. The conspirators hoped to pass off the incident as suicide by self immolation, but after flames burned through the scarf binding her, she was able to get down from the roof for help. Her brother recorded a video statement from her in the ambulance on a mobile phone. Over 80% of her body was burned, and she died five days later. The case prompted national outrage amid an alarming rise in sexual harassment cases, and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina promised to prosecute all those involved. Despite the passage of a Suppression of Violence Against Women and Children Act in 2000, violence against women remains a substantial problem in the predominately Muslim country. After the killing, Bangladesh ordered 27,000 schools to set up committees to prevent sexual violence.

October 24, 2020 – Defying a government ban on public gatherings, thousands of people in cities across Poland marched for the third straight day in protests of over the ruling by Poland’s highest court that an existing law allowing the abortion of malformed fetuses was unconstitutional. The constitutional court’s verdict is in line with policies espoused by Poland’s Roman Catholic episcopate and the governing rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which had “reformed” the court in 2019, and introduced a disciplinary regime for high court judges that the European Court of Justice ruled is a breach of European Union law. Many of the banners and signs carried by the protesters were marked with the red lightning symbol adopted by campaigners against the ban. Activists called for a national referendum on the issue, and announced they would block traffic nationwide on Monday, October 26. There were already fewer than 2,000 legal abortions a year in Poland, the vast majority of them because of malformed fetuses. However, Polish women’s groups estimate as many as 200,000 procedures were performed illegally or abroad annually.

October 24, 2021 – Richard Ratcliffe, husband of British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe went on a hunger strike for a second time, attempting to persuade the UK Foreign Secretary to do more get his wife released from detention in Iran. Iranian authorities said earlier this month that Nazanin lost her appeal against a second prison sentence. She was returned to jail for another year, then will be subject to a travel ban for a further year after that. She was arrested in 2016 and has always protested her innocence, and has already served a five-year sentence for spying. Ratcliffe staged his strike outside the Foreign Office in London. Many supporters joined him in a vigil two nights before he ended his hunger strike after 21 days: “Today I have promised Nazanin to end the hunger strike. Gabriella needs two parents. Thank you all for your overwhelming care these past three weeks … I will be going to the hospital for a full check-up. Thank you for keeping our family in the light.” Labour MP Tulip Siddiq called for Johnson to visit her constituent. She tweeted on Ratcliffe’s last strike day: “It has been three weeks since Richard Ratcliffe last ate any food. In that time, not a single government minister has visited his camp outside the Foreign Office in solidarity. Will the prime minister take five minutes out of his day to visit my constituent today?”

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October 25, 1692 – Elisabeth Farnese born, stepdaughter of the Duke of Parma. Raised in seclusion at the Palazzo della Pilotta, she took little interest in her lessons in Latin, French, German, rhetoric, philosophy, geography, and history, but enjoyed lessons in dance, painting, and music. After surviving a virulent attack of smallpox, she often went riding and hunting. There were no surviving male heirs to the Duchy of Parma, so whoever married her would be in line to succeed her uncle. She had several suitors, but was married by proxy at age 22 to Philip V of Spain as his second wife. His beloved first wife died at age 25 of tuberculosis. During the extended negotiations, Parma’s ambassador told the influential Princesse des Ursins that Elisabeth was a simple-minded woman interested in needlework, and would be easy to control and dominate, but told Elisabeth that the king wanted to be governed by others, so she must take control quickly, and the Spanish would like her very much if she could end the influence of the French party headed by the Princesse des Ursins. Upon entrance to Spain, Elisabeth refused to part with her Italian retinue in exchange for a Spanish one as originally planned. The Princesse des Ursins, appointed as her Mistress of the Robes, hastened to meet Elisabeth before she met Philip V, having already heard from her spies that Elisabeth was not the simpleton she was led to believe. Elisabeth greeted her, and they spoke in private, where a violent argument could be heard by their attendants. Des Ursins was fired and arrested at Elisabeth’s command, and escorted over the border to France. When Philip met her the next day, he was enchanted with his new bride. She soon dominated Philip, and completely replaced the French party at court with her own retinue. Philip suffered periods of depression which left him unable to handle his duties, so she took over, and meetings with the ministers took place in the apartments they shared in the palace, even when the king was able to function, so she was present at all the government meetings from the start. In 1724, Philip abdicated in favor of his firstborn son from his previous marriage, Louis I, and retired to another palace. But Louis died from smallpox just a few months later, and Philip resumed the throne. Elisabeth was the de facto ruler of Spain from then until 1746 when Philip died, then went into exile when her stepson Ferdinand VI became king until his death in 1759. She was briefly regent for her son Charles III (1759-1760). Elisabeth died at age 73 in 1766.

October 25, 1783 – Deborah Sampson was honorably discharged from the Continental Army after serving almost two years disguised as “Robert Shurtlieff.” When she was wounded, with a gash in her forehead from a sword, and a pistol ball in her left thigh, she extracted the pistol ball herself, and continued to serve, keeping her secret. Her true identity was finally discovered in Philadelphia, because she became ill during an epidemic, and lost consciousness when she was taken to a hospital. Sampson was the only woman to earn a full military pension for participation in the Revolutionary army.

October 25, 1800 – Maria Jane Jewsbury born, English writer, poet, and literary reviewer; when her mother died in 1819, Maria took over running the household and raising her younger siblings. In spite of her many duties, she contributed poems to the Manchester Gazette in 1821. Noted for Phantasmagoria, or Sketches of Life and Literature; Letters to the Young; Lays for Leisure Hours; and The Three Histories. Her first book, Phantasmagoria, a mix of poetry and prose, was published in 1825, and attracted the attention of William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, with whom she became friends. Jewsbury joined the literary scene, and was courted as a guest as much for her brilliant conversation as for her growing reputation as a writer. Making the acquaintance of Charles Wentworth Dilke, editor of the literary magazine The Athenaeum, led to her becoming a contributor in 1830. Against her father’s wishes, she married Reverend William Kew Fletcher in 1832, and went with him to India. When they arrived at Sholapoor where Reverend Fletcher was assigned, it was in the midst of a drought and famine. He fell ill from overwork and anxiety, and she nursed him back to health. A medical certificate that his health could not bear the climate allowed them to leave, but she succumbed to cholera in Poona on October 4, 1833, and was buried there.

October 25, 1803 – Maria Doolaeghe born, Flemish author and poet; her first poetry collection, Madelieven, was published in 1834, and she made numerous contributions to literary magazines in Flanders and the Netherlands. She was an advocate for expanding education for girls. In the 1830s, she and her sister opened a grocery store to earn a living. Though Flemish chambers of rhetoric did not allow women members, she was made an honorary member of more than one chamber. As an unmarried woman, she was not allowed to be present on the podium to read her work, so while she could enter her poems in poetry competitions, and her poems were declared the best in three competitions, the first place medal went to male poets whose work placed second. Her published work in magazines and books did make her a well-known and popular author. When she died at age 80 in April 1884, her funeral was attended by delegations from several Flemish literary societies.

October 25, 1840 – Helen Blanchard born, American inventor who received 28 patents, including the Blanchard over-seaming machine (which both sewed and trimmed knitted fabrics), zigzag stitching, a pencil sharpener, and a machine to sew hats.

October 25, 1884 – Maria Czaplicka born, Polish cultural anthropologist known for her ethnography of Siberian shamanism; her studies were published in Aboriginal Siberia (1914). Also noted for a travelogue, My Siberian Year (1916); and a set of lectures as The Turks of Central Asia (1919), In 1916, she became the first woman lecturer in anthropology at Oxford University; in 1920, received a Murchison Grant from the Royal Geographical Society in 1920, though not enough to offset losing the income from her three-year fellowship at Oxford, which expired in 1919. When a travelling fellowship she applied for didn’t come through, she was only able to find a temporary teaching position. She poisoned herself in 1921, leaving all her papers to her colleague, Henry Usher Hall, who was on the 1914-1915 expedition to Siberia with her, and ornithologist Maud Doria Haviland. There was speculation about her relationship with Hall, especially since he was being married in the U.S. around the time of her suicide.

**Maria Czaplicka** — with Henry Usher Hall

October 25, 1885 (OS) – Sabina Spielrein born in Rostov-on-Don; Russian physician, one of the first women psychoanalysts. She became a patient of Jung after the sudden death of her sister Emma, then his student. He took sexual advantage of her, but she nevertheless completed her studies, and became a psychoanalyst. She spoke three languages fluently, and founded Moscow’s Psychoanalytic Clinic. In the late 1920s, Stalin shut down the clinic because psychoanalytic ideas were “too Jewish.” She returned to her home town and risked reprisals by seeing patients secretly. During Stalin’s Great Purge, her three brothers were executed in the Gulag, then her husband, and finally her parents. Spielrein was trapped, without family or powerful friends abroad to help get her out. In August 1942, Nazis invaders murdered her and her two daughters, in the massacre of 27,000 Jews in Rostov-on-Don.

October 25, 1892 – Margaret Ingels born, American mechanical engineer; first woman graduate in engineering at the University of Kentucky in 1916; worked on air conditioning, developing an “effective temperature” scale which incorporated humidity and air movement in the equation for comfort level.

October 25, 1892 – Nelle Shipman born, Canadian producer-director, actress, author-screenwriter, animal trainer, and pioneer in silent films; co-head of Canadian Photoplays Ltd.

October 25, 1900 – Chief Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti born, Nigerian women’s rights and political activist, founded the Abeokuta Women’s Union, which grew to 20,000 members, and launched successful campaigns against price controls which hurt women merchants of the Abeokuta markets, and against tax collection abuses. Ransome-Kuti also campaigned for Nigerian women’s right to vote. In the 1950s, she was one of the few women elected to the house of chiefs, serving as Oloye of the Yoruba people. Her three sons were also political activists. In 1978, Ransome-Kuti was thrown out of a third floor window by military personnel who invaded the compound of her son Fela. She went into a coma and died two months later. In 2012, the government proposed putting Ransome-Kuti’s picture on a N5000 note. Her grandson, Fela’s son Seun Kuti, a popular musician, said on television that his grandmother was murdered by the Federal Government, and asked the government to apologise to his family for her death before considering immortalizing her on the nation’s money. The government did not respond in spite of protest groups adding pressure on social media. The N5000 proposal was withdrawn.

October 25, 1912 – Minnie Pearl, born as Sarah Coley, American comedian who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry (1940-1991); after battling breast cancer, she became a spokeswoman and benefactor for cancer research, founding the Minnie Pearl Cancer Foundation, and the Sarah Cannon (her married name) Cancer Research Institute.

October 25, 1921 – Marian Koshland born, American immunologist, discoverer of the differences in amino acid composition of antibodies which explain their efficiency and effectiveness in combating a huge range of foreign invaders. During WWII, her post-graduate studies included work in projects developing an Asiatic cholera vaccine, and combating transmission of airborne pathogens in army barracks. In 1970, she became a professor of Microbiology and Immunology, and discovered the J chain (a B cell antibody subunit). In 1991, with colleagues, she identified a specialized intracellular pathway that transports antibodies into blood circulation, allowing for multiplication of B cells, essential in fighting infection.

October 25, 1923 – Beate Sirota Gordon born in Austria; her family emigrated to Japan in 1929; her father was a professor at the Imperial Academy of Music. She came to America in 1939 to study at Mills College in California, and was completely cut off from her family during WWII. In 1940 she was one of only 65 Caucasians fluent in Japanese in the U.S., and worked for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the FCC. 1n 1945, she became an American citizen. In December, 1945, she was the first civilian American woman to arrive in Japan, working for the Political Affairs staff. She reunited with her parents, who survived the war in an internment camp. Gordon worked for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) as a translator – in addition to Japanese, she was fluent in English, German, French, and Russian. She also worked on the civil rights section of the new constitution for Japan, drafting the language on legal equality for Japanese women – one of only two women involved in this work – the other was economist Eleanor Hadley. After the war, she was a career counselor for Japanese students in New York City, including Yoko Ono, and then became an impresario, introducing Japanese performing artists to the NY public.

October 25, 1941 – Anne Tyler born, American novelist; notable for The Accidental Tourist, and Breathing Lessons, which won the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Literature.

October 25, 1942 – Gloria Katz born, American screenwriter and film producer; co-writer of the screenplays for American Graffiti, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

October 25, 1952 – Wendy Hall born, English computer scientist, mathematician, and academic; Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Her team invented the Microcosm hypermedia system in 1984, before the World Wide Web was launched. She became Southampton’s first woman professor of engineering in 1994, and Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (2002-2007.) Founding Director of the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006. In 2020, appointed as Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute.

October 25, 1955 – Gale Anne Hurd born, American film producer and screenwriter; founder of Pacific Western Productions and Valhalla Entertainment; produced the movies The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Tremors and Dante’s Peak, and the TV series, The Walking Dead.

October 25, 1966 – Zana Briski born, British photographer and documentary filmmaker; she directed Born into Brothels, 2004 winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; and is the founder of Kids with Cameras, a non-profit that teaches photography to marginalized children.

October 25, 1969 – Samantha Bee born, Canadian-American comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, and host of Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (2015-2022).

October 25, 1971 – Elif Shafak born, Turkish-British novelist, essayist, academic, women’s and minorities rights activist, and advocate for freedom of speech. She writes in English and Turkish, and is a founding member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Awarded the 1988 Rumi Prize for her first novel, Pinhan (The Hidden), and the 2000 Turkish Writers’ Union Prize for Mahrem (The Gaze). Her first novel written in English was The Bastard of Istanbul (2006), which addresses the Armenian genocide, still denied by the Turkish government. She was charged with “insulting Turkishness” (Article 301 0f the Turkish Penal Code) for writing about the genocide. She also addressed honor killings in her book Honour (2012). She has been living in London since 2013 in self-imposed exile. In 2022, her book, The Island of Missing Trees, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

October 25, 1971 – Midori born as Midori Goto in Osaka, Japan; celebrated Japanese-American violinist; child prodigy debuted with the New York Philharmonic at age 11. At age 21, she established her foundation Midori and Friends to bring music education to young people in underserved communities in New York City and Japan. In 2007, Midori became a UN Messenger of Peace, and in 2012, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

October 25, 1972 – Esther Duflo born in France, French-American economist; co-founder and director of the Abdul Latif Jamee Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Co-recipient of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer for their research on alleviating global poverty. The youngest person and the second woman to win the Economic Sciences Nobel Prize (after Elinor Ostrom won in 2009). Author of Poor Economics; Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems; and Le Développement Humain (Volumes 1 and 2).

October 25, 1980 – The Hague International Child Abduction Convention concludes, after developing a multilateral treaty to provide for quick return of a child under age 16 abducted or detained by a non-custodial parent from one member country to another – as of 2022, 101 countries were party to the treaty.

October 25, 1980 – Victoria Francés born, Spanish illustrator, noted for her Dark Romanticism; her “Hekate” appears on the album entitled Luna for the German Pagan Folk band, Faun.

October 25, 2018 – Ethiopia’s parliament approved the appointment of senior diplomat Sahle-Work Zewde as the country’s first woman president. The president’s job is mostly ceremonial, with the prime minister holding executive power and acting as head of government. Still, the office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed hailed the selection of Sahle-Work, currently a United Nations under-secretary general and special representative of the secretary general to the African Union, as an “historic move.” Fitsum Arega, Abiy’s chief of staff, said, “In a patriarchal society such as ours, the appointment of a female head of state not only sets the standard for the future but also normalizes women as decision-makers in public life.”

October 25, 2019 – Over a million protesters in streets throughout Chile demanded President Sebastián Piñera’s resignation. He had declared a state of emergency, invoking Ley de Seguridad del Estado (a state security law) against dozens of detainees, and deployed Chilean Army forces to enforce order. There were numerous reports of women being strip searched without probable cause, as well as beatings, sexual abuse, and sexual assault. Many buildings, including the Violeta Parra Museum, were damaged in arson attacks as violence continued into 2020. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International both expressed concern over the “excessive use of force” by the Carbineros, Chile’s national police force.

Stand-off between Chilean protesters and national police — Violeta Parra Museum

October 25, 2020 – The Police and Crime Committee of the London Assembly presented to Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland a report revealing rapes and other sexual offenses reported in London are less likely to result in convictions in 2020 than they were in 2015. According to figures gathered from the Metropolitan police and the Crown Prosecution Service, reports of rape and sexual offences in London increased by 25% between 2015 and 2020, but convictions dropped by almost a quarter, and the time it takes to bring charges of rape almost tripled. In 2015, one in nine reports of sexual offenses resulted in convictions, but in 2020, only one in 16 resulted in a guilty verdict. Unmesh Desai, chair of the Police and Crime Committee, said, “The toxic combination of significantly more reported sexual offences alongside a depressing failure to undertake successful prosecutions is a deeply worrying trend which leads victims to lose confidence in the criminal justice system.” Concerns were also raised that the backlog of cases and a lack of preparedness in the courts lead to more rape cases dropping out of the system, as further delays could impact victims’ confidence and willingness to pursue a prosecution. Rape cases take longer to charge than any other type of crime. In 2015-2016, it took on average 53 days for a charge to be brought, and by 2019-2020 that had increased to 145 days. In addition to lengthy charging times, victims have to wait longer for their cases to reach court. Over 500,000 cases were waiting to be heard in magistrates and crown courts in England after jury trials were suspended during the coronavirus lockdown, and many courts haven’t been adequately equipped to reopen. The committee heard of one rape survivor who had waited for over two years for their case to be heard, then faced further delays due to a lack of perspex screens in the court. Unmesh Desai added, “If all other businesses and organisations across the country are ensuring that their premises are Covid-19 secure, it’s disgraceful that something as easy to fix as this is adding a further delay in bringing perpetrators to justice. Victims of rape and sexual offences already have so many hurdles to overcome without the added pressure of long delays to get their day in court.”

October 25, 2021 –Problems with the UK’s Metropolitan Police officers were highlighted by two cases. One Met officer was on trial, accused of rape, and his defense was that when he pulled her shorts down, and she pulled them back up, he thought she was “just playing hard to get and being flirty” when she said, “No. Stop.” The officer was later found not guilty. In another case, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) found that the Metropolitan police failed the family of two black sisters, Bibaa Henry age 46, and Nicole Smallman age 27, reported missing on Saturday, June 6, 2020, the day after they were last seen at a birthday celebration for the older sister in a north London park. The women’s bodies were found by friends who had organised their own search party after police failed to initiate a search. The IOPC found the Met failed to follow their missing person’s policies, among other errors, but said it had looked “exhaustively” at whether bias was a factor and found that it was not. A call handler referred to one of the missing women as a “suspect” and appeared dismissive when a friend of one of the sisters phoned asking for help, the watchdog found. The IOPC investigation also found that the inspector closed the police logs after receiving information about the sisters’ possible whereabouts from a family member, but that information was “inaccurately” recorded by a communications supervisor. This meant that missing persons inquiries for both women were not processed properly. The report concluded that the service the family received from the Met was “unacceptable.” Yet the IOPC concluded no officer should face a disciplinary hearing, but the Met should apologise to the family. The victims’ mother, Mina Smallman, responded that she believed race was a factor, “No one was taking it seriously. There was no search put in place by police. Our phone calls were being disregarded. There was no action at all … Bibaa wasn’t even on as a missing person on the Sunday after we’d made calls on the Saturday. And you know, it’s shameful. It’s shocking … Right from the very beginning, they knew they were looking for two girls, two women of colour. I’m trying to understand why they didn’t follow procedure. What could the explanation be?”

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October 26, 1837 – Louisa Lee Schuyler born, established first U.S. training school for nurses in conjunction with Bellevue Hospital. In 1915, awarded the first honorary LL.D. degree given to a woman by Columbia University.

October 26, 1845 – Tennessee Celeste Claflin born, reformer and suffragist. She and her sister Victoria Woodhull were the first women to open a Wall Street brokerage firm.

October 26, 1892 – Ida B. Wells publishes her pamphlet Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, beginning to detail her extensive research into thousands of lynchings of black Americans in the South.

October 26, 1894 – Florence Nagel born, British racehorse and Irish wolfhound trainer-breeder and feminist. In 1920, while training her first racehorse, women were still forced to employ a man to hold a Jockey Club trainer’s license on their behalf because females were excluded from membership. She challenged this, and became one of the first two U.K. women to licensed to train racehorses. She sponsored the Florence Nagle Girl Apprentices’ Handicap Race, first run in 1986 at Kempton Park, and left funds in her will to continue the race.

October 26, 1902 – Beryl Markham born, British-Kenyan aviator, horse trainer-breeder, and writer; she was the first woman to fly solo east-to-west across the Atlantic; notable for her 1942 memoir, West with the Night.

October 26, 1902 – Henrietta Hill Swope born, American astronomer; discovered and studied thousands of variable stars, and measured the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid stars, used in calculating their distance from other celestial bodies. During WWII, she worked on LORAN navigation tables at the MIT Hydrographic Office. Swope worked at the Observatories of Carnegie Institution of Washington (1952-1968). She was honored with the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1968.

October 26, 1911 – Mahalia Jackson born, internationally acclaimed gospel singer, sang at the 1963 March on Washington.

October 26, 1920 – Sarah Lee Lippincott born, American astronomer; pioneer in determining the character of binary stars and the search for extrasolar planets.

October 26, 1935 – Gloria Conyers Hewitt born, African American mathematician; researches in Group Theory and Abstract Algebra; awarded the National Science Foundation postdoctoral Science Faculty Fellowship.

October 26, 1936 – Etelka Kenéz Heka born, Hungarian writer, poet, and singer, grew up in Yugoslavia, but lived mostly outside Hungary. She has three citizenships, Hungarian, Austrian, and Croatian, and now lives in Hódmezővásárhely in south-east Hungary. Author of about 90 books, but none of them have yet been translated into English. Winner of the 2015 Hódmezővásárhely Pro Urbe Award.

October 26, 1945 – Nancy Davis Griffeth born, American computer scientist and academic; modeling biological systems in computational biology. Her current interests lie at the intersection of voting rights, technology, and the environment.

October 26, 1947 – Hillary Rodham Clinton born, attorney and Democratic politician; U.S. Secretary of State (2009-2013), Senator from New York (2001-2009), former First Lady (1993-2001). In 2016, she became the first woman U.S. presidential candidate nominated by a major party. Clinton won the popular vote, but didn’t carry the Electoral College.

October 26, 1956 – Rita Wilson born as Margarita Ibrahimoff, American film producer, actress, and singer-songwriter; supporter of cancer research and children’s charities, and the ONE Campaign to make women a priority at the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Summit; producer of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Connie and Carla, and Mamma Mia!

October 26, 1963 – Natalie Merchant born, American singer-songwriter; lead vocalist and primary songwriter for 10,000 Maniacs (1981-1993). Began a successful solo career in 1993, and released seven solo albums since, including Ophelia, Motherland, and The House Carpenter’s Daughter, her first album on her own label, Myth America Records. Merchant and Mark Ruffalo organized a concert in 2012 to protest gas and oil fracking in New York state, and a documentary about the show was released titled Dear Governor Cuomo. In 2013, Merchant then directed Shelter: A Concert Film to Benefit Victims of Domestic Violence, a documentary short.

October 26, 2011 – The Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition and Prostitution Research & Education released a study that looks at the trafficking of Native American women in Minnesota. “Native women are at exceptionally high risk for poverty and sexual violence, which are both elements in the trafficking of women,” report co-author Nicole Matthews, the executive director of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, said. “The specific needs of Native women are not being met. Our goal was to assess the life circumstances of Native women in prostitution in Minnesota, a group of women not previously studied in research such as this.”

October 26, 2019 –A wide-ranging study of prostitution and the criminalization of the industry in the UK commissioned by the Home Office revealed a growing number of women have sold sex to survive after years of Tory austerity. To make matters worse, while it is not illegal in the UK to buy or sell sex from each other, sex workers banding together as a group is illegal. “The law is impossible to navigate because all of the stuff that makes me safer is illegal,” one woman told researchers. Niki Adams, spokesperson for the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP), which presented evidence from its national network of sex workers who work both on the street and inside premises, said: “We have seen a massive increase in people coming to us for help because they have gone into prostitution for the first time and they need advice and support. A big proportion of women are single mothers … Universal Credit has a massive impact on people coming to us. Having to wait five weeks before you get any benefits under Universal Credit is forcing women back into prostitution or into starting prostitution for the first time. People have been left with no money. This is particularly devastating for mothers – how do you get the money for the next meal for your children?” Many of the women do not go to the police when they are the victims of violence because they fear going to prison.

NikiAdamsspokespersonfortheEnglishCollectiveofProstitutes.jpg

October 26, 2020 – Women aboard a Qatar Airways flight bound for Sydney were taken off the plane during an unexplained long delay in Doha, the capital of Qatar, to be strip-searched as authorities tried to identify the mother of an infant found in Hamad International Airport’s toilets. Kim Mills said in an interview that she and eight other women taken off the flight, but she was the only one not strip-searched, because she is in her 60s with grey hair. Neither the women nor the airline crew were told why the women were being forced off the plane, and they were taken to ambulances where they were invasively examined by medical personnel to determine if they recently gave birth. Mills was returning to Australia from Italy, where she had been visiting with her daughter and new grandchild. It is illegal to have sex outside marriage in Qatar. Healthcare workers in Qatar are required by law to report any unmarried mothers, so many choose to give birth without any medical assistance. The passengers waited for 90 minutes on a bus on the tarmac at Sydney airport, then were driven to the terminal. One woman collected contact information to make a report to the Australian federal police. The following day, Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, said it was “a grossly, grossly disturbing, offensive, concerning set of events. It is not something that I have ever heard of occurring in my life, in any context. We have made our views very clear to Qatari authorities on this matter.” Qatar’s Communications Office issued a statement, “While the aim of the urgently decided search was to prevent the perpetrators of the horrible crime from escaping, the State of Qatar regrets any distress or infringement on the personal freedoms of any traveler caused by this action.” Qatar later announced they had identified the “Asian” parents of the baby girl (who had survived), and were trying to extradite the mother to face attempted murder charges carrying a 15 year sentence if she is extradited (no word of an attempt to extradite the father). Public prosecutors in Qatar announced that they had filed criminal charges against a number of employees working in the airport security department. The officers broke the law “by summoning female medical staff to conduct external examinations of some female passengers,” (the women reported that the exams were not “external”) and faced up to three years in prison if convicted, a statement said.

October 26, 2021 – President Biden nominated Jessica Rosenworcel as the first woman chair of the Federal Communications Commission. She was already the commission’s acting chair, and on the FCC panel since 2012. Rosenworcel is an author and advocate for net neutrality. Net neutrality was overturned under former Chairman Ajit Pai during the Trump administration. Her appointment as permanent chair was confirmed by the Senate on December 7, 2021.

October 26, 2022 – On the 40^th day after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died, after being detained by Iran’s morality police for being dressed inappropriately, security forces continued to clash with protesters. They shot teargas and opened fire on people in Saqqez City, injuring over 50 civilians, according to Hengaw, a Norway-based group monitoring rights violations Iran’s Kurdish district. Amini’s death ignited unexpectedly large protests across the country against the nation’s hijab laws. The government insists Amini had underlying health conditions, which her family adamantly denies. A group of students at Amirkabir University in Tehran chanted at police, “We are free women, you are the whores.” Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian dual national held in jail in Tehran for five years, spoke in London: “Today the regime is not only fighting to maintain its power, but for its survival … They survive in a system of repression. They have no limits to their brutality and oppression …” She added that the West had a responsibility to hold the Iranian state to account.

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October 27, 1561 – Mary Sidney Herbert born, Countess of Pembroke; English poet, playwright, patron, and translator, first Englishwoman with major reputation for her poetry; sister of Philip Sidney; noted for her play, Antonius, and her lyric translation of Psalms 44-150, completing work begun by her brother. Her ‘Wilton Circle,’ a literary salon at her home, Wilton House, was a gathering place for some of the day’s best poets and writers. She was also patron, supporting several promising poets early in their careers. Herbert had a chemistry laboratory, and developed invisible ink and medicines. She died of smallpox in 1621, at age 59.

October 27, 1744 – Mary Moser born, British painter, one of two women founding members of the Royal Academy; noted for flower paintings.

October 27, 1885 – Sigrid Hjertén born, major Swedish modernist painter. Encouraged by her future husband, Isaac Grünewald, she went to Paris, and she studied with Matisse (1909-1911). Her paintings were first exhibited in a group show in Stockholm in 1912. She and her family lived in Paris between 1920 and 1932, and made many excursions into the French countryside and to Italy for painting, but in the late 1920s, Hjertén began to experience the first symptoms of schizophrenia. She complained of loneliness when her husband was away, and feelings of abandonment. She was returning to Stockholm in 1932 when she collapsed, and was taken temporarily to the psychiatric hospital of Beckomberga. Over the next two years, she painted frenziedly, creating a painting a day, calling them the picture-book of her life. In 1934, she went with her family to southern Europe, continuing to paint. A joint exhibition with Grünewald stirred controversy, and many of the critics wrote scornful or deeply offensive reviews, some calling her work idiocy or horrors. But in 1936, she had a well-received solo exhibition at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts, and was honored as one of Sweden’s most original artists. Then Grünewald, who was frequently unfaithful, divorced her. Her illness escalated. By 1938, she was permanently hospitalized at Beckomberga, and painted very little. In 1948, she died after a botched lobotomy.

October 27, 1908 – Lee Krasner born, American abstract expressionist painter; though overshadowed by her husband, Jackson Pollack, she is one of only four women artists to have a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Manhattan.

‘Right Bird Left’ (1965) — by Lee Krasner

October 27, 1910 – Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau born, American chemical engineer; designer of the first commercial penicillin production plant; first woman member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

October 27, 1922 – Ruby Dee born, American actress, poet, playwright, and civil rights activist; she originated the role of Ruth in A Raisin in the Sun, both on stage and in the 1961 film; Grammy, Emmy, and Obie winner, and a National Medal of Arts, Kennedy Center Honors, and Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award recipient. Dee was a member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the NAACP, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Delta Sigma Theta sorority, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She was also an active member of the Harlem Writers Guild for over 40 years. In 1963, Dee emceed the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She gave the eulogy at Malcolm X’s funeral in 1965. In 1970, she won the Frederick Douglass Award from the New York Urban League. In 1999, Dee was arrested at 1 Police Plaza, headquarters of the New York Police Department, protesting the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. She died at age 91 in June 2014.

October 27, 1924 – Bonnie Lou born as Mary Joan Kath, American pioneer in television and rock-n-roll. One of the first singers to successfully crossover from a country music to rock’n’roll, from “yodeling sweetheart” to rockabilly star. She hosted a weekend country music radio show. She was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

October 27, 1925 – Monica Sims born, British radio producer for the BBC, a strong advocate for quality in children’s television as BBC television’s head of Children’s Programmes (1967-1979); Controller of BBC Radio 4 (1978-1983); in 1985, her report Women in BBC Management showed the number of women in top jobs was virtually the same as it had been a decade before: 6 women compared with 159 men. The report concluded with 19 recommendations, including appointing a women’s employment officer; more career guidance for both women and men; a review of the Appointments Board policy for senior posts; increasing the number of women attending Management Training Courses, and introduction of women-only courses as an experiment. She also recommended part-time work, job sharing, and other options for flexible working schedules.

October 27, 1931 – Gladys West born, African American mathematician. In 1956, West became a project manager for data-processing systems used in the analysis of satellite data at the Naval Proving Ground (now called the Naval Surface Warfare Center), the second black woman hired and one of only four black employees. She later worked on the mathematical modeling of the shape of the Earth, and the development of the satellite geodesy models that were eventually incorporated into the Global Positioning System (GPS). West was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018, and awarded the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on the satellite geodesy models.

October 27, 1931 – Nawal El Saadawi born, Egyptian feminist, physician, and author; founder and first president of the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association and co-founder of Arab Association for Human Rights; her 1972 book, Woman and Sex (المرأة والجنس), confronting aggression against women, including female circumcision, became a foundational text of second-wave feminism, especially in the Middle East and Africa. After Saadawi helped publish a feminist magazine in 1981 called Confrontation, she was imprisoned in September for her controversial and “dangerous” views, but released in November, after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

October 27, 1932 – Sylvia Plath born, American novelist, poet, and short story writer; known for The Bell Jar; she committed suicide at age 30, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry posthumously (1982) for The Collected Poems. Her other work includes Ariel, The Colossus, and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams.

October 27, 1932 – Dolores Moore born, played in the infield for the Grand Rapids Chicks (1953-1954); her team won the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Championship that year, the last season for the league.

October 27, 1940 – Maxine Hong Kingston born, Chinese-American author best known for The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, her autobiographical book about the Chinese-American woman’s experience, won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1976. Her book China Men won a National Book Award in 1981. She was honored with the 1998 John Dos Passos Prize, for body of work by an American author.

October 27, 1944 – J.A. Jance born as Judith Ann Jance, American mystery novelist and poet; noted for three series, which sometimes intersect: J.P. Beaumont; Joanna Brady; and Ali Reynolds. Jance used her initials for her pen name because a publisher told her disclosing her gender would be a liability for a book about a male detective.

October 27, 1950 – Fran Lebowitz born, American author and public speaker, known for her sardonic social commentary; her books include Metropolitan Life, Social Studies, and The Fran Lebowitiz Reader.

October 27, 1954 – Jan Duursema born, American comics artist who has worked for DC Comics, on Wonder Woman among other projects, and on publications for the Star Wars franchise.

October 27, 1955 – Deborah Bowen born American lawyer and Democratic politician; California Secretary of State (2007-2015); California State Senator (28th District 1998-2006); campaigned for a transparency bill to make all of California’s bill information available on the internet; as Secretary of State, she commissioned a top-to-bottom review of California’s electronic voting systems, which revealed numerous weaknesses, for which she was awarded the Profile in Courage Award by the JFK Presidential Library.

October 27, 1972 – Elissa, born as Elissar Zakaria Khoury to a Lebanese father and a Syrian mother; Lebanese recording artist, one of the most popular singers in the Arab world; outspoken advocate for women’s rights. After being diagnosed early with breast cancer, she campaigned for breast exams, breaking the taboo in the Middle East against talking about the disease, urging that early detection will save lives.

October 27, 1992 – Emily Hagins born, American filmmaker; made her first movie at age 12 in her hometown of Austin, Texas – a zombie movie called Pathogen. Her other work includes the movies My Sucky Teen Romance; The Retelling; Coin Heist; and the “First Kiss” episode of the V/H/S miniseries.

October 27, 2019 – British police investigated a crowdfunding page to raise £10,000 for a hitman to kill Gina Miller. Miller is a UK anti-Brexit activist, and author of Rise: Life Lessons in Speaking Out. She went to court in 2017 to challenge the government’s right to implement Brexit without parliament’s approval, and succeeded in maintaining the principle that parliament is sovereign. A GoFundMe spokesman said: “This campaign has been removed. We are sorry it got through our otherwise robust procedures. We are particularly sorry for any distress this caused Gina Miller.” The page was taken down before any donations were made. Miller has been a target of death and rape threats ever since she began leading the campaign to ensure parliament had approval of any Brexit plan. Miller responded with thanks to her supporters: “We need to heal our nation and my view is that the only way of doing that is to remember true British values of tolerance, decency, reason, civic duty, common-sense, and above all else honesty and kindness.”

October 27, 2020 – Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director declared women continue to be under-represented in key decision-making in the battle against COVID-19, and the situation is even “worse for women in conflict areas.” She discussed calls all over the world for inclusion and representation, “one of the main reasons why so many ordinary people are taking to the streets, organizing protests and raising their voices.” UN Secretary General António Guterres called again “for an immediate global ceasefire so that we could focus on our common enemy: the COVID-19 virus.” Guterres continued, “Women are on the front-line responding to the pandemic, keeping communities, economies, and societies running through their crucial work as care givers, nurses, teachers, and farmers, among other vital services. And they are peacebuilders at the local level and in communities around the world. We must also recognize women who step up every day in conflict zones to help those at risk, mediating between groups to enable access by civilians and humanitarian aid, building trust, and strengthening social bonds.”

**Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and António Guterres**

October 27, 2021 – Sexual harassment is a fact of life for women who run for office in Japan, where female participation in politics is among the lowest in the world. Despite the recent emergence of diversity and gender as topics of public debate – and signs that voters are more progressive than many of their representatives, women MPs comprise just 9.9% of Japan’s lower house. Mari Yasuda, contesting a seat in Hyogo prefecture for the Constitutional Democratic party of Japan, said she constantly received abusive messages on her social media accounts, “They accuse me of sleeping with powerful men to get ahead … I receive emails from men remarking on my appearance or asking me for a date … There are lots of areas of Japanese life in which women are underrepresented and feel unable to express themselves, but it’s particularly prevalent in politics.” Of 1,051 candidates running for office, only 186 are women. Despite a 2018 gender equality law encouraging parties to select similar numbers of male and female candidates, the number of women running is lower than in the 2017. Yoshiko Maeda, a councillor in western Tokyo since 2015, says sexism is not confined to social media. As a member of Japan’s Alliance of Feminist Representatives, Maeda says she received reports from female politicians across Japan who have been harassed by male colleagues, ranging from heckling during debates to sustained pressure on them to resign. “It is bullying, pure and simple,” she says.

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October 28, 1599 – Marie of the Incarnation born as Marie Guyart in Tours, France; founder of the Ursuline order in Canada, and the first school for girls in North America. She also wrote dictionaries and translations of the catechism in Montagnais, Algonquin, Huron, and Iroquois (none have survived to the present day), and left an extensive account of life in the French colony from 1639 until 1671 in her letters and other writings.

October 28, 1816 – Malwida von Meysenbug born, German writer noted for Memories of an Idealist, its first volume published anonymously in 1869. She broke with her family over her advocacy of the emancipation of women and approval of the German revolutions of 1848-1849, aimed at unifying Germany under a more democratic form of government. She lived first in a free community in Hamburg, then immigrated to England, making her living as a teacher and translator. She went to Italy in 1862 with a friend, remaining there due to poor health. In 1876, she invited Nietzche to Sorrento, where he began work on Human, All Too Human. In 1901 she was the first woman nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature after French historian Gabriel Monod submitted her name. In 1903, von Meysenbug died in Rome.

October 28, 1842 – Anna Dickinson born, orator, early champion of the rights of women and black Americans; an ardent abolitionist, she supported interracial marriage, attacked the double standard of morality, and was the first woman to speak before the U.S. Congress.

October 28, 1856 – Carolina Maria Benedicks-Bruce born, Swedish sculptor, founder with her husband of the artist’s estate Brucebo on Gotland, known for her work on preservation of buildings, women’s suffrage, and the Swedish Women’s Voluntary Defence Service.

October 28, 1867 – Sister Nivedita born as Margaret Noble, Irish teacher, author, social activist, and school founder. In 1895, she met Swami Vivekananda in London, then travelled to Calcutta (now Kolkata) India, where Swami Vivekananda gave her the name Nivedita (“dedicated to God”). She opened a school in the Bagbazar area of the city for girls who would otherwise receive no education. During an epidemic of plague in 1899, she nursed poor patients. She promoted Indian history and culture, and helped Indian scientist Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose get financial contributions and recognition for his work in plant science, and later pioneering work in radio and microwave optics. She was a prolific writer and lecturer, and a campaigner for Indian independence. When the British government initiated the partition of Bengal, she was one of the key organizers of the resistance, providing financial and logistical support, leveraged her contacts within the British agencies to forewarn the revolutionaries, and was an advocate for Indian women’s rights. Noted for her books Kali, the Mother; The Web of Indian Life; Cradle Tales of Hinduism; and Footfalls of Indian History.

October 28, 1897 – Edith Head born, American motion-picture costume designer, who won eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design, from The Heiress in 1949 to The Sting in 1973; created everything from Dorothy Lamour’s sarong to Audrey Hepburn’s stylish clothes for Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

October 28, 1905 – Tatyana van Aardenne-Ehrenfest born, Dutch mathematician; contributed to De Bruijn sequences, the discrepancy theorem, and the BEST theorem.

October 28, 1916 – Jessie Kesson born as Jessie Grant McDonald; Scottish novelist, playwright, and radio producer. Born in a workhouse because her mother was forced to turn to prostitution after her family disowned her. When Jessie was eight, she was taken from her mother and placed in an orphanage, where she received no further education and was sent into domestic service. She suffered a breakdown and spent a year in the Royal Cornhill Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Aberdeen. When she left the hospital, she went to live with an elderly woman in an isolated village near Loch Ness. While roaming the surrounding hills, in 1934 she met Johnnie Kesson, and after they married, they both worked on farms. She met naturalist writer Nan Shepherd and novelist-dramatist Neil Gunn, who both encouraged her to write, and she began writing radio plays for the BBC in Aberdeen. In 1947, Kesson moved to London, worked as a radio producer on Woman’s Hour, and wrote and produced over 100 radio plays. Her novels include The White Bird Passes; Glitter of Mica; and Another Time, Another Place. She died at age 77 in September 1994.

October 28, 1927 – Cleo Laine born as Clementine Bullock, daughter of a Jamaican father and an English mother, English jazz singer with a vocal range of over three octaves.

October 28, 1929 – Virginia P. Held born, American social-political and feminist philosopher, whose work centers on the ethics of caregiving and the roles of women in society.

October 28, 1938 – Anne Perry born as Juliet Hulme, English author of historical detective fiction, best known for her two series, Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, and William Monk. At age 15, she was convicted of participating in the murder of a friend’s mother, and served five years in prison, after which she changed her name.

October 28, 1939 – Jane Alexander born, American actress, and author; Tony Award winner, two-time Emmy winner, four-time Academy Award nominee, and Director of the National Endowment for the Arts (1993-1997).

October 28, 1940 – Susan Harris born, American television comedy writer and producer; she creating several television series, including Soap and The Golden Girls. Harris was honored with the Writers’ Guild’s Paddy Chayefsky Award in 2005, and inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2011.

October 28, 1942 – Gillian Lovegrove born, British computer scientist and academic; worked on object-oriented computing; advocate for gender balance in computer education and employment; with Wendy Hall, organized ‘Women into Computing’ conferences.

October 28, 1943 – Karlyn Patterson born, British psychologist; pioneering specialist in cognitive neuropsychology at the Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge and MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge; fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy.

October 28, 1946 – Sharon Thesen born, Canadian poet and academic; her 2000 poetry collection, A Pair of Scissors, won the Pat Lowther Award, presented by the League of Canadian Poets.

October 28, 1949 – President Truman swears in Eugenie Moore Anderson as U.S ambassador to Denmark, first American woman appointed as chief of mission at ambassador level.

October 28, 1950 – Sihem Bensedrine born, Tunisian journalist and human rights advocate; in 1980, she was a reporter for the independent journal Le Phare. When the journal stopped publication, she became a political chief at Maghreb, and then at Réalités. When Maghreb ceased publication in 1983, she oversaw the opposition newspaper El Mawkif. In 1998, she founded the Conseil National pour les Libertés en Tunisie (CNLT – National Council for Liberties in Tunisia), but in 1999, she faced numerous police and judicial actions, including confiscation and destruction of property and a personal libel campaign in which she was portrayed as a prostitute, because of her freedom of the press and human rights activities. In 2001, after denouncing torture, corruption, and lack of judicial independence during an interview with a foreign television station, she spent 45 days in Manouba women’s prison. Bensedrine was honored by OXFAM in 2005 with their Novib/PEN Award.

October 28, 1950 – Annette Humpe born, German singer-songwriter and record producer. Co-founder of the band Ideal (1980-1983) with Ernst Ulrich Deuker and Frank Jürgen Krüger. She wrote the group’s biggest hit song, “Blaue Augen.” When the band split up, Humpe became a record producer.

October 28, 1957 – Marian P. Bell born, British economist; Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Board (2002-2005); Royal Bank of Scotland (1982-1989 and 1991-2000); Governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (2014 to present).

NationalInstituteofEconomicandSocialResearch-UK-MarianBell.jpg — UK National Institute of Economic and Social Research

October 28, 1958 – Mary Roebling becomes the first woman director of a stock exchange (American Stock Exchange).

October 28, 1967 – Julia Roberts born, American actress and producer; won the 2001 Oscar for Best Actress for Erin Brockovich; co-founder and head of Red Om Films, which produced Eat Pray Love and several children’s movies; traveled to Haiti in 1995 as part of a UNICEF fundraising campaign, and was the voice of Mother Nature on a Conservation International 2014 short film to raise awareness of climate change.

October 28, 1971 – Caroline Dinenage born, British Conservative politician, Member of Parliament for Gosport since 2010. In 2014, she founded and was co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Maths and Numeracy after leading a debate on adult literacy and numeracy. She served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Family Support, Housing and Child Maintenance (2017-2018), where she launched an investigation leading to revisions in building rules to facilitate adding improved toilet facilities for the disabled, and more diaper changing places. As Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Women, Equalities and Early Years (2015-2017), Dinenage campaigned for more women on corporate boards. She promoted flexible working schedules, shared parental leave.

October 28, 1991 – Molly Ostertag born, American cartoonist, graphic novelist, and writer for children’s TV animation programs. Noted for The Girl from the Sea, the webcomic Strong Female Protagonist, and wrote scripts for the TV series The Owl House and ThunderCats Roar.

October 28, 2007 – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first woman elected as President of Argentina.

October 28, 2009 – Angela Merkel is sworn in for her second term as Chancellor of Germany.

October 28, 2019 – Sophie Wilmés becomes Belgium’s first woman prime minister in its 189-year history, succeeding Charles Michel, who became president of the European Council. The caretaker government she inherited was described as a ‘poisoned chalice,’ as linguistically divided parties were struggling to form a new government. Belgium had been under a caretaker government since December 2018. She resigned in 2022, and returned to Parlement.

October 28, 2020 – The American Mathematical Society announced Amanda Folsom was the 2021 Mary P. Dolciani Prize for Excellence in Research recipient. Folsom, a Professor of Mathematics at Amherst College, was awarded the prize for her outstanding record of research in analytic and algebraic number theory, with applications to combinatorics and Lie theory, for her work with undergraduate students, and for her service to the profession, including her work to promote success of women in mathematics.

October 28, 2021 – On the sidelines of the annual Security Council Open Debate, signatories for the Compact on Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action worked for increased cooperation from the highest levels of policymaking to the grassroots, to ensure full protection and participation for women and girls during conflict and crisis. 240 participants attended the event, which marked the 21^st anniversary of UN Security Council resolution 1325, a recognition of women’s vital role in international peace and security. It was hosted by the Permanent Missions of Sierra Leone, Norway, and Mexico to the UN, the African Union Permanent Observer Mission to the UN, the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), and UN Women. UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous urged the international community to sign onto the Compact and tackle mounting challenges to gender equality. “We can no longer wait to implement the women, peace and security agenda, and gender-responsive humanitarian action. Over the last 15 years, the number of protracted crises has more than doubled with over one billion people directly affected, 51 per cent of whom are women and girls,” she said.

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October 29, 1390 – The first Witchcraft trial in a secular court in Paris: Jeanne de Brigue was brought before the Parliament of Paris, accused of casting evil spells and consorting with demons. She and her friend Macette protested their innocence, but were both condemned, and burned alive at the stake in August 1391. The trial unleashed a wave of suspicion and hysteria, and many more deaths followed.

October 29, 1504 – Shin Saimdang born, Korean artist, writer, poet, and calligrapher; called Eojin Eomeoni (어진 어머니; “Wise Mother”), and honored as a model of Confucian ideals; pennames: Saim, Saimdang, Inimang and Imsajae; she was the oldest of five sisters in a family with no sons, so her maternal grandfather taught her as if she were his grandson, an education very rare for women in that time and place; her husband, Commander Yi Wonsu, appreciated her intelligence and education, which she passed on to their son, the Confucian scholar Yi I, who was also a revered politician and reformer, passing the Civil Service exam at the age of 13; Saimdang died suddenly of unknown cause at the age of 48. In 2009, she became the first woman to appear on a South Korean banknote, the 50,000 won.

October 29, 1808 – Caterina Scarpellini born, Italian astronomer and meteorologist. She discovered a comet on April 1, 1854; in 1856, she established a meteorological station in Rome; corresponding member of the Accademia dei Georgofili in Florence, and honored by the Italian government for her work in 1872.

October 29, 1812 – Louise Granberg born, Swedish playwright, theatre director, and translator, who often used the pseudonym Carl Blink. Known for her plays Johan Fredman, and Familjen Mohrin (The Mohrin Family). Her sister Jeanette was a rising playwright, but died at the age of 31. Louise later married Jeannette’s widower, actor Edvard Stjernström, who founded the Swedish Theatre (Stockholm). Louise was considered a very able director, and she ran the theatre after her husband’s death in 1877. Granberg died in 1907, at the age of 95.

October 29, 1837 – Harriet Powers born in slavery in rural Georgia, African-American quilter and folk artist; she was able to read and write and often used Bible stories as inspiration for her quilts. Her work is on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.

October 29, 1880 – Anzia Yezierska born in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), Jewish-American author and short story writer; her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was a child. After marrying in 1910, she had a daughter, but left with her child in 1914, moving to San Francisco. She was quickly overwhelmed trying to work and raise a child on her own, and gave her daughter up to her estranged husband. They were divorced in 1916, and she moved back to New York. She wrote about the struggles of Jewish and Puerto Rican immigrants living on New York’s Lower East Side, especially the problems of wives. At first, she was only able to get her short stories published in magazines, but her novel, Salome of the Tenements, published in 1923, led to her best-known book, Bread Givers, followed by Arrogant Beggar, and All I Could Never Be. During the Depression, she worked for the Federal Writers Project of the WPA, but then fell into obscurity until 1950, when her fictionalized biography, Red Ribbon on a White Horse, revived interest in her work. She was nearly 70 years old by then, and was losing her eyesight, but continued to write short stories and book reviews until her death in 1970 at the age of 90.

October 29, 1891 – Fanny Brice born, American comedian and comic singer.

October 29, 1899 – Kate Seredy born in Hungary, American children’s book author-illustrator and bookstore owner; winner of a 1938 Newbery Medal and 1971 Caldecott Honor; most of her books are written in English, her second language.

October 29, 1908 – Louise Bates Ames born, child psychologist, researched and stressed normal steps in development, wrote newspaper advice column in 1960s.

October 29, 1930 – Niki de Saint Phalle born, French sculptor and painter.

October 29, 1932 – Joyce Gould born, British Labour Party politician and pharmacist; member of Campaign Against Racial Discriminations (1965-1975), Secretary of the National Joint Committee of Working Women’s Organizations (1975-1985), and served in various capacities with a number of other commissions and organizations; in 1993, made a Life Peer, Baroness Gould of Potternewton, serving on House of Lords committees, involved with anti-racism, gender equity, and civil liberty issues in particular.

October 29, 1938 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf born, Liberian politician, President of Liberia (2006-2018), the first woman elected as a head of state in Africa. She was a co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize.

October 29, 1947 – Helen Lloyd Coonan born, Australian Liberal Party politician; Senator for New South Wales (1996-2011); the first woman in the Coalition Leadership Team as Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate (2006-2007); served as Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer (2001-2004) and Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (2004-2007).

October 29, 1952 – Marcia Fudge born, American Democratic politician; Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio’s 11^th District since 2008; Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (2013-2015); Mayor of Warrensville Heights (2000-2008).

October 29, 1966 – Mary Bucholtz born, American professor of linguistics at University of California, Santa Barbara, noted for work on sociocultural linguistics and for developing the tactics of intersubjectivity framework with Kira Hall; she is the co-author of Gender Articulated: language and the socially constructed self.

October 29-30, 1966 – First organizing conference held for the National Organization for Women; officers elected included Betty Friedan as the first president of NOW.

October 29, 1972 – Gabrielle Union born, African American actress, memoirist, and children’s author. She is known for playing Isis in the 2000 film Bring It On, and for leading roles in Deliver Us From Eva, and Think Like a Man. She was honored with an NAACP Image Award for playing the title role in Being Mary Jane, a BET TV drama series from 2013 to 2019. Union is an advocate for survivors of assault, the importance of therapy, and has spoken in favor of women’s right to abortion. She ran in the 2012 Global Race for the Cure in honor of her friend Kristen Martinez, who had died from breast cancer, and was a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer initiative. She supported Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and was appointed by him to the National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women. She was also part of the “Greater Together” initiative during his re-election campaign. Union published her memoirs, We’re Going to Need More Wine in 2017, and You Got Anything Stronger? in 2021. Her first children’s book, Welcome to the Party, appeared in 2020.

October 29, 1988 – During a nationwide so-called “national day of rescue” aimed at closing women’s healthcare clinics, 2,000 anti-abortion protesters were arrested for blocking access to clinics. While the protests were mostly non-violent, one protester was arrested when he tried to stop a police motorcycle from entering clinic property, while other demonstrators lay down to block clinic employees’ cars as they arrived for work. In the state of New York, the Operation Rescue anti-abortion group faced a $25,000 fine for blocking access to local clinics. The protests marked a continuation of the anti-abortion campaign that resulted in about 7,000 arrests across the U.S. since the campaign began during the Democratic National Convention in July. Pro-choice counter demonstrators in California chanted: “Not the church, not the state, women will decide their fate.”

October1988OperationRescuevsPro-ChoiceCounter-Demonstrators.jpg

October 29, 2019 – In the UK, over 70 women members of parliament from across the political divide signed an open letter condemning the media’s treatment of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, saying that the coverage displays “outdated, colonial overtones.” The letter, on House of Commons headed notepaper from the office of Labour’s Holly Lynch, was posted on the Halifax MP’s Twitter account and addressed to the Duchess of Sussex. “As women MPs of all political persuasions, we wanted to express our solidarity with you in taking a stand against the often distasteful and misleading nature of the stories printed in a number of our national newspapers concerning you, your character and your family . . . You have our assurances that we stand with you in solidarity on this. We will use the means at our disposal to ensure that our press accept your right to privacy and show respect, and that their stories reflect the truth.” The Duchess sued the Mail on Sunday for breach of privacy after it printed extracts of her private letter to her estranged father. Prince Harry issued legal proceedings against the owners of the Sun and the Daily Mirror over alleged phone hacking.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — MP Holly Lynch

October 29, 2020 – The UN Security Council marked the 20 year anniversary of the historic vote that recognized for the first time the unique impact that conflicts by force of arms have on women, and the critical role they play in conflict prevention and resolution. The council unanimously adopted resolution 1325 to set a new basis for women’s leadership, gender equality, justice and accountability in all aspects of peace. Since then, nine supporting resolutions have been passed, and over 80 countries have adopted national plans to translate these resolutions into action. Women’s organizations and activists around the world have worked to advance women’s representation, demanding women’s participation at peace tables, in reconstruction efforts, and in implementing post conflict agreements. Women have led peaceful democratic elections and war crimes prosecutions. They have served as peacekeepers and role models and been recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize. However, progress has also been maddeningly slow and met with backlash. As of 2019, peace agreements with gender equality provisions have increased from 14 to 22 per cent since 1995, but on average, women were only 13 per cent of negotiators, 6 per cent of mediators, and 6 per cent of signatories in major peace processes between 1992 and 2019. The Security Council was briefed by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director; Zarqa Yaftali, Afghan Activist and Executive Director of Women and Children Legal Research Foundation; Danai Gurira, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, and award-winning playwright and actor; and Nataliia Emelianova, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Adviser in the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei.

PhumzileMlambo-Ngcuka-ZarqaYaftali-DanaiGurira-NataliiaEmelianova.jpg — Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka — Zarqa Yaftali — Danai Gurira — Nataliia Emelianova

October 29, 2021– Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was charged with forcible touching, a misdemeanor crime, for allegedly groping his aide inside the Executive Mansion in 2020. The disgraced governor, forced to resign in August amid a flurry of sexual misconduct claims, was to appear in court on November 17, 2021, for arraignment on five separate charges, but the court date was pushed back to January 7, 2022. By January 31, all criminal charges against Cuomo had been dropped. Oswego County District Attorney Gregory Oakes said in a statement that his office has concluded that “there is not a sufficient legal basis” to criminally charge Cuomo.

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October 30, 1492 – Anne d’Alençon, Lady of La Guerche born, French noblewoman who became Marquise of Montferrat at age 16 when she married William IX, Marquis of Montferrat. She gave birth to three children, and acted as Regent of the Marquisate of Montferrat for her son, Boniface, from death of her husband in 1518 to Boniface’s unexpected death in 1530. She remained involved in the government of Montferrat after her brother-in-law, John George, became the new Marquis, and she had a major say in the betrothals of her daughters Maria and Margherita. On retiring from public life, Anne d’Alençon entered the convent of Dominican Sisters of Catherine of Siena which adjoined her palazzo in Casale Monferrato. She died in October 1562, shortly before her 70th birthday.

October 30, 1668 – Sophia Charlotte of Hanover born, the first Queen of Prussia, by marriage in 1684 to Frederick, Elector of Brandenburg, who became Frederick I of Prussia in 1701. In addition to German, she spoke French, Italian and English fluently, and surrounded herself with philosophers, theologians, and musicians; her influence helped bring about the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Arcangelo Corelli dedicated his Op.5 sonatas for solo violin to her. She died of pneumonia at age 36 in 1705.

October 30, 1728 – Mary W. Hayley born, a curious and independent child of a prosperous distiller, who loved to read, defied convention as she grew older by attending trials at the Old Bailey, London’s central criminal court, and traveling throughout Britain. She became an English businesswoman who parlayed an inheritance in 1753 from her much older first husband into a sizeable estate with her second husband, who had been the chief clerk of her first husband, by establishing trade relationships with the American colonies. Their firm shipped the tea which went overboard in the Boston Tea Party. When her second husband died, she ran the business on her own, and became one of the few British merchants who recouped her losses from America after the war. In 1784, she bought a frigate formerly used as a war ship, and refurbished it as a whaling and sealing vessel, which she rechristened the United States. She moved to Boston for the next eight years, running the whaling business and becoming known for her charitable donations. Returning from the venture’s inaugural voyage to the Falkland Islands with a cargo of whale oil, her ship was boarded by the British Navy in 1785, and the cargo was seized. But the British Crown was unable to prove that she owed duty because British merchants were exempt if a third of their crew were also British, so the Crown had to recompense her. In 1786, she married a Scottish merchant in Boston, but in 1792, she left him, returning to England with the stipulation that he never again appear in her presence. She retired to Bath, and died there in 1808.

October 30, 1741 – Angelica Kauffman born, Swiss-born Austrian Neoclassical painter who had a successful career in London and Rome; she and Mary Moser were the only two women among the founding members of the Royal Academy in London (1768); best remembered for historical scenes and portraits.

Angelica Kaufmann — self-portrait with bust of Athena

October 30, 1854 – Julie Rivé-King born, American pianist and composer; after a European concert tour, she debuted with the New York Philharmonic in 1875. She married her manager, Frank King, in 1876, and limited her public appearances to concentrate on composing and teaching music. Her husband persuaded her to publish his compositions under her name, and one of her publishers also used her name on his compositions, causing confusion, but most of her compositions are for the piano. Noted for “Gems of Scotland” and “March of the Goblins,” which have been confirmed as her work.

October 30, 1857 – Gertrude Horn Atherton born, American author of over 60 stories, novels, and articles, many set in her home state of California. Her story Black Oxen was made into a silent film. Her articles for magazines and newspapers featured feminism, politics, and war. Her first published work of fiction in 1882 was a serial, The Randolphs of Redwood: A Romance, in a San Francisco newspaper under the pen name ‘Asmodeus.’ When she told her family she was the author, she was ostracized, and left for New York, then London, before returning to California. Her first novel, What Dreams May Come, was published in 1888 under the pseudonym Frank Lin. She was a champion of the rights of authors as well as the rights of women.

October 30, 1864 – Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge born, pianist, endowed the first pension fund for Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1916), funded Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s Bureau of Educational Experiments, and established a foundation at the Library of Congress (1925) to provide for the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Auditorium.

October 30, 1877 – Irma Rombauer born, author of The Joy of Cooking, which is still in print in revised editions. Over 20 million copies have been sold.

October 30, 1877 – Luisa Spagnoli born, Italian chocolatier and fashion designer; co-founder, with Giovanni Buitoni, of the Perugina chocolate factory in 1877. In 1928, she was the first person to introduce angora yarn for knitwear, with the trademark l’Angora Spagnoli, at that year’s Fiera di Milano (Milano Fair), where she showcased shawls and other fashionable clothing. But the new company was run by her son, because she was diagnosed with cancer, and died in 1935.

October 30, 1881 – Elizabeth Madox Roberts born, American poet and author; best known for her novel, The Time of Man, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1926. Her poetry collection, Under the Tree, won the Fiske Prize.

October 30, 1886 – Zoë Akins born, American playwright, author, screenwriter, and poet; her book The Greeks Had a Word For It, inspired the 1953 hit movie How to Marry a Millionaire.

October 30, 1896 – Ruth Gordon born, actor and screenwriter. She made her Broadway debut in 1915 as one of the Lost Boys in a revival of Peter Pan. With her husband, Garson Kanin, she wrote screenplays for Hepburn and Tracy movies. Starred as Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker (1954), and memorably in the off-beat film Harold and Maude in 1971 when she was in her 70s. She died after a stroke at the age of 88 in 1985. She was posthumously nominated for a Saturn Best Supporting Actress Award for her performance in the film Maxie, which was released a month before she died.

October 30, 1917 – Minni Nurme born, Estonian author, poet, and translator; during WWII, she lived behind Soviet lines; after the war, she moved to Tallinn, Estonia’s capital. She wrote two novels, several collections of short stories, and eleven collections of poetry, in spite of harassment by Stalinist authorities.

October 30, 1923 – Gloria Oden born, American poet and academic, her poetry collection Resurrections, a nominee for the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was a response to the unsolved murders of her mother and sister.

October 30, 1932 – Reina Torres de Araúz born, Panamanian anthropologist and ethnographer; a tireless defender of Panama’s indigenous cultural heritage.

October 30, 1939 – Grace Slick born, American singer-songwriter with Jefferson Airplane. After retiring from the music business, she began painting, mainly animals at first, and then portraits of rock-n-roll musicians she knew. Her autobiography, Somebody to Love? A Rock and Roll Memoir, was published in 1998 — in it, Slick discusses her struggles with drugs and alcoholism.

October 30, 1944 – Anne Frank and her sister Margot are deported from Auschwitz to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

October 30, 1944 – Martha Graham’s ballet Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland, premieres at the Library of Congress.

October 30, 1946 – Andrea Mitchell born, American television journalist, anchor, and commentator.

October 30, 1955 – Heidi Heitkamp born, American politician; first woman elected U.S. Senator for North Dakota (2013-2019); Attorney General of North Dakota (1992-2000).

October 30, 1963 – Rebecca Ann Heineman born William S. Heineman, American video game programmer; founding member of Interplay Productions and Logicware, now CEO of Olde Skuul.

October 30, 1972 – Jessica Hynes born, English scriptwriter and actress; co-creator, writer and star of the British sitcom Spaced, for which she won a BAFTA award; creator of the series Up the Women; supporter of the Women’s Equality Party.

October 30, 1978 – Stephanie Izard born, considered one of America’s top chefs; co-owner and executive chef of three award-winning Chicago restaurants: Girl and the Goat, Little Goat, and Duck Duck Goat.

October 30, 2005 – Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks becomes the first woman to be laid in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the first woman to lie in state, because of her position as part of the US. government.)

October 30, 2019 – Human Rights Watch issued a report on the bride trafficking problem in China. The country’s one-child policy, in force from 1979 to 2015, and the widespread preference for a son rather than a daughter, created a huge gender imbalance. There are now over 3o million more Chinese men than Chinese women. The Chinese government ignored or denied the problem for many years, but the brutal business of selling women and girls from neighboring countries has grown too big to ignore. Human Rights Watch investigated bride trafficking in northern Myanmar, where women and girls, many from impoverished communities of ethnic or religious minorities, are tricked by brokers who promise them well-paid jobs across the border in China. But when they arrive in China, they are sold to Chinese families for between $3,000 and $13,000 USD. Once purchased they are prisoners, often pressured to produce babies as quickly as possible. Similar stories were documented by journalists and researchers in Cambodia, North Korea, Pakistan, and Vietnam. All of the affected countries have complicated relationships and deep power imbalances with China. In consequence, their own governments often show little concern about the fate of women and girls trafficked to China. Pakistani authorities have begun to pay attention to the problem, and the Chinese government seems to have worked with Pakistani authorities, helping them to identify and track down suspected traffickers on the Pakistani-Chinese border. The Ministry of Public Security, China’s national police, reported that in 2018 they rescued 1,100 Southeast Asian female trafficking victims, and arrested 1,322 suspects, including 262 foreigners. But the tight grip of the Chinese government on the media and the internet means much of the Chinese public are unaware of bride trafficking. Speaking critically of the government often results in police harassment and arrest. Combined with a continuing crackdown on women’s rights activists and civil society groups, it has become increasingly difficult for them to raise awareness and assist victims.

October 30, 2020 – Amidst huge protests across the country, hospitals in Poland began turning away women seeking abortions, even though the constitutional tribunal ruling which instituted a ban on abortions because of severe fetal defects had not yet taken effect. Legal abortions in Poland were already rare, and 97% of the 1,110 legal Polish abortions in 2019 were for severe fetal defects. The Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning received dozens of calls from distressed women, including from those turned away from clinics despite having pre-existing appointments on the grounds of fetal abnormalities. “Most are too distraught to even speak to me,” said the federation’s executive director, Krystyna Kacpura. “They start talking and break down in tears. These women need psychological help, their mental health is in very poor shape.” The FWFP appealed to the mayor of Warsaw to urge hospitals to reverse their polices, and a few hospitals in the city did extend availability until the date that the ban takes effect. The situation was exacerbated by rising cases of Covid-19 in Poland, which had already caused some abortion clinics to close. On October 28, the health ministry reported a record 21,629 new infections out of a population of 38 million people. In 2016, Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of PiS, the nation’s ruling party, stated the party’s grim goal: “We will strive to ensure that even in pregnancies which are very difficult, when a child is sure to die, strongly deformed, women end up giving birth so that the child can be baptised, buried and have a name.”

October 30, 2021 – Across Afghanistan, women continue to protest, asking for girl’s schools to reopen and for women’s right to work. “I want to go to school and become an independent woman who chooses and decides for her life,” 16-year-old Nasiba said. “If I am educated, men wouldn’t dare to interfere but if I am not, they will decide my whole life for me.” She lives in Kabul and has been unable to return to her secondary school since the Taliban took over Afghanistan on August 15, 2021. Her name and that of the others quoted here are pseudonyms. “If the Taliban have really changed, they should prove it by letting our daughters go to school and us to go work,” said Zainab, another young woman in Kabul who participated in one of the protests. Roya, 18, was supposed to graduate from high school in 2021 and prepare for the university entrance examination. “I always dreamed of being a lawyer and had been preparing to get into law school,” she said. “But now with the Taliban taking over I don’t think I have a future.”

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October 31, 1445 – Hedwig of Saxony born, Princess-Abbess of Quedlinburg (1458-1511). The chapter of the Quedlinburg Abbey elected 12-year-old Hedwig as successor to Princess-Abbess Anna I. Quedlinburg Abbey was a house of secular canonesses, and ruled the principality of Quedlinburg, a self-governing Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire with the right to vote in the Imperial Diet. Pope Calixtus III confirmed the election, but decreed that the Princess-Abbess should reign under the guardianship of her father and the canonesses of Quedlinburg until the age of 20. In 1460, the city of Quedlinburg had joined the Hanseatic League, attempting to gain independence from her and become a free imperial city. Gebhard von Hoym, Bishop of Halberstadt, aided the rebellion. The Bishop invaded the abbey-principality and tried to evict Hedwig. But as princess-abbess, Hedwig was subject only to the Pope and the Emperor; she forced the Bishop to renounce his claim with the help of her brothers, Elector Ernest and Duke Albert III of Saxony. Hedwig subdued the rebels, then forced the town to leave the Hanseatic League, strengthening her authority. In 1465, she was invested with regalia by her maternal uncle, Emperor Frederick III, and started governing the abbey-principality on her own. Hedwig died in the abbey at age 65 in June 1511.

October 31, 1542 – Henriette de La Marck of Cleves born, French courtier who became suo jure (in her own right) Countess of Rethel in 1654 after her brother James died without an heir. Henriette was left with enormous debts from her late father and brothers, but managed her lands so well, she discharged their debts. Her later profits were so great that she became one of the chief creditors of France’s unstable state during the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). She was lady-in-waiting to Catherine de’ Medici, Queen consort of France, until her marriage at age 22 in 1565 to Louis I of Gonzaga-Nevers, which made her Princess of Mantua. She bore four children, and died in 1601 at age 58.

October 31, 1711 – Laura Bassi born, Italian philosopher, physicist, and academic; received a doctoral degree from the University of Bologna in 1732, the second degree recorded as given to a woman by a university (Elena Cornaro Pisopia was the first, in 1678); also the first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university in Europe, and recognized as the first woman in the world to become a university chair in a scientific field of studies. Bassi was one of the first women to lecture in public, but initially, the university restricted her to one lecture per year, so she conducted private lessons, and performed experiments at home. Gradually, she came to attend most of the events which the University opened to the public, at the Palazzo Pubblico, attended by major political and religious figures as well as university faculty and students. These public appearances enabled her to petition for pay increases, which she used to buy her advanced equipment. She conducted experiments with electricity with her husband, which attracted other talented scientific minds to Bologna, and helped spread the study of Newtonian mechanics throughout Italy. She was most interested in Newtonian physics and in Franklinian electricity, fields of study that were not part of the regular curriculum. In her lifetime, she wrote 28 papers, the majority of these on physics and hydraulics, although she did not publish any books, and only four of her papers were published. She also carried on an extensive correspondence with many outstanding scientists of her day in France and England. When the chair of the experimental physics department died suddenly, she was appointed to replace him, serving for the two years until her death. Bassi made invaluable contributions to the field of science while also helping to spread the field of Newtonianism through Italy.

October 31, 1849 – Marie Louise Andrews born, American journalist, short story writer, and poet; editor at the Indianapolis Herald; co-founder of the Western Association of Writers (1885).

October 31, 1851 – Louise of Sweden born. Her brother Carl died at age three, leaving her the only surviving child of King Charles XV of Sweden. She was not eligible for the crown, so her uncle, who had several sons, became heir to the throne. She was doted on by her parents, and received a better-than-average education, which included swimming lessons from Nancy Edberg, a pioneer in swimming for women, which helped make swimming more acceptable for women. Her father arranged for her to meet Crown Prince Frederick of Denmark to see if she liked him. It would be a politically desirable marriage, but he didn’t want her to marry someone she disliked. She agreed to the marriage, and began learning Danish, as well as the customs, culture, and history of Denmark. They were married in 1869, and she became Crown Princess of Denmark (1869-1906), and later Queen Consort (1906-1912). She was popular with the people of Denmark, but life at court was very difficult because of her domineering mother-in-law, who didn’t approve of Louise’s frank and less formal nature, or even her choice of clothes. Her husband’s infidelity distressed her, and also hurt his public image. She found solace in religion, studied Greek and the Bible, as well as founding several charitable organizations. When she became Queen in 1906, she expanded her charity projects and her interest in art and literature, was dutifully correct on ceremonial occasions, but didn’t enjoy them, and spent much time with her children. She became the last widow of a Danish monarch to use the title Queen Dowager, and died at age 74 in 1926 at Egelund Castle.

October 31, 1860 – Juliette Gordon Low born, founder and first president of the Girl Scouts U.S.A.

October 31, 1874 – Mary Swartz Rose born, scientist and educator; earned her Ph.D. in 1909 from Yale in physiological chemistry.

October 31, 1876 – Natalie Clifford Barney born, American playwright, novelist, and poet; lived openly as a lesbian in Paris for 60 years; formed a “Women’s Academy” (L’Académie des Femmes), a feminist and pacifist, and advocate for free love; her weekly Salon brought together expat writers and artists, with their French counterparts, from modernists to members of the French Academy.

October 31, 1880 – Julia Mood Peterkin born in South Carolina, American author, won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her novel Scarlet Sister Mary; her books included depictions of the lives of the Gullah people of the Low Country; Scarlet Sister Mary was banned by the Gaffney library in South Carolina, but The Gaffney Ledger published the complete book in serial form.

October 31, 1883 – Marie Laurencin born, French Cubist painter and printmaker associated with La Section d’Or, a Cubist-Orphist collective of artists, poets, and critics, named for the Salon de la Section d’Or, the most important public showing of Cubist work before WWI, in 1912 in Paris.

October 31, 1896 – Ethel Waters born, African American singer and actress, recorded over 250 sides after debut (1921), unsurpassed vocalist and stylist with perfect pitch. As an actress, known for her performance in Member of the Wedding, both on Broadway, and in the 1952 film version.

October 31, 1902 – Julia Lee born, African-American blues singer-songwriter; noted the sexual innuendo in her “songs my mother taught me not to sing,” such as “Snatch and Grab It” which sold over 500,000 copies.

October 31, 1908 – Muriel Duckworth born, Canadian pacifist, feminist, and community activist who maintained that war is a major obstacle to social justice, because of the violence it inflicts on women and children, and the money spent on armaments which perpetuates poverty while reinforcing the power of the elite; founding member of Nova Scotia Voice of Women for Peace, the regional branch of Voice of Women; she was president of VOW (1967-1971) and led protests against the Canadian government’s quiet support for the U.S.-led Vietnam War. She was the first woman in Halifax to run for a seat in the Nova Scotia legislature, but did not win. She led community campaigns for better housing, education, social assistance, and municipal planning. In 1991, she was honored with the Pearson Medal of Peace.

October 31, 1915 – Jane Jarvis born, American jazz pianist, composer, and corporate vice president at Muzak (1962?-1978). In the 1960s, she played the ballpark organ for the Mets. She left corporate work to return to playing jazz piano, and has over 300 compositions to her credit with ASCAP. She lived to be 94 years old.

October 31, 1918 – Nina McCall, a 19-year-old impoverished American woman in Michigan, fell victim to the “American Plan” – the 1918 Chamberlain-Kahn Act, a federal law passed in July, 1918, to combat the spread of venereal disease among U.S. draftees during WWI, which gave the government the power to quarantine any woman suspected of having a sexually transmitted disease (STD). A medical examination was required, and if it revealed an STD, this discovery could constitute proof of prostitution. The American Plan, under the assumption that female prostitutes were the sole source of venereal disease, authorized the military to arrest any woman within five miles of a military camps or training base. If found infected, or otherwise judged to be a public health threat, a woman could be sentenced, often without trial, to a hospital, a “farm colony,” or just put in jail, until “cured.” At the time, there was no cure, just dangerous experimental treatments with poisons like mercury and arsenic. It is estimated that at least 30,000 U.S. women were detained and examined. Hundreds of incarcerated women rioted, fought back against their oppressors, or burned their detention facilities to the ground; they jumped out of windows or leapt from moving trains, or scaled barbed-wire fences in order to escape. Nina McCall sued her captors. In his 2018 book The Trials of Nina McCall, Scott W. Stern describes the American Plan, a decades-long government-sponsored campaign. In some places, vestiges of the plan lingered into the 1960s and 1970s, and the laws that undergirded it remain on the books to this day.

October 31, 1922 – Barbara Bel Geddes born, American stage, screen, and television actress. She was also an artist, and a children’s author. In 1955, she was the original Maggie in the first Broadway production of the Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Also noted the films I Remember Mama and Vertigo. But most audiences now remember her as “Miss Ellie” Ewing Farlow in the TV series Dallas (1978-1984 and 1985-1990). She retired from acting in 1990, and spent her time painting, developing a successful line of greeting cards, and writing two children’s books, I Like to Be Me and So Do I. A long-time heavy smoker, Bel Geddes died of lung cancer in 2005.

October 31, 1941 – Sally Kirkland born, American stage, screen, and television actress, painter, and acting teacher; Sandra Bullock, Barbra Streisand, and Liza Minnelli have studied with her. Kirkland was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for the 1987 film Anna, and did win the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for the role. In 2005, she was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by La Femme International Film Festival.

October 31, 1949 – Allison Wolf born, British economist and author; the Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London; Director of the International Centre for University Policy Research, King’s Policy Institute; and Director of the university’s MSc programme in Public Sector Policy and Management; Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth, and The XX Factor.

October 31, 1950 – Dame Zaha Hadid born in Iraq, British-Iraqi architect, described as the “Queen of the curve” for her fluid design style. Her major projects include the London Aquatics Centre for the 2012 Olympics, the Broad Art Museum in the US, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, and the Guangzhou Opera House in China. In 2004, Hadid was the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Also honored with the UK’s most prestigious architectural award, the Stirling Prize, in 2010 and 2011. In February 2016, she was the first woman awarded the Royal Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects. She died age 65 in March, 2016, of a heart attack, while being treated for bronchitis in a Miami, Florida hospital.

October 31, 1950 – Jane Pauley born, American television journalist and anchor of CBS Sunday Morning since 2016; Dateline co-anchor (1992-2003); Today show co-host (1976-1989).

October 31, 1955 – Susan Orlean born, American journalist; since 1992, staff writer for The New Yorker; author of The Orchid Thief. She also published The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, and My Kind of Place, collections of her stories that had previously appeared in magazines.

October 31, 1956 – Annie Finch born, central figure in contemporary American poetry, author of over eighteen books, including poetry, literary essays, and criticism, as well as editing several anthologies. Finch’s mother, Margaret Rockwell Finch, was also a poet.

October 31, 1962 – Anna Geifman born, American historian and author; focused on political extremism, terrorism, and the history of the Russian revolutionary movements; Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917 and Entangled in Terror: The Azef Affair and the Russian Revolution.

October 31, 1980 – Alondra de la Parra born in New York City, Mexican American conductor. Her family moved to Mexico City when she was three, where she studied piano, cello, and composition. She returned to New York at age 19 to study piano and conducting at the Manhattan School of Music, and served as an apprentice conductor with the New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra. In 2003, she founded the Mexican-American Orchestra for a concert of Mexican music at the Mexico Now Festival. In 2004, the orchestra was renamed the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA), and toured in Mexico. She was appointed as an official Cultural Ambassador of Mexico. The orchestra disbanded in 2011 because of financial difficulties. De la Parra became artistic director of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco (2012-2013), then Music Director of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra (2017-2019), the first woman principal conductor of a major Australian symphony orchestra.

October 31, 1984 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi assassinated by two Sikh security guards. Riots broke out in New Delhi and other cities and nearly 10,000 Sikhs were killed.

October 31, 1996 – The South African National Assembly passes the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act, which allows women, including minors, to terminate pregnancies on request within the first 12 weeks, and under specified circumstances from the 13^th week to through the 20^th week, and under very limited circumstances beyond that point.

October 31, 2019 – The draft of the new constitution for Sudan sets a minimum 40% quota for women in the future Transitional Legislative Council. The news comes just days after Sudan’s sovereign council appointed Nemat Abdullah Mohamed Khair as the nation’s first woman chief justice. Khair is the first woman chief justice in the Arab world, and the fifth in Africa. Sudanese citizens have largely embraced the appointment and see it as a major step forward for Sudanese women, reflecting women’s leading role in the protests that toppled President Omar al-Bashir. Four women were appointed to cabinet positions in the new government, including the country’s first woman minister of foreign affairs, Asma Mohamed Abdalla.

Asma Mohamed Abdalla and Nemat Abdullah Khair

October 31, 2020 – In New Zealand, the Green Party accepted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s offer of a stake in governing, through a “cooperation agreement” which gives the Greens two ministries, and a framework for working together on some shared policy priorities. Ardern’s Labour party won an outright majority which entitled the party to govern alone, but Ardern said the agreement allows the government to benefit from the expertise of Green Party members on the environment, climate change, and child wellbeing. James Shaw, Green Party co-leader with Marama Davidson, will continue as Climate Change Minister and Associate Environment Minister. Marama Davidson, a survivor of sexual assault, will take on the new position of Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence. In 2015 she was thrown out of parliament for revealing she was the victim of sexual violence as a child, and has since become an activist for victims of abuse. A member of the Maori community, she is also an advocate for indigenous rights. “We showed in the last government we can work well with the Green party,” Ardern said. “On environmental and wellbeing issues there is much we agree on that is good for New Zealand and I want to draw on our shared goals and expertise to keep moving forward with that work.”

October 31, 2021 –Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was mobbed by supporters as she arrived in Glasgow on the opening day of the United Nations COP26 climate summit. Thunberg arrived by train from London, where she participated in a protest urging banks to stop funding fossil-fuel extraction. Thousands of activists gathered in Glasgow to demand that leaders step up their nations’ commitments to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Thunberg described the UN climate change summit as a “two-week long celebration of business as usual and blah, blah, blah” to “maintain business as usual” and “create loopholes to benefit themselves.” COP26 President Alok Sharma urged the 196 world leaders and 20,000 delegates attending the conference to “leave the ghosts of the past behind” and “focus on the future and unite around this one issue we know that matters for all of us, which is protecting our precious planet.”