WOW2 - Part B: Late October's Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History -2017

Welcome to WOW2 — PART B !!

WOW2 has been a monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women, but is now a twice-monthly blog, splitting the month in half. These are the women and events from October 17 to October 31.

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

Incredibly, this is my third year of work on WOW2, and every week I’m still discovering more stories of outstanding women. I hope you will find reclaiming our past as much of an inspiration as I do.   

This Week in the War on Women 

just posted, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines: www.dailykos.com/...

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Late October’s Women Trailblazers and Events in OUR History

• October 17, 1720–Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini born, Italian composer, harpsichordist and singer; she often performed in gatherings where her more famous sister, Maria Gaetana Agnesi lectured

• October 17, 1864–Elinor Glyn born, provocative English author, screenwriter, and producer-director; her novels It and Three Weeks were scandalous at the time; she wrote screenplays for Hollywood silent films for Gloria Swanson and Clara Bow – Glyn gave Bow her ‘It Girl’ title; briefly had her own production company in Britain, Elinor Glyn Ltd, but it failed, and she went back to writing novels

• October 17, 1868–Sophia Hayden Bennett born, American architect, first woman to receive an architecture degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, designed the Woman’s Building at the World Columbian  Exposition in 1893

• October 17, 1917 -  Adele Stimmel Chase born, American painter, sculptor and ceramicist; noted for faience figures and ceramic tiles

• October 17, 1936–Sathima Bea Benjaminborn, South African singer-songwriter, received the Order of Ikhamanga Silver Award from South African president Thabo Mbeki for her “excellent contribution as a jazz artist” and “contribution to the struggle against apartheid.”

• October 17, 1943–Vilma Socorro Martinez born, lawyer, first female U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, civil rights crusader, one of first women on the board of Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF)

• October 17, 1956 – Mae Jamison born, American physician, academic and astronaut

• October 18, 1587–Lady Mary Wroth born, English Renaissance poet, one of the first women to achieve an enduring reputation in literature; wrote Urania, first known/surviving prose romance written by an English woman, the sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, and Love’s Victory, a pastoral closet drama (reader’s theatre piece for private performance)

• October 18, 1775 - Poet Phillis Wheatley, a black slave in Boston, is freed upon the death of her master John Wheatley

• October 18, 1874 - Christine Murrell born, English medical doctor, first woman member of the British Medical Association’s Central Council; woman suffragist, chair of WWI Women’s Emergency Corps; president of Medical Women’s Federation (1926-1928)

• October 18, 1889–Fannie Hurst born, author, wrote 17 novels and 9 volumes of short stories over 50 years, including Imitation of Life, left approximately one million dollars each to Brandeis and Washington Universities for professorships in creative literature

• October c.18, 1890  –Pauline Newman born, labor leader who emigrated from Lithuania (1901), aided uprising of the 20,000 in New York; hailed by Coalition of Labor Union Women as a foremother of the women’s liberation movement; strategist in 1909 when 40,000 NYC women factory workers went on strike, first woman organizer for the ILGWU

• October 18, 1897 - Isabel Briggs-Myers born, American author and co-creator with her mother, Katherine Cook Briggs, of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a Jung-based psychological questionnaire to determine a person’s dominant perception function – sensation, intuition, feeling or thinking – and their decision-making process, designed to evaluate “normal” populations

• October 18, 1898–Lotte Lenya born, singer and actress, interpreted and promoted Kurt Weill’s music, especially The Threepenny Opera; left Germany in 1933, was part of the Group Theatre in New York, made recordings for Voice of America during WWII

• October 18, 1900 - Evelyn Berckman born, American author of detective fiction, Gothic horror novels and non-fiction British naval history, who began writing after semi-paralysis ended her career as a pianist; The Beckoning Dream, The Heir of Starvelings, and Creators and Destroyers of the English Navy

• October 18, 1900- Sarah Bavly born in the Netherlands, Israeli nutritionist and author; chief dietitian for Hadassah hospitals and head of Hadassah’s school lunch program; Tzunatenu (Our Nutrition) was a standard elementary-school textbook for decades

• October 18, 1917–Mamie Clarkborn, psychologist, co-founder with husband her Kenneth of Northside Center for Child Development, for treatment of the whole child

• October 18, 1920–Melina Mercouriborn, award-winning Greek actress and singer; activist against the Greek military junta which overthrew the government in 1967 –  the junta revoked her Greek citizenship; politician, a founding member of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), a centre-left political party; elected in 1977 as the MP for Piraeus B; Greek Minister of Culture (1981-1989)

• October 18, 1921–Beatrice Worsley born (in Mexico), Canadian, first woman to earn a Ph.D. in what is now called computer science, from Cambridge (Alan Turing was one of her advisors); female computer scientist in Canada; wrote the first program to run on EDSAC, and co-wrote the first compiler for Toronto’s Ferranti Mark 1

• October 18, 1923–Jessie Mae Hemphill born, American country blues singer-songwriter

• October 18, 1929 –Persons Day in Canada–celebrates the success of the “Famous Five” who led the fight to establish that a “person” means a woman as well as a men in Canadian law.  The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overrules the Supreme Court of Canada in Edwards v. Canada when it declares that women are considered “Persons” under Canadian law, establishing both the citizenship rights of Canadian women, and the “living tree doctrine,” that a constitution is organic and must be read in a broad and liberal manner so as to adapt it to changing times. The Lord Chancellor, Viscount Sankey, wrote that “…exclusion of women from all public offices is a relic of days more barbarous than ours,” and that “to those who ask why the word should include females, the obvious answer is why should it not.” Canadians who have enhanced women’s lives are honored by the Governor General's Awards in Commemoration of the Persons Case

• October 18, 1929 – Violeta Chamorro born, Nicaraguan publisher and politician, first woman elected as President of Nicaragua (1990-1997)

• October 18, 1947–Laura Nyro born, singer-songwriter, feminist and pacifist, melded R&B, pop, doo-wop, jazz and Broadway

• October 18, 1951–Terry McMillan born, author of 13 novels including Waiting to Exhale

• October 18, 1956 –Martina Navratilova born, tennis champion, 9-time Wimbledon singles winner

• October 19, 1850–Annie Smith Peck born, American mountaineer, teacher, linguist, feminist, author and lecturer; first woman to attend the American School of Classical Studies at Athens; taught archaeology and Latin at Purdue University and Smith College; her tunic and trousers worn with boots when she climbed the Matterhorn in 1895 caused a serious hullaballoo in the press, and prompted public debate on what a woman can and should do; first woman to climb Huascarán in Peru (22,204 feet/6768 meters) when she was 57 years old, then climbed Coropuna (20,922 feet/6.377 meters) in 1911, planting a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit; she continued to climb mountains until she was 82 years old

• October 19, 1868 - Bertha Knight Landes born, president of Washington State chapter of the League of Women Voters; Seattle city councilwoman 1922-1924; first female mayor of a major American city, Seattle, 1926-1928; her mayoral campaign motto was “municipal housekeeping,” and during her tenure as mayor, she tightened the budget, raised standards, and pushed hard to clean up city hall, bold reforms in a time of widespread corruption in Seattle

• October 19, 1879 - Emma Bell Miles born, American writer, poet, and artist; she published The Spirit of the Mountains in 1905, which contained stories, travel narratives, entries from her journals, and cultural analysis of Southern Appalachia; the section of her book on Appalachian music first appeared as an article in Harper’s Monthly in 1904, probably the first mention of Appalachian music in a popular magazine; several of her journals have also appeared in print

• October 19, 1909 - Marguerite Pereyborn, French physicist; as a student, mentored by Marie Curie; she discovered the element francium; in 1962, she became the first woman elected to the French Académie des Sciences, an honor denied to her mentor

• October 19, 1983 - Cara Santa Mariaborn, American science writer, producer, television host and podcaster; science correspondent for the Huffington Post

• October 20, 1740–When Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI dies on October 20, 1740, his daughter, Maria Theresa, ascends the throne of Austria. Her father was the sole surviving male member of the House of Habsburg, so he issued an edict, dubbed the Pragmatic Sanction, in April 1713, to ensure that the Habsburg hereditary possessions could be inherited by a daughter, but France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refuse to honor the Pragmatic Sanction and the War of the Austrian Succession begins, which lasts 8 years

• October 20, 1740–Isabelle de Charrière born, Dutch author and poet, known as Belle van Zuylen in the Netherlands, known mostly letters she wrote about the era’s society and politics; but she also penned pamphlets, plays and music; corresponded with writers like James Boswell and Benjamin Constant; she publishes her first novel, Le Noble, a satire against the nobility, anonymously at age 43, but her identity is soon discovered, and her parents withdraw the work from sale

• October 20, 1832–Ellen Hardin Walworth born, author, lawyer, historic preservationist,  early advocate for the establishment of the United States National Archives. one of the first women in New York State to hold a position on a local board of education, a role she used to bolster the call for women's suffrage

• October 20, 1862–Maud Nathan born, social worker, activist and suffragist, cousin to poet Emma Lazarus and Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo

• October 20, 1873–Nellie McClung born, Canadian politician and activist, Liberal member of Legislative Assembly of Alberta (1921-26), one of Canada’s ‘Famous Five’ in the Persons’ Case

• October 20, 1904 - Enolia Pettigen McMillan born, African American high school teacher and principal, civil rights activist and community leader; President of Maryland’s State Colored Teachers’ Association; first female chair of Morgan State University Board of Regents; first woman president of the NAACP (1984-1990)

• October 20, 1927 -  Joyce Brothers born, American psychologist, author, television personality; columnist for Good Housekeeping magazine for almost 40 years

• October 20, 1937 - Emma Tennant born, British postmodern novelist; The French Dancer’s Bastard

• October 20, 1942– Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard born, German developmental biologist; co-winner of 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work on identifying genes involved in embryonic development

• October 20, 1946 - Elfriede Jelinek born, controversial Austrian playwright, novelist and feminist; 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature; her novel, The Piano Teacher, inspired the 2001 film

• October 20, 1957- Hilda Solis born, American politician; California State Assemblywoman, and first Hispanic woman to serve in the State Senate; Congresswoman (2001-2009 D-CA); U.S. Secretary of Labor (2009-2013); currently serving on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors; her parents are immigrants from Nicaragua and Mexico

• October 20, 1961 - Kate Mosse born, English novelist and non-fiction author; her novel, Labyrinth, has been translated into 37 languages

• October 21, 1854–Florence Nightingaleembarks for the Crimean War with 38 nurses she has trained, as well as 15 Catholic nuns. They arrive at Scutari in November to find an overworked medical staff, poor hygiene, and no equipment to prepare food for the wounded

• October 21 1911 - Mary Robinson Blair born, American artist and children’s author who drew concepts for the Walt Disney animated films of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South and Cinderella; also worked on designs for attractions at Disneyland

• October 21, 1928 -  Eudóxia Froehlich born, Brazilian zoologist, noted for her work on land planarians (flatworms) and arachnids

• October 21, 1929–Ursula K. Le Guin born, author, known for ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy —The Left Hand of Darkness, TheEarthsea series,The Dispossessed, andThe Lathe of Heaven; became Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grandmaster in 2003

• October 21, 1933- Maureen Duffyborn, English author, poet, and playwright of Rites, and its sequel, Washouse; activist for Gay and Animal rights

• October 21, 1940–Frances FitzGerald born, journalist and author, won a Pulitzer Prize for her book Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam

• October 21, 1945– French women vote in parliamentary elections for the first time

• October 21, 1959 - Rose McDowall born, Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

• October 22, 1834 –Abigail Scott Duniway born, Pacific NW suffrage leader, helped win the vote for women in Oregon (1912), wrote Path Breaking

• October 22, 1919 –Doris Lessing born, British novelist, poet, playwright, 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature; The Grass Is Singing, The Golden Notebook

• October 22, 1925–Edith Kawelohea McKinzie born, Hawaiian genealogist, author, and hula expert

• October 22, 1929 – Dory Previn born, American singer-songwriter and guitarist

• October 22, 1931 - Ann Rule born, American true crime author

• October 22, 1943 –Catherine Deneuve born, French International film star; 1993 Oscar for Best Actress for Indochine; UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Safeguarding of Film Heritage (1994-2003), also involved with Children of Africa, Voix de femmes pour la démocratie (Voice of women for democracy), and Amnesty International

• October 22, 1952–Julie Dash, American film producer-director-writer, her 1991 feature film, Daughters of the Dust, is the first full-length film directed by an African-American woman to be in general theatrical release in the U.S.

• October 23, 1850 – First U.S. National Women's Rights Convention begins in Worcester, MA;over 1,000 women and men attend; there are delegates from 11 states, including one who travels all the way from California, which had just become a state on September 9, 1850

• October 23, 1865–Neltje Blanchan born, American scientific historian and nature writer; she published eleven books, many on wildflowers and birds, noted for combining scientific facts with poetic expression; a devoted supporter of American Red Cross, she was serving as a Red Cross commissioner in China when she died suddenly at age 52

• October 23,1897–Marjorie Flack born, American illustrator-author of children’s books; The Story of Ping and Angus Lost

• October 23, 1889 –Frieda Fromm-Reichmann born, major pioneer using therapeutic relationships in treating mental illness at Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland

• October 23, 1894–Emma Williams Vyssotsky born, American astronomer at the McCormick Observatory of the University of Virginia; specialty in motion of stars and kinematics of the Milky Way; recipient of Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy, for distinguished contributions to astronomy

• October 23, 1906 –Miriam Gideon born, composer of approximately 70 works including “The Hound of Heaven” (1945), developed more atonal pieces for voice and instruments after beginning with a more conservative tonal style
• October 23, 1906 –Gertrude Ederle born, first woman to swim the English Channel (1926)

• October 23, 1910–Blanche Stuart Scott becomes first American woman pilot to make a public flight for a crowd

• October 23, 1911–Martha Rountree born, creator and first moderator (1945-54) of television show Meet the Press, pioneering unrehearsed panel discussion television

• October 23, 1915–Women's Suffrage: In New York City on the 65th anniversary of the Worcester Convention, 30,000–33,000 women march on Fifth Avenue for their right to vote

• October 23, 1935–JacSue Kehoe born, American neuroscientist-researcher; noted for discovering that a single neurotransmitter can have multiple types of receptors

• October 23, 1940–Ellie Greenwich born, American singer-songwriter and record producer; wrote or co-wrote hits like “Be My Baby”“Da Wa Diddy Diddy”“Leader of the Pack” and “River Deep – Mountain High”

• October 23, 1942–Anita Roddickborn, British businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner; founder of The Body Shop, a pioneer in ethical consumerism and fair trade with developing countries

• October 23, 1945–Maggi Hambling born, British contemporary painter and sculptor, whose public works projects have stirred a great degree of controversy

• October 24, 1788–Sarah Josepha Hale born, American author and poet; “Mary Had a Little Lamb”

• October 24, 1830 –Belva Lockwoodborn, attorney, first woman admitted to practice law before Supreme Court (1879), runs for U.S. President (1884 and 1888) for the Equal Rights Party

• 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; first Western woman to enter the forbidden city of Llasa, disguised as a beggar; her writings influenced ‘beat’ writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and 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 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; moved to London to work as a ‘Lady Factory Inspector’ (1908-1921); retired, became a Christian Scientist, moved to America, and wrote seven books of poetry

• 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, worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and other leaders in civil rights struggles

• October 24, 1901 –Annie Edson Taylor, desiring to secure her later years financially and avoid the poorhouse, on her 63^rd birthday becomes the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel – the custom-made barrel, with a mattress inside for padding, was tested the previous day, going over the falls with a cat inside, who survived, bloodied and spitting mad

• October 24, 1915 –Letitia Woods Brown born, pioneer in researching and teaching African-American history, completed 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, 1923–Denise Levertov born, British-American poet, her anti-Vietnam war poems include themes of destruction by greed, racism, and sexism in the 1970s; her later poetry reflects her conversion to Catholicism

• October 24, 1975—‘Women’s Day Off’: 90% of Icelandic women take part in a national women’s strike, refusing to work in protest of gaps in gender equality; the country grinds to a halt, not only because the women are missing from work, but also because husbands are forced to stay home, taking over childcare

• October 25, 1783–Deborah Sampson receives an honorable discharge from the Continental army after serving one and a half years disguised as her deceased brother, Robert Shurtlieff Sampson, and performing self-surgery to remove a musket ball from her thigh to keep the secret of her gender

• 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, 1875–Carolyn Sherwin Bailey born, American children’s author; books include Boys and Girls of Colonial Days, and Miss Hickory, which won the 1947 Newbery Medal

• 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, 1892–Margaret Ingels born, American mechanical engineer; first female 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, 1894 –Marjorie Phillips born, artist, embraced techniques of Van Gogh and Cezanne, introduced modern art to the Phillips Gallery as associate director of her husband’s Washington D.C. museum

• October 25, 1912–Minnie Pearl, born as Sarah Coley, American comedian who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry from 1940 to 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, 1923–Beate Sirota Gordon born in Austria; her family emigrates to Japan in 1929 — her father is a professor at the Imperial Academy of Music; she comes in 1939 to California as a student at Mills College — cut off from her family during WWII. In 1940 she’s one of only 65 Caucasians fluent in Japanese in the U.S.; works for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the FCC; becomes a U.S. citizen in 1945. In December, 1945, Gordon is the first civilian American woman to arrive in Japan, working for the Political Affairs staff; reunites with her parents, who survived the war in an internment camp. Works for the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) as a translator – in addition to Japanese, fluent in English, German, French, and Russian – and works on the civil rights section of the new constitution for Japan, drafting language on legal equality for Japanese women; one of only two women involved in this work – the other is economist Eleanor Hadley. After the war, becomes a career counselor for Japanese students in New York City, including Yoko Ono, and then 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 wins the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for Literature

• 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, 1894–Florence Nagel born, British racehorse and Irish wolfhound trainer-breeder and feminist; in 1920, when she trained her first racehorse, women were forced to employ a man to hold a Jockey Club trainers license on their behalf because women were excluded by the Jockey Club, but 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, 1900–Karin Boye born, Swedish poet and novelist; noted for her dystopian sci-fi novel Kallocain

• October 26, 1902–Beryl Markham born, British-Kenyon aviator, horse trainer and breeder, and writer; first woman to fly solo east-to-west across the Atlantic; memoir, West with the Night

• October 26,1902 –Henrietta Hill Swope born, American astronomer; studied variable stars, and measured the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid stars

• 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 if 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, 1947–Hillary Rodham Clinton born, U.S. Secretary of State (2009-13), Senator from New York (2001-09), former First Lady (1993-2001), first woman U.S. presidential candidate for a major party, won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College

• October 26, 1945–Nancy Davis Griffeth born, American computer scientist and academic; modeling biological systems in computational biology

• October 26, 1977–Marisha Pessl born, American novelist; Special Topics in Calamity Physics

• October  27, 1561–Mary Sidney born, English writer, patroness and translator, one of the few Englishwomen prior to the 19th century whose work achieved a major reputation; sister of Philip Sidney

• October 27,1744–Mary Moser born, British painter, one of two female founding members of the Royal Academy

• October 27,1765–Nancy Storace born, English operatic soprano, the role of Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro was written for and first performed by her

• October 27,1868–Janet Scudder born, sculptor

• October 27, 1908–Lee Krasner born,  American abstract expressionist painter; although overshadowed by her husband, Jackson Pollack, she is one of only four women artists to have a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art

• 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; the first to portray the character of Ruth in A Raisin in the Sun, both on stage and in the 1961 film; Grammy, Emmy, and Obie winner

• 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 (المرأةوالجنس), which confronted aggression against women, including female circumcision, became a foundational text of second-wave feminism, especially in the Middle East and Africa; imprisoned for her controversial and “dangerous” views in 1981, but was released a month after Anwar Sadat’s assassination

• October 27, 1932–Sylvia Plath born, American author and poet; The Bell Jar; won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously (1982)

• 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, 1939–Suzy Covey born, scholar and musician who examined the intersections of comics, technology, and sound, working with computers in the early days of the internet

• October 27, 1940–Maxine Hong Kingston born, award-winning author of The Woman Warrior:  Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, an autobiography of the Chinese-American female experience

• October 27, 1944–J.A. Jance born, American mystery novelist and poet; she writes three series, which sometimes intersect

• October 27, 1950–Fran Lebowitz born, American author and public speaker, known for her sardonic social commentary

• 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, politician; California Secretary of State (2007-2015); California State Senator (D-28th District 1998-2006); campaigned for a transparency bill which makes all of California’s bill information available on the internet; as Secretary of State, 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 28, 1842 –Anna Dickinson born, orator, early champion of the rights of women and blacks, supported interracial marriage, attacked the double standard of morality, first woman to speak before the US Congress

• October 28, 1856–Anna Klumpke born, American portrait and genre painter, known for her portraits of famous women, author of a biography of painter Rosa Bonheur

• 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, 1897–Edith Headborn, American motion-picture costume designer, won 8 Best Costume Design Oscars, from The Heiress (1949) to The Sting  (1973); created everything from Dorothy Lamour’s sarong to Audrey Hepburn’s stylish clothes for Breakfast at Tiffany’s

• 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 over 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

• October 28,1939– Jane Alexander born, Tony Award winner, Two-time Emmy winner, Four-time Academy Award nominee, Director of the National Endowment for the Arts (1993-97)

• October 28,1940–Susan S. Harris born, American television writer-producer for comedy series

• 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 28,1949– 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; honored by OXFAM in 2005 with their Novib/PEN Award

• 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)

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

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

• October 29, 1390 –Witch trials in a secular court in Paris – three people are killed – two of them women, burned for ‘afliction [sic] of illness, manipulation of affections’ and diabolism

• October 29, 1504–Shin Saimdang born, Korean artist, writer, poet and calligrapher; called Eojin Eomeoni (어진어머니; "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 L, 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, 1711 - Laura Bassi born, Italian philosopher, physicist and academic; received the second recorded doctoral degree awarded to a woman by a university, the University of Bologna in 1732, (Elena Cornaro Pisopia was the first, in 1678); first woman to earn a professorship in physics at a university in Europe; also recognized as first woman university chair in a scientific field of studies. Initially, the university restricted her to one lecture per year, so she conducted private lessons, and performed experiments at home; called upon to attend most of the events the University opened to the public, so petitioned for pay increases, which she used to buy her advanced equipment. When the experimental physics department chair died suddenly, she’s 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 Newtonianism in Italy

• October 29,1808–Caterina Scarpellini born, Italian astronomer and meteorologist; discovered a comet 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, 1837–Harriet Powers born, African-American quilter and folk artist; her quilts are on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA

• 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–Natalie Sleeth born, American religious music composer and organist; noted for choral anthem, “Joy in the Morning”

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

• October 29,1932–Joyce Gould born, British Labour Party politician and pharmacist; Secretary of the National Joint Committee of Working Women’s Organizations (1975-1985); in 1993, made a Life Peer, Baroness Gould of Potternewton, serving on House of Lords committees related to anti-racism, gender equity and civil liberty issues

• October 29, 1938–Ellen Johnson Sirleaf born, Liberian politician, 24th and current President of Liberia, first elected female head of state in Africa, awarded 2011 Nobel Peace Prize

• October 29, 1947 – Helen Coonan born, Liberal Member of the Australian Senate representing New South Wales (1996-2011), now retired; a trustee of the Sydney Opera House Trust

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

• October 30, 1741–Angelica Kauffmann born, Swiss-born Austrian painter

• October 30, 1857–Gertrude Horn Atherton born, author of over 60 stories and articles

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

• October 30, 1877–Irma Rombauer born, author of The Joy of Cooking

• October 30, 1881–Elizabeth Madox Roberts born, American poet and author; The Time of Man

• October 30, 1886–Zoë Akins born, American playwright, author, screenwriter  and poet; Déclassée, The Greeks Had a Word For It

• October 30, 1896–Ruth Gordon born, actor, screenwriter. one of the Lost Boys in “Peter Pan,” with Garson Kanin wrote comedies for Hepburn and Tracy movies, starred as Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker (1954), and in Harold and Maude

• October 30, 1917 – Minni Nrume born, Estonian writer and poet

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

• October 30, 1939 – Grace Slick born, American singer-songwriter (Jefferson Airplane) “White Rabbit”

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

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

• October 30, 1955 – Heidi Heitkamp born, American politician, U.S. Senator (D-ND 2013- ), first woman elected to the U.S. senate from North Dakota

• 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, 2005– Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks is the first woman to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda

• October 31, 1849–Marie Louis 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, 1860–Juliette Low born, founder and first president of the Girl Scouts U.S.A.

• 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 free love advocate; her weekly Salon brought together expat writers and artists, with their French counterparts, from modernists to members of the French Academy

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

• October 31, 1880–Julia Mood Peterkin born in south Carolina, American author, won the 1929 Pulitzer rize 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 painter and printmaker, a member of the Cubists

• October 31, 1896 –Ethel Waters born, African American singer/actor, recorded more than 250 sides after debut (1921), unsurpassed vocalist and stylist with perfect pitch

• October 31, 1896–Lutah Riggs born, architect of both country estates and modest homes, advocate of preserving historic buildings

• October 31, 1902 - Julia Lee born, American blues singer-songwriter

• October 31, 1906 –Louise Talma born, composer, first American woman to receive the Sibelius Medal, taught music theory and musicianship at Hunter College for 51 years

• October 31, 1908 – Muriel Duckworth born, Canadian pacifist, feminist, and social activist; founding member of Nova Scotia branch of the Voice of Women for Peace, (VOW); ran for the Nova Scotia legislature, but not elected; member of  the Raging Grannies, a group that composed and performed satirical songs promoting social justice; honored with the 1981Governor General's Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case, and the Order of Canada in 1983

• October 31, 1915 – Jane Jarvis born, American pianist and composer

• October 31, 1949 – Allison Wolf born, British economist and author; Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London

• October 31, 1950 – Jane Pauley born, American television journalist, Today show co-host (1976-1989), Dateline co-anchor (1992-2003)

• October 31, 1955 – Susan Orlean born, American journalist; staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992; author of The Orchid Thief

• October 31, 1956 –Annie Finch (1956 – )born on Halloween, which had an noticeable impact on her work; central figure in contemporary American poetry, has published over eighteen books, which include her own poetry, literary essays, and criticism, as well as several anthologies which she edited. Her mother was the poet Margaret Rockwell Finch. For fifteen months, beginning at the age of six, she lived in Europe and the Middle East, which she says affected her sense of language as incantation.