WOW2: Mid-February's Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History

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

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• February 12, 1554 –A year after claiming the throne of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey is beheaded for treason.

• February 12, 1831 –Myra Colby Bradwell born, pioneering woman in law; editor, publisher and suffragist-political activist, founder of the Chicago Legal News. The widely circulated paper published information about court opinions, laws, and court ordinances, but its reporters also criticized corruption within the local bar and judiciary, and urged railroad regulation. Bradwell was determined to improve women's status in society, so the paper included a column entitled "Law Relating to Women." After studying law in her husband’s law office, she was denied admission to the Illinois bar because she was a woman, and as a married woman she was not legally allowed to enter into contracts. Her case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justice's decision was 8-1 in favor of the state of Illinois. Still, Bradwell persisted, working tirelessly to change laws that discriminated against women. She was finally granted a state license to practice law in 1890, and then the right to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892, but died before she had a case to bring before them, at age 63, in 1894.  

• February 12,1855–Fannie Barrier Williams born, African American educator and women’s rights advocate; in 1870, she became the first African American to graduate from Brockport Normal School (now College at Brockport, State University of New York). She taught black students in Hannibal, Missouri, then freed men and women in the Washington DC area, and encountered a level of racism in both cities which growing up in New York State had not prepared her to deal with. She had to overcome significant difficulties when she enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Washington DC to study portrait painting, and again when she tried to study music at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. After she married, she and her husband moved to Chicago, where she was the director of theart and music department of the Prudence Crandall Study Club, and became involved local politics and social reform efforts. In 1893, she helped to found the National League of Colored Women, and was one of the earliest members of the NAACP. In 1894, she was the first black woman nominated to the Chicago Women’s Club, but wasn’t inducted until 1896, because of opposition and threats made against her and her supporters. In 1905, she was involved in the establishment of the Frederick Douglass Center, a settlement house. She was one of the few black women in the Illinois Women’s Alliance, and lectured frequently on the need for all women, but especially black women, to have the vote. Williams was the only African American to eulogize Susan B. Anthony at the 1907 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention.

• February 12, 1870 –Women in the Utah Territory gain the right to vote.

• February 12, 1881 –Anna Pavlova born, Russian prima ballerina, principal artist of Imperial Russian Ballet, and of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

• February 12, 1884 –Alice Roosevelt Longworth born, American writer, eldest child of Theodore Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Lee, who died two days after her birth. She was fiercely independent, a non-conformist who smoked in public, rode unchaperoned in cars with men, stayed out late, placed bets with bookies, and kept a pet snake; noted for her autobiography, Crowded Hours, and her sharp wit.

• February 12, 1884 –Marie Vassilieff born, Russian Empire painter who moved to Paris and became part of the Montparnasse artistic community.

• February 12, 1891–Hanna Rydh born, Swedish archaeologist and politician for the Liberal People's Party. She served as a Member of Parliament in the Riksdag (1943-1944) and as the third President of the International Alliance of Women (1946-1952). She and her husband conducted archaeological excavations at Adelsö (1916-1930) and at Gästrikland (1917-1921). Rydh was given a research grant in 1922 from the International Federation of University Women. When asked if she should be given the scholarship, as she had just become a mother, she famously replied: "my son's birth makes no difference." She was attaché temporaire at the Musée des Antiquités Nationales in St Germain-en-Laye (1924-1925). Rydh published articles in a number of popular scientific journals, and was regarded as an example of the successful “New Woman” who had both an internationally respected career and was a married woman with a family.

• February 12, 1909– The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded. Charter members include Ida Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Anna Garlin Spencer, and Mary White Ovington. The NAACP is now the oldest and largest grassroots-based civil rights organization in the U.S.

• February 12, 1914–Johanna von Caemmerer Neumann born in Germany, British mathematician noted for her work on group theory. She was an outstanding student at the University of Berlin, and became a part-time assistant in the Mathematical Institute’s library. She met Bernhard Neumann in 1933. When the Nazis came to power that year, Neumann, who was Jewish left Germany and moved to Cambridge, England. She visited him there, and they became secretly engaged, but she returned to Germany to continue her studies. She lost her job in the library after she joined a group of students who tried to prevent Nazis disruption of lectures by Jewish academics, but was able to complete her undergraduate degree by 1936, with distinctions in mathematics and physics, and began working toward her PhD at the University of Göttingen in 1937. She and Bernard corresponded anonymously through friends, but were only able to meet once, in Denmark while he was attending the 1936 International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo. In 1938, she left Germany, and married Bernhard in Cardiff. The couple moved to Oxford in 1940, where she completed her Doctor of Philosophy in group theory at the Society of Home Students, Oxford. She became a British citizen, and took a teaching position at the University of Hull in 1946, then was a lecturer at the MathematicsDepartment of Manchester College of Science and Technology in 1958. In 1963, she and her husband took academic positions at the Australian National University in Canberra. She became chair of mathematics in 1964, and dean of students (1968-1969). In 1969, she became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. She died from a cerebral aneurysm at age 57 while on a lecture tour in Canada in 1971.

• February 12, 1915–Olivia Hooker born; after her application to join the U.S. Navy’s WAVES was rejected because she was black, she became the first African American woman to join the Coast Guard, becoming a SPAR, the Coast Guard’s Women’s Reserve during WWII (1945-1946), and a Yeoman, Second Class; after the war, she earned her degree as a psychologist, and was an associate professor at Fordham University, and a founding member of the American Psychological Association’s Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Division.

• February 12, 1926–Joan Mitchell born, abstract expressionist painter, known for very large canvasses, often with animals. She was also a poet, and her poetry included nature and animal subjects. Mitchell was one of a handful of women painters who gained critical acclaim and international recognition in the post-WWII era. She died in Paris of lung cancer at age 67 in 1992. In 1993, the Joan Mitchell Foundation was established, which awards grants and stipends to painters, sculptors and artist collectives, and sponsors an artist-in-residence program.

• February 12, 1934–Annette Crosbie born, Scottish actress, best known in the U.S. for her performance as Catherine of Aragon in the BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and in supporting roles in the films Calendar Girls and Into the Woods. She is a campaigner for greyhound welfare, and since 2003, has been a President of the League Against Cruel Sports, which opposes blood sports such as hunting with hounds and animal fighting.

• February 12, 1934–Anne Krueger born, American economist, former World Bank Chief Economist, 1st deputy managing director of  International Monetary Fund, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

• February 12, 1938 – Judy Blume born, award-winning American author of primarily Young Adult books; Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

• February 12, 1948 –Nancy Leftenant-Colon becomes the first black woman accepted in the regular U.S. Army nursing corps.

• February 12, 1953–Joanna Kerns born, American actress and director; best known for her role as Maggie Seaver on the TV series Growing Pains (1985-1992). After the series ended, she turned more to directing episodes of television series, made-for-TV movies and short films. She is a member of the Democratic Party, and supported the presidential campaigns of John Kerry in 2004, and Hillary Clinton in 2008. She is also a breast cancer survivor.

• February 12, 1961–Di Farmer born, Australian Labor politician; Deputy Speaker of the Queensland Legislative Assembly (2015-2018); Minister for Child Safety (2017-2018); Member of the Queensland Parliament for Bulimba (2015 to present, previously 2009-2012).

• February 12,1980 –Christina Ricci born, American actress and producer. She made her acting debut at age 10 in Mermaids, and appeared in the 1991 motion picture version of The Addams Family. She made the transition from child characters to teen roles in The Ice Storm, and then transitioned into adult roles, often playing offbeat characters. She was a producer on The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015) and Z: The Beginning of Everything (2017). Ricci is the national spokesperson for RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network).

• February 12,1983 –Two hundred women protest in Lahore, Pakistan, against the proposed Law of Evidence of military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, which declares that the testimony of two women in a lawsuit is equal to the testimony of one man; the women, carrying only petitions to the Lahore High Court, are tear-gassed, baton-charged and thrown into jail. In 2006, the women are successful in getting the Women’s Protection Bill passed. It repeals the Law of Evidence and the infamous Hudood Ordinance (which brought back stoning, lashing and amputation as punishments, and made adultery and fornication criminal offences, with no distinction between rape and consensual sex, so rape victims could be tried for fornication or adultery).

• February 12, 1990 –Carmen Lawrence becomes Premier of Western Australia, the first woman premier of an Australian state.

• February 12, 2018 – The deputy head of Oxfam resigned as the British charity faced an uproar over reports that some of its workers sexually exploited survivors of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. Similar allegations also have surfaced in Chad, and a former senior staffer said she reported concerns about “a culture of sexual abuse” but was ignored. U.K. aid minister Penny Mordaunt met with leaders of Oxfam to demand full disclosure. A day earlier, she threatened to stop government funding of Oxfam. She reportedly told Oxfam’s chief executive, Mark Goldring, that the organization would have to show “moral leadership” to address the scandal and rebuild public trust. Haitian President Jovenel Moise called the scandal a “serious violation of human dignity.”

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• February 13, 1457 –Mary of Burgundy born, Sovereign Duchess regnant of Burgundy, who inherited the Duchy of Burgundy upon the death of her father, and ruled over many of its territories (parts of modern-day France and southern Belgium) from 1477 to her death in 1482. She was compelled to sign the ‘Great Privilege’ in 1477, which restored most of the local communal rights abolished by previous dukes of Burgundy, and obligated her not to declare war, make peace, or raise taxes without first gaining the consent of the provinces and towns, and to only employ native residents in official posts. This smoothed out affairs in the region, French aggression was temporarily checked, and internal peace was in large measure restored. When she married Archduke Maximillian of Austria later that year, he became her co-ruler. In 1508, he would become Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, which would cause contention between France and the Habsburgs, but Mary had already died in 1482, several weeks after she was thrown from her horse during a hunt, suffering internal injuries and a broken back.

• February 13, 1608 – Bess of Hardwick, also known as Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, dies, leaving her carefully inventoried household furnishings to her heirs to be preserved in perpetuity. The 400-year-old collection, now known as the Hardwick Hall textiles, is the largest collection of tapestry, embroidery, canvaswork, and other textiles to have been preserved by a single private family. Bess was also notable for her building projects, the most famous of which are Chatsworth, now the seat of the Dukes of Devonshire (who are descended from the children of her second marriage), and Hardwick Hall, which was famous in her day for its many large windows, glass being very expensive then. Her birthdate was not recorded, but she was born around 1527, and married – and widowed four times. Her first husband, Robert Barley, died only a year after their marriage, at the age of 14. Her marital claims were disputed, but after a court battle lasting several years, she was awarded his estate and fortune. In 1547, she became the third wife of widower Sir William Cavendish, and became Lady Cavendish. They lived at Chatsworth in Derbyshire. During the ten years of their marriage, she bore eight children to her much older husband, but two died in infancy. Bess claimed the sum of his property, insisting that his land be settled on their children. In 1559, she married Sir William St. Loe, Captain of the Guard to Queen Elizabeth I, and Chief Butler of England. He was able to use his influence to reduce the debt owed by her previous husband which had fallen on her at his death, and then paid off the balance in full on her behalf. When he died without male issue in 1564 or ’65, he left his considerable estate entirely to Bess, which made her one of the wealthiest women in England, with an annual income estimated to be £60,000. She was also a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth I, and now in her late 30s, but still in good health and looks. She was courted by a number of important suitors, but took her time in choosing her fourth husband, George Talbot, 6th Earl of Shrewsbury, whom she married in 1568.  Two of his children from his first marriage were wed in a double ceremony to two of Bess’ children that same year. She and Shrewsbury were entrusted by Elizabeth I with the custody of Mary, the abdicated Queen of Scots, who was moved around between their many houses in the Midlands, and Bess often spent time working on embroidery and textile projects with Mary, which became part of the historical collection at Harwick Hall. Bess and Shrewsbury became estranged, and separated, so Sir Amias Paulet became Mary’s new keeper in 1585. Bess outlived husband number four, who died in 1590, and she lived to the age of 81. Queen Elizabeth II is one of her descendants, through her grandmother Cecilia Cavendish-Bentinck.

• February 13, 1879 –Sarojini Naidu born, Indian author-poet/activist-politician, first woman to be President of the Indian National Congress, first woman to be Governor of Uttar Pradesh.

• February 13, 1881 – Eleanor Farjeon born, English author, poet and biographer; noted for lyrics to the hymn “Morning Has Broken” and the Martin Pippin series for children.

• February 13, 1889 –Leontine Sagan born, Austrian-Hungarian film director and theatre producer; her family moved to South Africa when she was ten, but she worked in Germany in the 1920s as an actress, but first became notable for her film directing debut, the 1931 film, Mädchen in Uniform, which featured an all-woman cast, and a ground-breaking portrayal of lesbianism. The production was also one of the earliest films to use co-operative and profit-sharing financing. After its success, she moved to England, where she directed Men of Tomorrow, and worked in Alexander Korda’s film studio. Later she was a theatre producer in Manchester, then became the first woman producer at London’s Drury Lane, producing a series of Ivor Novello musicals in the West End. In the 1940s, she returned to South Africa, and co-founded the National Theatre in Johannesburg.

• February 13, 1891 – Kate Roberts born, one of the foremost Welsh-language authors, and a leading Welsh Nationalist; with her husband founded and ran the Welsh-language weekly Y Faner(The Banner - from 1935 to 1956).

• February 13, 1906 –Pauline Frederick born, pioneering American woman  television news correspondent; she also worked in newspapers and radio, and was the first woman reporter to broadcast from China. She was on a team that covered the Nuremberg Trials, but Frederick was often relegated to “women’s interest” stories. In 1948, she finally got her opportunity when she was the only reporter available to cover a breaking story at the United Nations. Later in 1948, she was selected to cover the first televised political convention, an experience that gained her instant credibility. In 1949, after years of struggle, Pauline Frederick became the “first women ever to work full-time for a U.S. television Network,” ABC. Also in 1949, she premiered a weekday news program entitled “Pauline Frederick Reports”, and ABC promoted her as the only female commentator broadcasting on-air. She worked for ABC until 1953, when NBC hired her to cover the United Nations, which she did for the next 21 years, and it made her a familiar face and name on American television. Anchorman Chet Huntley commented about her reporting, “She is our dependable right arm in sorting out the legalities, the propaganda, the nationalistic sensitivities and the international nuances which frequent the UN.” But when she retired from NBC in 1975, she was earning not only much less than her male counterparts, but was being paid close to the salaries of other women who had only been in broadcast news for a year. She worked for National Public Radio until 1980, when she retired from the airwaves, but gave lectures on the United Nations until her death at age 82 in 1990.

• February 13, 1911 –Jean Muir born, American actress, first victim of Hollywood blacklisting. She debuted on Broadway in 1930, then was signed by Warner Brothers in 1933, and made 14 films for the studio before returning to Broadway in 1937. She appeared in a few films after that, and had been considered for the role of Melanie in Gone With the Wind, but displeased the studio executives because of her involvement in the formation of the Screen Actors Guild, her questioning of the way the film business operated, and her resistance to posing for publicity photos. In 1950, Muir was named as a Communist sympathizer in the notorious Red Channels pamphlet, and was immediately removed from her role in the television series The Aldrich Family, in spite of thousands of phone calls protesting the decision, and only a few calls complaining about her appearance on the show, because General Foods, the primary sponsor of the program, threatened to pull their ads if she stayed. Muir was the first performer to be deprived of employment because of the Red Channels pamphlet. The ‘sympathizer’ label was apparently based on her six-month membership in the Congress of American Women, a women’s rights organization founded in 1946 by Elinor Gimbel, widow of a member of the department store family, following a feminist conference in Paris. The CAW became affiliated with the Women’s International Democratic Federation, which had the stated goal of working for women’s rights, but was widely believed to be a pro-Soviet communist front organization, and later did support the East German communist regime. Muir began teaching drama and directing plays at community theatres in New York, then moved to Missouri in 1968 to be the Master Acting Teacher at Stephens College, until she reached the college’s mandatory retirement age.

• February 13, 1916–Dorothy Bliss born, American carcinologist (study of crustaceans), Curator of Invertebrates (1967-1980) at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and editor-in-chief of the 10 volume series The Biology of Crustacea. Bliss was a pioneer in the study of hormonal control in crustaceans, and was president of the American Society of Zoologists.

• February 13, 1919–Evelyn Freeman Roberts born, Black American bandleader, songwriter, arranger and composer; co-founder with her husband Tommy Roberts of the Young Saints Scholarships Foundation, which provided training in the arts in South Central Los Angeles. They were honored in 1993 by the NAACP with a Community Service Award. Freeman also ran her own nightclub, The Upstairs, on the Sunset Strip. She died at the age of 98 in 2017.

• February 13, 1920–Eileen Farrell born, American operatic soprano, at the Metropolitan Opera (1960-1966).

• February 13, 1926–Fay Ajzenberg-Seloveborn in Germany to a Jewish family; American nuclear physicist. She and her family fled the Nazis in 1940, via a torturous route through the Iberian Peninsula to the Caribbean before reaching the U.S. in 1941. She was known for experimental work on nuclear spectroscopy of light elements, and her reviews of the energy levels of light atomic nuclei; recipient of the 2007 National Medal of Science.

• February 13, 1932–Susan Oliver born as Charlotte Gercke, American actress mostly in theatre and television, television director and aviator. She was one of the original 19 women admitted to the American Film Institute’s  Directing Workshop for Women.  In 1977, she wrote and directed her AFI-DWW short film, Cowboysan, and then began directing episodes of several network television series, including M*A*S*H, Magnum PI, and Murder She Wrote. She was also an accomplished pilot, and was the fourth woman to fly a single-engine plane solo across the Atlantic Ocean. In 1968, she was offered a chance by Learjet to earn a type rating in one of their jets, and added that rating to her commercial pilot certificate in single- and multi-engine land airplanes. In 1970, Oliver was the co-pilot of the victorious Piper Comanche in the 2760-mile transcontinental race for women pilots, dubbed the “Powder Puff Derby.” In 1972, she got a glider rating. Oliver died of cancer at age 58 in 1990.

• February 13,1943–Elaine Pagels born, biblical scholar, author, Princeton professor of religion, known for work on Nag Hammadi manuscripts, won a National Book Award for The Ghostic Gospels; also wrote Adam, Eve and the Serpent:Sex and Politics in Early Christianity.

• February 13, 1943 – The first women to sign up for non-clerical duties enlist in Marine Corps Women’s Reserve at Camp Lejune, North Carolina, inducted into specialties ranging from cooks to transport personnel and mechanics. One-third of the women served in aviation-related fields. Almost 18,000 women went through training at Camp Lejune, but the entire women’s reserve was discharged in March 1946.

• February 13, 1945–Marian Dawkins born, British biologist, professor of Animal Behavior, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford; noted for research in animal signaling, vision in birds, behavioural synchrony, animal consciousness and animal welfare. Dawkins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014, for her substantial contributions to natural knowledge.

• February 13, 1946 –Dame Janet V. Finch born,British sociologist and academic administrator; Vice Chancellor and Professor of Social Relations at Keele University; named DBE in 2008 Birthday Honours for services to social science.

• February 13,1950– Dame Vera Baird born, British Labour politician and barrister; Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner since 2012; Solicitor General for England and Wales (2007-2010); Member of Parliament for Redcar (2001-2010); noted for her advocacy of neighbourhood policing and making ending violence against women a priority.

• February 13, 1964 – Ylva Johannson born, Swedish Social Democratic politician; Member of the Riksdag for Stockholm since 2006: European Commissioner for Home Affairs since 2019; Swedish Minister for Employment (2014-2019). She holds a Master of Science in education, and worked as a teacher (1992-1994) before being appointed as Minister for Schools (1994-1998).

• February 13, 1979 –Rachel Reeves born, British economist and Labour politician; Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee since 2017; Member of Parliament for Leeds West since 2010

• February 13, 2012 –Rita Dove, poet and author, who had been the second African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987), receives the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.

• February 13, 2019 –Ryan Adams, singer-songwriter and record producer, was accused by several women of emotional abuse and sexual misconduct, according to a report in the New York Times. The women include Adams’ ex-wife, actress and singer Mandy Moore, who described Adams as psychologically abusive. Sources told the Times that Adams promised women career opportunities, and became emotionally and verbally abusive if they rejected his advances. One woman, now 20, said that in 2013 she started talking with Adams online about music, and while she was underage, he steered conversations to phone sex and once exposed himself during a video chat. Adams’ lawyer said his client “unequivocally denies that he ever engaged in inappropriate online sexual communications with someone he knew was underage.” Adams tweeted that he’s “not a perfect man,” but the “picture that this article paints is upsettingly inaccurate.” According to the Times, the F.B.I. has opened an inquiry into Ryan Adams’s explicit communications with an underage fan.

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• February 14, 1782 –Eleanora Atherton born, English philanthropist. She was the oldest of two surviving daughters of the four children born to her parents, and inherited her wealth from several family members. She owned land in London, Cheshire, Lancashire and Jamaica. The property in Jamaica was a coffee plantation, which she inherited jointly with her sister Lucy, and included a number of slaves. Atherton quietly became a major benefactor in Manchester, donating thousands of pounds to charities devoted to children, the sick and elderly, and the restoration or building of churches. Atherton donated £5000 to the Manchester ragged and industrial schools alone. She also supported the literary work of Manchester’s Chetham Society, donated to the town’s library society, and funded medical facilities in Manchester, including  St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, and several institutions which helped people who were terminally ill. The last three years of her life she was bed-ridden. When she died in 1870, she was one of the richest women in the 19^th century.

• February 14, 1813 –Lydia Hamilton Smith born, American businesswoman and abolitionist, daughter of a free biracial woman and an Irish father.  She married a free black man, Jacob Smith, with whom she had two sons, but she separated from her husband, and moved in 1847 with her mother and her sons to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She went to work as a housekeeper for Thaddeus Stevens, one of the leaders of the Radical Republican faction of the Republican Party, and a fierce opponent of slavery and discrimination against black Americans. There was much speculation about the relationship between Stevens and Smith, and many of their contemporaries considered her his common-law wife, but there is no evidence beyond rumor of what was between them. In a brief surviving letter to her from Stevens, he addressed her as “Mrs. Smith.” When he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1848, she also kept his house in Washington DC when he was in residence there, serving as his unofficial hostess for political dinners, until his death in 1868. They were both involved with the Underground Railroad, which later led to the burning of the Stevens ironworks in Pennsylvania during the U.S. Civil War. During and after the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, Smith hired a horse and wagon, collecting food and supplies for the wounded from neighbors in Adams, York and Lancaster counties, then delivered them to the makeshift hospitals. In his will, Stevens left her the choice of a $5,000 lump sum, or an annual allowance of $500, and any furniture she wanted from his house. With the inheritance, Smith became a successful businesswoman, buying Stevens’ house and the adjoining lot, and running a prosperous boarding house in Washington. She also invested in other real estate, and various business ventures.

• February 14, 1838–Margaret E. Knight, American inventor; held 27 patents, including one for a machine to fold and glue paper bags with flat bottoms, a new valve sleeve for an automobile engine, and six patents for machines used in manufacturing shoes. She did not make much money from her inventions because, as an unmarried self-supporting working-class woman, she was not able to wait for royalties, but had to sell the rights to her inventions outright.

• February 14, 1847 – AnnaHoward Shaw born, America minister and physician, one of the first U.S. women ordained as a Methodist minister, and one of the most influential leaders of the women’s suffrage movement and the temperance movement. She helped broker reconciliation in 1890 between the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Equal Rights Association, which had split in 1869 over whether or not to support the 15^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Shaw became president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) after the two groups merged, and focused on securing a national constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote. She resigned as NAWSA president in 1915 because she opposed the militant tactics being employed by younger NAWSA members Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, such as picketing the White House. Carrie Chapman Catt took over as NAWSA president. For Shaw’s service as head of the Women’s Committee of the U.S. Council of National Defense during WWI, she became the first woman awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, for exceptionally meritorious service to the government in a duty of great responsibility related to the U.S. military. In a speech shortly before her death in 1919 she said that “the only way to refute” the argument that America was a democracy and therefore American women were entitled to vote was “to prove that women are not people.”

• February 14, 1870–Esther Hobart Morris, suffragist, begins tenure as first female U.S. Justice of the Peace. Appointed after previous Justice resigned in protest over Wyoming’s December 1869 passage of a women’s suffrage amendment to the state constitution.

• February 14, 1871–Marion Mahony Griffin born, American architect and artist, designer for Frank Lloyd  Wright of murals, mosaics, furniture, leaded glass, and lighting fixtures. As his primary delineator, her drawings were instrumental in enhancing Wright's early reputation.

• February 14, 1874–Charlotta Spears Bass born, newspaper publisher and civil rights activist, works for the California Eagle newspaper in Los Angeles (1904-1951), taking over after the owner/editor dies – by 1925 it is the West Coast’s largest Black newspaper, circulation 60,000; she was the first African American woman U.S. Vice Presidential candidate when the Progressive Party chooses her as their nominee in 1952.

• February 14, 1890–Nina Hamnett born, Welsh artist and writer, expert on sea chanteys; in 1914, she became part of the Montparnasse artists’ group in Paris, living a flamboyantly unconventional, openly bisexual life, becoming known as the ‘Queen of Bohemia.’  She  returned to England in 1917, joining the Fitzrovia Bohemian set in London, and published a tale of Bohemian life, Laughing Torso, in 1932.

• February 14, 1891–Katherine Stinson born; she started learning to fly at 16, and became the fourth licensed U.S. woman pilot in 1912; she was the first woman to “loop the loop” (1915), and the first woman to fly in Asia, drawing crowd of 25,000 to watch her in Tokyo.

• February 14, 1898 –Angela Bambace, union organizer; in 1956, she became the first Italian-American immigrant to serve as a Vice President of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union and as a member of the General Executive Board.

• February 14, 1904 –Jessie O’Connor born, journalist, social activist, second-generation WILPF member and lifelong pacifist. She was an active and vocal opponent of HUAC, reported on textile strikes in North Carolina and coal strikes in Harland County, Kentucky, and brought attention to those accused of communism. She was against the Vietnam War, and Ronald Reagan’s many cuts in spending for social programs, while greatly increasing military spending.

• February 14, 1914 –Nancy Harkness Love born, pilot who earned her pilot's license at age 16. She worked as a test pilot and air racer in the 1930s. During World War II, she and Jackie Cochran convinced U.S. Air Force (now the U.S. Air Force) to set up a group of women pilots to ferry aircraft from factories to air bases. Love ferried planes to Canada, and was the Commander of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) 1940-1942. The group was absorbed into WASPs, but the WASPs were disbanded in 1944. She was awarded the Air Medal for her work during the war and was appointed a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve in 1948. After the war, she was a champion for recognition as military veterans for the women who had served as WASPs. She died of cancer at age 62 in 1976, so she did not live to see the WASPs finally accorded military recognition in 1979.

• February 14,1920–The League of Women Voters is founded in Chicago by Carrie Chapman Catt, and Maude Wood Park becomes its first president.

• February 14, 1921 –Hazel McCallion born, Canadian independent politician; she is the first Chancellor of Sheridan College, since 2016; longest-serving Mayor of Mississauga, Ontario (1978-2014), dubbed by her supporters as “Hurricane Hazel” for her outspoken style. In 2016, February 14 was declared ‘Hazel McCallion Day’ across the province of Ontario, in honor of her birthday.

• February 14, 1924 –Patricia Knatchbull, 2^nd Countess of Mountbatten of Burma, British peer, daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten and Edwina Ashley Mountbatten. When her father was assassinated in 1979, she succeeded him under a special remainder to his daughters and their heirs male. She took her father’s seat in the House of Lords, and served there until 1999, when the House of Lords Act removed most hereditary peers from the House. During WWII, she entered the Women’s Royal Naval Service in 1943, as a Signal Rating, and worked in Combined Operations bases in Britain, until she was commissioned as a third officer in 1945, and sent to Supreme Allied Headquarters, South East Asia. In the 1970s, she was appointed as Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Kent, and also served as a magistrate. She was a Patron of SOS Children’s Villages UK, and of the Countess Mountbatten’s Own Legion of Frontiersmen of the Commonwealth. The assassination of her father in a bombing of his boat by the IRA also killed her 14 year-old son Nicolas, and her husband’s mother. She, her husband and their son Timothy were injured, but survived. The Countess became Patron, and later President, of The Compassionate Friends, a UK organization of bereaved parents. Countess Mountbatten died at the age of 93 in 2017, at her home in Kent.

• February 14, 1941 –Donna Shalala, University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor (1988-1993), U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (1993-2001), president of the University of Miami (2001- 2015), awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008.

• February 14, 1952 –Sushma Swaraj born, Indian politician and lawyer; India’s second woman Minister of External Affairs (2014-2019); she was elected seven times as a Member of Parliament. Swaraj was regarded as one of India’s “best loved” politicians. She died of a heart attack in 2019 at age 67.

• February 14, 1952–Dorothy V. Bishop born, British psychologist specializing in developmental disorders and language impairments; Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford since 1998; Principal Investigator for the Oxford Study of Children’s Communication Impairments (OSCCI), and a supernumerary fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.

• February 14, 1955 – Carol Kalish born, American writer, editor, comic book retailer, wholesaler and sales manager; Direct Sales Manager and Vice President of New Product Development at Marvel Comics (1981-1991), where she was a pioneer in the comics direct market, starting a Marvel program which helped pay for the purchase of cash registers by comic book stores. Kalish won the 1991 Inkpot Award. She died suddenly at the age of 36 of a brain aneurysm.

• February 14, 1956 – Katharina Fritsch born, German sculptor, noted for installations and sculptures which present familiar objects in jarring ways, including a true-to-scale sculpture of an elephant, and Rattenkonig, a circle of black polyester rats standing over 8 feet high.

• February 14, 1959 – Renée Fleming born, American opera singer, a lyric soprano; 4-time Grammy winner; awarded a National Medal of Arts in 2012

• February 14, 1960 –Meg Tilly born in California, to a Canadian mother and a Chinese-American father; American actress and novelist; she grew up in Canada after her parents divorced and her mother remarried. Tilly has stated that her stepfather was a violent pedophile, and she took dance lessons, in part to get away from him. She moved to New York City after graduating from high school, where she later became a member of the Connecticut Ballet Company. This led to her screen debut as a dancer in the 1980 musical drama Fame. Her dance career ended when a partner dropped her, seriously injuring her back. She moved to Los Angeles, took acting lessons, and began getting roles on television. Her part in 1983 film The Big Chill, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, was a big boost to her career. She was the original choice to play Mozart’s wife Constanze in the film of Amadeus, but an injury to her leg caused the part to go to Elizabeth Berridge. She is probably best known for playing the title role in the film version of Agnes of God. Tilly is also the author of six novels, including A Taste of Heaven, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Libris Young Reader Book of the Year, and won the 2014-2015 Chocolate Lilly Award.

• February 14, 1967 –Aretha Franklin records her song “Respect.”

• February 14, 1969 –Meg Hillier born, British Labour Co-operative politician; Chair of the Public Accounts Committee since 2015; Member of Parliament since 2004; Mayor of Islington (1998-1999).

• February 14, 1973 – Annalisa Buffa born, Italian mathematician, known for numerical analysis and partial differential equations; Director at the Istituto di matematica applicata e tecnologie informatiche "E. Magenes" (IMATI) of the CNR (National Research Council)in Pavia(2013-2016). Buffa was awarded the 2007 Bartolozzi Prize and the 2015 Collatz Prize.

• February 14, 1974–Valentina Vezzali born, Italian Olympic fencer and Scelta Civica Party (liberal-centrist) politician; member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies since 2013; she was the first fencer in Olympic history to win three individual Foil medals at three consecutive Olympics: Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, and Beijing 2008, as well as winning 14 gold medals at the World Fencing Championships.

• February 14, 1974–Rie Rasmussen born, Danish actress, film director, writer and photographer; she wrote, directed and produced her first feature film, Human Zoo, which was an official selection at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival.

• February 14, 1977–Anna G. Erschler born in Russia, mathematician working in France, specializing in geometric group theory, and probability theory, especially random walks on groups; awarded the 2001 Möbius Prize of the Independent University of Moscow, the 2002 Annual Prize of the Saint Petersburg Mathematical Society, and the 2015 Élie Cartan Prize of the French Academy of Sciences.

• February 14, 1979– Glider pilot Sabrina Jackintell breaks the altitude record in a glider – her absolute altitude record of 41,460 feet still stands, although the altitude gain record was broken in 1988 by Yvonne Loader of New Zealand.

• February 14, 1980–Michelle Ye Xuan born in China, actress and producer; she is fluent in Cantonese, English, and Mandarin. Ye immigrated to the U.S. at age 10, and in high school won first place at the 1998 International Science and Engineering Fair in the Botany sector. In 1999, she began working for TVB, a Hong Kong-based television broadcasting company, playing leading roles in several dramas, and was their on-site reporter during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. She is the founder and chair of her production company, Michelle Ye Studios-Zhejiang Bohai Television Ltd, and vice president of the Hengdian Film Association.

• February 14, 1988–Katie Boland born, Canadian film producer, director, screenwriter and actress; wrote and directed Lolz-ita; producer and writer on Long Story, Short, Fateful; and Sweetieface.

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• February 15, 1638 –Zeb-un-Nissa born, Mughal princess and poet who wrote under the pseudonym Makhfi (Hidden One). She was carefully educated by Hafiza Mariam, and by age seven, she had become a Hafiza (female title for one who has memorized the Quaran). She also studied the sciences of the day with Mohammad Saeed Ashraf Mazandarani, and  learned mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, literature, the Persian, Arabic and Urdu languages, calligraphy and music. Zeb-un-Nissa had a large library of her own, and was a patron of several scholars. She was noted for both her poetry and her song lyrics. When her father became emperor after Shah Jahan, he sometimes discussed political affairs with her, but in 1681 or 1682, her father had her imprisoned at Salimgarh Fort, Delhi, but there are conflicting accounts of why. Sources variously claim she had an affair (a rumour which may have started because she rejected all her suitors and never married), became too public with her poetry and music, or supported her younger brother during a conflict over the succession. She died after about 20 years in prison, either in 1701 or 1702. In 1724, her surviving writings were collected in the Diwan-i-Makhfi, (Book of the Hidden One). There are four hundred and twenty-one ghazals (an Arabic form of ode, using couplets) and several ruba’is (a four-line poem form in Persian poetry).

• February 15, 1810–Mary S.B. Shindler born, American poet, hymnist, writer and editor; she was born in South Carolina, and moved to Texas in 1865. Her debut volume of poetry was The Southern Harp, which was followed by The Northern Harp; The Parted Family; Young Sailor; and Forecastle Tom. Her best known poem was “Pass Under the Rod.” In 1878, she was also an editor of The Voice of Truth, a spiritualist journal.

• February 15, 1820–Susan B. Anthony born, American abolitionist, tireless leader of the 19^th Century women’s rights movement; co-leader with Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for women and people of color.  She and Cady Stanton founded the women’s rights newspaper The Revolution, and the National Woman Suffrage Association, which later merged into the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) where Anthony spearheaded the fight until her retirement in 1900 at the age of 80.

• February 15, 1836 –Sarah Fuller born, educator, promoted Alexander Graham Bell’s techniques to teach deaf children to speak. In November 1869, she organized a public day school for deaf children in Boston called the Boston School for Deaf Mutes (now known as the Horace Mann School for the Deaf). She was the principal of the school from 1869 until her retirement in 1910.

• February 15, 1848 – When five-year-old Sarah Roberts is refused admittance to a white school in her Boston neighborhood because she is black, her father, Benjamin Roberts, files the first school integration lawsuit, Roberts v. City of Boston, citing the poorer quality of education at the black school and the much greater distance Sarah will have to travel to go there, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules in favor of Boston; the case is later cited in Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the “separate but equal” standard; however, in 1855, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts banned segregated schools in the state, the first law prohibiting segregated schools in the U.S.

• February 15, 1850–Sophie Bryant born, Anglo-Irish mathematician, educator and feminist. She taught at the North London Collegiate School, founded by Frances Mary Buss, a pioneer in girls’ education, which was one of the first schools where girls could get the same educational opportunities as boys. In 1895, Bryant succeeded Buss as the school’s Headmistress. When the University of London opened its degree courses to women in 1878, she became one of the first women to obtain First Class Honours, in Mental and Moral Sciences, together with a degree in mathematics in 1881, and three years later she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science, the first woman in England to earn a Doctorate in science. In 1882 she was the third woman to be elected to the London Mathematical Society, and was the first active female member, publishing her first paper with the Society in 1884. She helped to set up the Cambridge Training College for Women, now Hughes Hall, Cambridge. She was president of the Irish National Literary Society in 1914. Bryant was an advocate for improving women’s education, and thought after they were better educated, women should have the vote. She died in a hiking accident in the Swiss Alps in 1922, at age 72.

• February 15, 1879– President Rutherford B. Hayessigns bill enabling women attorneys to argue cases before U.S. Supreme Court. In 1880, Belva Lockwood was the first woman to argue cases before the Supreme Court. Lockwood was co-counsel with Mike L. Woods on a case about the execution of a deed that bound local District of Columbia property for the payment of a debt. Lockwood was the lawyer for Caroline Kaiser, the appellant, and she tried to turn the tables in favor of her client by using the much-criticized D.C. married women's property laws, arguing that Kaiser, a married woman, could not legally be party to a contract that encumbered her own property. The strategy failed, and the lower court ruled against her, so the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she also lost. But Lockwood was sole counsel on her second case before the court, and won a $5 million reimbursement for the Cherokee people from the U.S. government.

• February 15, 1909–Miep Gies born in Vienna, Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal recipient and author. She was taken in as a foster child by Dutch citizens, and became one of the people who hid Anne Frank, her family, and four other Jews in an annex above Otto Frank’s former business premises during WWII. She had worked for Otto Frank since 1933. After the discovery and arrest of the family, Gies retrieved Anne’s diary, keeping it hidden until Otto Frank came back from Auschwitz, the only member of the family to survive. Gies is the co-author with Alison Leslie Gold of Anne Frank Remembered: The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family.

• February 15, 1910–Irena Sendler born, Polish nurse and social worker, head of the children’s section of Żegota, a Polish underground resistance organization which smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, and gave them false identity papers to save them from the Holocaust. The German occupiers suspected Sendler's involvement in the Polish Underground and in October 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo, but she managed to hide the list of the names and locations of the rescued Jewish children, preventing this information from falling into the hands of the Gestapo. Withstanding torture and imprisonment, Sendler refused to reveal anything about her work or the location of the saved children. She was sentenced to death but narrowly escaped on the day of her scheduled execution, after Żegota bribed German leaders to obtain her release. In 1965, she was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. Sendler was also made an honorary citizen of Israel in 1991.

• February 15, 1921–The Suffrage Monument, depicting Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott, and sculpted by Adelaide Johnson, is dedicated at the U.S. Capitol.

• February 15, 1923 –Yelena Bonner born, human rights activist in the former Soviet Union, married to Andrei Sakharov. Beginning in the 1940s, Bonner helped political prisoners and their families. Although she joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1964 while she was working as a physician, only a few years later Bonner was active in the Soviet human rights movement. Her resolve towards dissidence was strengthened in August 1968 after Soviet bloc tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia in order to crush the Prague Spring movement. That event strengthened her belief that the system could not be reformed from within. She was a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group in 1976, and smuggled some of her husband’s writings out of Gorky when he was sent into exile there in 1980.  

• February 15, 1925–Angella D. Ferguson born, African American pediatrician noted for her ground-breaking research on sickle cell disease.  She earned a BS in chemistry from Howard University, and an MD from Howard University College of Medicine in 1949, when there were very few African-American women who were accepted into medical schools. She conducted her internship and residency at Washington Freedman’s Hospital and joined the faculty at Howard University in 1953 as an instructor in pediatrics, a position she held until 1959, when she became assistant professor of pediatrics at Freedman’s Hospital, where she became a full professor (1963-1990), and was also an associate pediatrician there (1953-1970). Ferguson was also on the staff of the District of Columbia General Hospital (1953-1990), and had her own private practice in Washington DC. Her early research required her to understand normal development in African American children, but to her surprise no such baseline data existed. In setting out to rectify this gap in knowledge, she made the startling discovery that African American infants learned to sit and stand earlier than infants of European descent. She attributed this to the number of African American infants who did not have playpens or high chairs, forcing them to sit and stand earlier than their white counterparts. She noticed the prevalence of sickle cell disease among the infants she treated in her practice, and began tracking the development of the disease in her patients. Sickle-cell anemia was then a little-known disease. Through experimentation, Ferguson determined that infants drinking a glass of soda water once a day before age five, decreased their chances of having a sickle-cell crisis – a condition in which the flow of damaged red blood cells is impeded, causing painful clogging of blood vessels. She also developed a blood test to detect the disease at birth, which became a standard test in forty U.S. states by 2010.

• February 15, 1935–Susan Brownmiller born, writer, novelist, historical researcher; author of Against Our Will: Men, Woman and Rape (1975) and a memoir, In Our Time.

• February 15, 1946 –Clare Short born, British Labour politician; Secretary of State for International Development (1997-2003); Member of Parliament  for Birmingham Ladywood (1983-2010); she left the Labour Party in 2006 become Independent because of her differences with Labour leadership over their support of the 2003 Iraq War.

• February 15, 1958–Chrystine Brouillet born, French Canadian novelist, many of her books are for children and young adults, but she also writes historical novels and thrillers; noted for Chère Voisine (Dear Neighbor).

• February 15, 1974 –Miranda July born as Miranda Grossinger, American film director, screenwriter, actress and author. Wrote, directed and co-starred in the films Me and You, and Everyone We Know. She is the author of a collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, and the novel The First Bad Man.

• February 15, 1982–Agatha Barbara takes office as Malta’s first woman President.

• February 15, 2011– Representative Carolyn Maloney (Democrat-New York, since 1993) introduces the Susan B. Anthony Birthday Act, to make Susan B. Anthony’s birthday a U.S. national holiday, but it has never been enacted. California, Florida, New York, and Wisconsin have the day listed on their state calendars, but only Florida has made it a legal holiday. West Virginia marks it on Election Day in February, and Massachusetts celebrates Susan B. Anthony Day each year on August 26, the date in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was ratified, and U.S. women finally won the right to vote; also on August 26, there’s an annual Susan B. Anthony Festival in Rochester New York.

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• February 16, 1838 –Kentucky passes a law permitting girls to attend public school under limited circumstances. The act also contained an unusual provision allowing single women or widows who owned property subject to taxation for school purposes to vote in school elections. 

• February 16, 1870–Leonora O’Reilly born, labor organizer, founding member of the Woman’s Trade Union League, and helped to found the NAACP.

• February 16, 1878–Pamela Colman Smith born, British artist and illustrator, best known for the Waite-Smith deck of tarot cards.

• February 16, 1883–The Ladies Home Journal begins publication.

• February 16, 1893–Katharine Cornell born, American stage actress,  writer, theater owner and producer, “First Lady of the American Theatre” who is one of the first winners of the Tony Award, given by the American Theatre Wing; she was among the first inductees into the American Theatre Hall of Fame (established in 1972).

• February 16, 1900 –Mary Elizabeth Switzer born, American public administrator and social reformer, advocate for increasing government’s role in assisting people with disabilities; worked on the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1954, a major expansion of federal funding and services for the physically and mentally disabled, which also authorized grants to fund research and rehabilitation programs.

• February 16, 1905 – Dame Henrietta Barnett born, British WRAF officer and director; she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service as a volunteer in 1938, then transferred to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) when it was established in June, 1939. She was  commissioned as a company assistant (equivalent to a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force), with seniority from December 1938. During World War II, she served at RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, at RAF Feltwell in Norfolk, and at the Air Ministry in London during the Blitz. At the end of WWII, she was posted to RAF Mediterranean Command in Italy, serving as staff officer responsible for all WAAF personnel in the RAF Mediterranean and Middle East Command. In 1947, she became a flight officer, and served as the WAAF staff officer at Flying Training Command headquarters. In 1949, when the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) was created, she was made a group officer in its Secretary Branch, one of the two WRAF Deputy-Directors. In 1952, she became Commanding Officer of RAF Hawkinge, the only woman station commander in the RAF, then served as Director of the WRAF as air commandant (1956-1960).

• February 16, 1905 –Louise Leung Larson born, first Chinese American and first Asian American reporter to work on a mainstream daily paper The Los Angeles Record (1926), later worked for  Chicago Daily Times and Los Angeles Times. She received many awards for her work. Her memoir, Sweet Bamboo, was published in 1989.

• February 16, 1906 –Vera Menchik born, Russian-Czechoslovak-British chess player; the first, and longest reigning, Women’s World Chess Champion, from 1927 to 1944.

• February 16, 1920 –Anna Mae Hays, chief of  Army Nurse Corps, one of the first two women promoted to rank of Brigadier General (same day as Elizabeth Hoisington was also promoted).

• February 16, 1923–Bessie Smith makes her first recording, “Down Hearted Blues” which sells 800,000 copies for Columbia Records.

• February 16, 1953–Roberta Williams born, American video game designer and co-founder of Sierra Entertainment; King’s Quest and Phantasmagoria are two of her better-known adventure games.

• February 16, 1958 –Natalie Angier born, American nonfiction writer, New York Times science journalist and outspoken atheist; won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.

• February 16, 1978–Tia Hellebaut born, Belgian chemist who was a track and field athlete, and won a gold medal for the High Jump at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and a gold medal at the 2008 Valencia World Indoor Championships for the Pentathlon. She was awarded the Belgium Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown in 2009.

• February 16, 2016– UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN Women Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri spoke at “The Value of Hosting Mega Sport Events as a Social, Economic and Environmental Sustainable Development Tool” event, saying:  “Sport has enormous power to generate real social, economic and environmental change, and contribute to sustainable development, social cohesion and even to challenge mind sets and prejudice.”

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• February 17, 624–Wu Zetian born, concubine of Chinese Tang dynasty Emperor Taizong until his death. She married his son and successor, Emperor Gaozong in 655, becoming his huanghou (empress consort). When Gaozong suffered a debilitating stroke in 660, Wu Zetian became administrator of the court, and then Empress regnant (690-705). She was forced to abdicate after a successful coup in February, 705.  Wu Zeitan is the only woman in Chinese history to wear the yellow robes as monarch which had been reserved for the sole use of emperors.

• February 17, 1848–Louisa Lawson born, Australian writer, women’s rights activist; took over as publisher of radical pro-federation newspaper The Republican and later launched  The Dawn, Australia’s first journal produced by an all-woman staff; leading figure in the Australian woman suffrage movement, ‘The Mother of Suffrage in New South Wales.’

• February 17, 1858–Margaret Warner Morley born, American biologist, educator, and writer, author of many works for children on nature and biology. Teaching children led her to developing better methods of teaching science, and to writing textbooks noted for being clear, authoritative and entertaining. Many of them were used as school texts just as nature study was being incorporated into the growing number of schools’ curricula. The Insect Folk, The Honey-Makers, and The Spark of Life: the story of how living things come into the world are among her many titles.

• February 17, 1877–Isabelle Eberhardt born, Swiss explorer and author, traveled extensively in North Africa, often wearing male clothing for the freedom it allowed her; she died in a flash flood in the Algerian desert at age 27 in 1904.

• February 17, 1877–Isidora Sekulić born, Serbian author, adventurer and polyglot, extensive traveler, known for strong female characters in her fiction.

• February 17, 1879–Dorothy Canfield Fisher born, author, education reformer, social activist, brought Montessori Method to U.S.

• February 17, 1881–Mary Carson Breckinridge born, American nurse-midwife; founded the Frontier Nursing Service, and Appalachian family care centers.

• February 17, 1888–Dorothy Kenyon born, American attorney, feminist and civil liberties activist; in 1950, accused of communist affiliations by Senator McCarthy, she called him “an unmitigated liar” and “a coward to take shelter in the cloak of Congressional immunity” then responded, “I am not, and never have been, a supporter of, a member of, or a sympathizer with any organization known to me to be, or suspected by me, of being controlled or dominated by Communists.” A NY Times editorial and support from Eleanor Roosevelt and other respected public figures made McCarthy back off, and the charges were dismissed; also served on United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (1946-1950).

• February 17, 1897 –Alice McLellan Birney and Phoebe Apperson Hearst hold the first convocation of the National Organization of Mothers (now the Parent Teacher Association – the PTA), and 2,000 people attend.

• February 17, 1905  –Rózsa Politzer Péter born, Hungarian mathematician, called the ‘founding mother of recursion theory’ because her research papers helped found recursive function theory as a distinct and separate area of mathematical research; responsible for formulating the Ackerman-Péter function.

• February 17, 1911–Margaret St. Clair born, American pioneering woman writer in science fiction; also used pen names Idris Seabright and Wilton Hazzard; noted for short stories "The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles" and "Brightness Falls from the Air."

• February 17, 1912 –Andre Norton born as Alice Mary Norton,  used “Andre” as more salable pen name in science fiction and fantasy, 50 years later named as “Grand Dame of Science and Fantasy.”

• February 17, 1913 – The Armory Show opens in New York, a landmark exhibit displaying works of artists who are to become some of the most influential painters of the early 20th century.  Only three women are prominently mentioned in the 50^th Anniversary catalog: Mary Cassatt, Marie Laurencin and Marguerite Zorach, but a surprising number of other women artists are in the list of exhibitors: Florence Howell Barkley, Bessie Marsh Brewer, Fannie Miller Brown, Edith Woodman Burroughs, Émilie Charmy, Nessa Cohen, Kate Cory, Edith Dimock (under Mrs. William Glackens), Katherine S. Dreier, Aileen King Dresser, Florence Dreyfous, Abastenia St. Leger Eberle, Florence Esté, Lily Everett, Mary Foote, Anne Goldthwaite, Edith Haworth, Margaret Hoard, Margaret Wendell Huntington, Gwen John, Grace Mott Johnson, Edith L. King, Hermine E. Kleinert, Amy Londoner, Jacquelin Marval, Carolyn Mase, Kathleen McEnery, Charlotte Meltzer, Myra Musselmann-Carr, Ethel Myers, Helen J. Niles, Olga Oppenheimer, Marjorie Organ (under Mrs. Robert Henri), Josephine Paddock, Agnes Lawrence Pelton, Louise Pope, Mary Wilson Preston, Katherine Rhoades, Mary Rogers, Frances Simpson Stevens, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, Hilda Ward, and Enid Yandell.

• February 17, 1918 –Jacqueline Lelong-Ferrand born, French mathematician noted for work on conformal representation theory, potential theory and Riemannian manifolds; she proved the compactness of the group of conformal mappings of a non-spherical compact Riemannian manifold, resolving a conjecture of André Lichnerowicz.

• February 17, 1920–Annie Castor Glenn born, American advocate for people with disabilities and communication disorders; she had stutter throughout her life, and didn’t find a treatment which helped her until 1973; she and astronaut John Glenn were married for 73 years until his death in 2016. She served on the Board of the Columbus Speech and Hearing Center, the Advisory Board of the National Center for Survivors of Child Abuse, and the National deafness and other Communication Disorders Advisory Board of the National Institutes of Health.

• February 17, 1924–Margaret Truman born, American coloratura soprano, journalist, author and socialite; noted for her murder mysteries set in Washington DC, and her non-fiction books about the Truman years in the White House. Daughter of Harry and Bess Truman.

• February 17, 1938–Mary Frances Berry born, American historian, lawyer and civil rights activist; first black woman to head a major research university as chancellor of the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus in 1976; Jimmy Carter appoints her to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1980: when Ronald Reagan comes into office in 1981, he tries to fire Berry and dismantle the commission, but she sues the Reagan Administration  successfully in federal court to retain her seat.

• February 17, 1941–Julia McKenzie born, English actress, singer and theatre director; she won BAFTA awards for Best Actress in stage productions of Woman in Mind (1986) and Sweeney Todd (1994). McKenzie is a critic of fox hunting and was one of the high-profile signers of a letter to Members of Parliament in 2015 opposing Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's plan to amend the Hunting Act 2004.

• February 17, 1945–Zina Bethune born, American actress, dancer and choreographer; she was diagnosed with scoliosis and hip dysplasia as a girl, and worked throughout her life with disabled students. She founded Dance Outreach in 1982 (now known as Infinite Dreams) which enrolls disabled children in dance-related activities, and the Bethune Theatredanse in 1981, a multimedia performance company. In 2012, she was killed at age 67 in a hit-and-run accident as she was trying to help an injured possum in Griffith Park, Los Angeles.

• February 17, 1946–Shahrnush Parsipur born, Iranian novelist, translator, short story writer, and children’s author; best-known for her novella,  Zanan bedun-e Mardan (Women Without Men), and her novel Touba va Ma'na-ye Shab (Touba and the Meaning of Night).

• February 17, 1952–Karin Büttner-Janz born, German physician, orthopaedic specialist and former East German Olympic gymnast who won two gold medals at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich; physician at the orthopedic clinic of Berlin-Hellersdorf (1990-2004); chief physician at the Vivantes clinic of Berlin-Friedrichshain (2004-2012) From 2008 to 2012, she was additionally Chief Physician of the Vivantes clinic in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

• February 17, 1961–Angela and Maria Eagle born, twin sisters who are British Labour politicians. Angela Eagle has been the Member of Parliament for Wallasey since 1992, and also served as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (2007-2009), and Minister for Pensions and Ageing Society (2009-2010). Maria Eagle is the incumbent Member of Parliament for Garston and Halewood since 1997; Under Secretary of State for Disabled People (2001-2005); and Minister for Children (2005-2006).

• February 17, 1962–Alison Hargreaves born, British mountaineer; scaled Mount Everest solo, without supplementary oxygen or a Sherpa team in 1995; she soloed all the great north faces of the Alps in a single season, including the Eiger’s north face, a first for any climber. She was killed in 1995 while descending from the summit of K2.

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• February 18, 1851 –Ida Husted Harper born, American author, educator, journalist, suffragist and a chronicler of the women’s suffrage fight. Harper’s three-volume biography of Susan B.  Anthony was written at Anthony's request. She also co-edited and collaborated with Anthony on volume four (1902) of the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage, and completed the project by solo writing volumes five and six (1922) after Anthony's death. Harper traveled extensively, delivered lectures in support of women's rights, handled press relations for the women's suffrage amendment in California, headed the National American Woman Suffrage Association's national press bureau in New York City, and the editorial correspondence department of the Leslie Bureau of Suffrage Education in Washington, D.C., and chaired the press committee of the International Council of Women.

• February 18, 1867 –Hedwig Courths-Mahler born, German novelist who, under various pen names, wrote romance fiction so popular that many of her books are still in print. By the time of her death in 1950, an estimated 80 million copies of her books had been sold, making her the most popular German woman author by number of sold copies.

• February 18, 1918–Jane Loevinger born, American psychologist, pioneer in ego development theory and women’s psychological issues.

• February 18, 1921–Mary Amdur born, American toxicologist, public health researcher and environmental hero, who worked primarily on the effects of smog, beginning with an air inversion incident in the mill town of Donora Pennsylvania, which killed 20 people and sickened 7,000 others. Her findings led to her being threatened, the loss of her funding, and being fired from her job at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1953; she carried on her research in a different role at Harvard, and later at MIT and New York University. Amdur was vindicated when her studies became the basis for the first standards in air pollution monitoring, which led to the 1970 Clean Air Act, and gave the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the power to more effectively fight environmental pollution.

• February 18, 1922–Helen Gurley Brown born, author, publisher, editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine.

• February 18, 1922–Connie Wisniewski born, American baseball player, starting pitcher and outfielder in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (1944-1952).

• February 18, 1929–Janet Gaynor is awarded the first Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in Sunrise at the inaugural Academy Awards in Hollywood, California.

• February 18, 1931–Toni Morrison born, American author, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize in Literature, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom; noted for Beloved; Song of Solomon; and The Bluest Eye.

• February 18, 1934–Audre Lorde born, American writer, poet, feminist, lesbian, librarian, and civil rights activist. She was born in New York City, the daughter of a father from Barbados, and a mother from Grenada. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, women, and the exploration of black female identity. “I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.” Her first poem was published in  Seventeen magazine when she was still in high school. She became an associate of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press in 1977, and a co-founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980. She survived breast cancer in 1978, but died at age 58 of liver cancer in 1992.

• February 18,1936–Jean Auel born, American author of the best-selling  Earth’s Children novels, set in prehistoric Europe.

• February 18, 1940 –Prue Leith born in South Africa, British chef, journalist, TV presenter, cookery writer and restaurateur; her Notting Hill restaurant, Leith’s, had a Michelin star (1969-1995); she founded Leith’s School of Food and Wine (1975-1993), and the Prue Leith Chef’s Academy in South Africa; food columnist for the Daily Mail, The Guardian and the Daily Mirror, and author of 12 cook books.

• February 18, 1941 –Irma Thomas born, American singer-songwriter, noted as “The Soul Queen of New Orleans.”

• February 18, 1950–Nana Amba Eyiaba I born, appointed in 1982 as one of the Ghanaian queen mothers,  for Effutu 16 of the Effutu Municipal District, a traditional position responsible for maintaining local cultural traditions and providing care for women and children in her area. In 2001, after a national women’s conference held by the University of Ghana, she was a key leader in a group of queen mothers who developed the national Council of Women Traditional Leaders (CWTL), which eventually grew to include women  leaders who were not queen mothers.  Eyiaba served on the CWTL executive Council from 2001 to 2016, advocating for more participation of women leaders in national politics. In 2013, the national Minister of Chieftaincy opened their regional and national meetings of Houses of Chiefs to queen mothers, but they were excluded from voting rights. CWTL began the fight for queen mothers’ full representation in 2016. Eyiaba worked for the Ghana Education Service of the Ministry of Education from 1997 until 2009, rising to become Director of Education for the Central Region before her retirement. Member of the Electoral Commission of Ghana from 2004 to 2010.

• February 18, 1955–Lisa See born, American writer and novelist, noted for On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family; Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; and Peony in Love.

• February 18, 1974 –Carrie Ann Baade born, American contemporary surrealist painter and associate professor in Florida State University’s Department of Art. In 2007 she was among a group of three artists who became the first Americans ever to exhibit at the Ningbo Museum, one of the largest provincial museums in China, located outside Shanghai. The Ningbo Museum director called them "the Mayflowers" for their contributions as cultural ambassadors. She is also co-author of Cute and Creepy.

• February 18, 1974–Ruby Dhalla born, Canadian Liberal politician; Member of Parliament for Brampton-Springdale (2004-2011); she and British Columbia Conservative MP Nina Grewal became the first Sikh women to serve in the Canadian House of Commons.

• February 18, 1974–Julia “Butterfly” Hill born, American environmental activist; she lived in a 1500-year-old California redwood tree for 738 days (1997-1999) to prevent Pacific Lumber Company loggers from cutting it down; author of The Legacy of Luna, and co-author of One Makes a Difference.

• February 18, 1974–Leilani Münte born, stock car racing driver (2010-2018) and environmental activist; became an Ambassador for the National Wildlife Federation in 2008, and has been an advocate for solar and wind power. Münte has also volunteered for Save Japan Dolphins, protesting against the annual slaughter of the Taiji dolphins, since 2010.

• February 18, 1975–Bernadette Sembrano-Aguinaldo born, Filipina newscaster, investigative reporter and television host; known for her investigative work on The Correspondents, and as co-anchor of the weekday evening news for ABS-CBN news. In 2011, she was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, and continues to undergo therapy.

• February 18, 1987–Girl Scout executives change the scout uniform color from the traditional Girl Scout green to the newer Girl Scout blue.

• February 18, 2018–The STEM Gap: Though their numbers are growing, only 27 % of all U.S. students taking the AP Computer Science exam are women, and just 18% of American computer-science college degrees go to women.  Meanwhile, in Algeria, 41 % of college graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics are women. So what explains the tendency for nations that have traditionally less gender equality to have more  women in science and technology than their more gender-progressive counterparts do? According to a new paper published in Psychological Science by the psychologists Gijsbert Stoet, at Leeds Beckett University, and David Geary, at the University of Missouri, it could have to do with the fact that women in countries with higher gender inequality are simply seeking the clearest possible path to financial freedom. And often, that path leads through STEM  professions. The issue doesn’t appear to be girls’ aptitude for STEM professions. In looking at test scores across 67 countries and regions, Stoet and Geary found that girls performed about as well or better than boys did on science in most countries, and in almost all countries, girls would have been capable of college-level science and math classes if they had enrolled in them. But when it comes to their relative strengths, in almost all the countries—all except Romania and Lebanon— boys’ best subject was science, and girls’ was reading. (That is, even if an average girl was as good as an average boy at science, she was still likely to be even better at reading.) Across all countries, 24 percent of girls had science as their best subject, 25 percent of girls’ strength was math, and 51 percent excelled in reading. For boys, the percentages were 38 for science, 42 for math, and 20 for reading. And the more gender-equal the country, as measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the larger this gap between boys and girls in having science as their best subject. In this study, the percentage of girls who did excel in science or math was  larger than the number of women who were graduating with STEM degrees. That could mean there’s still something in even the most liberal societies that’s nudging women away from math and science, even when those are their best subjects.  

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• February 19, 1841–Elfrida Andrée born, Swedish organist, composer and conductor, noted for two organ symphonies, and other works for orchestra and piano; she was also active in the Swedish women’s movement.

• February 19, 1866–Mary Anderson born, American real estate developer, rancher, citrus grower and inventor of the first effective windshield wiper blade, for which she was granted a patent in November 1903.

• February 19, 1871 –Lugenia Burns Hope born, American social reformer, founder of the Neighborhood Union, the first woman-run social welfare agency for African Americans in Atlanta, Georgia.

• February 19, 1877–Gabriele Münterborn, German expressionist painter; a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Riders),a short-lived but influential group of Russian émigrés and native Germans like Wassily Kandinsky and Franc Marc.

• February 19, 1902 –Kay Boyle born, writer, political activist; she spent much of her young adulthood in Paris, leaving just as the Germans were invading during WWII; was blacklisted during the McCarthy era; then her involvement in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations got her fired from her university position, and led to a jail sentence in Oakland, CA; her short stories “The White Horses of Vienna” and “Defeat” won O. Henry Awards.

• February 19, 1917–Carson McCullers born, American author; best known for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and The Member of the Wedding.

• February 19, 1946–Karen Silkwood born, American chemical technician and labor union activist;  her job was making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods. She was the first woman at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site to be part of the union’s negotiating team, speaking about the health and safety of workers. In 1974, she testified before the Atomic Energy Commission. After discovering plutonium contamination on her person and in her home for three days, she was driving to a meeting with a New York Times reporter when she was killed in a car crash under suspicious circumstances. When her family sued Kerr-McGee, it turned into the longest trial up to that point in Oklahoma history. Kerr-McGee settled out of court for $1.38 million USD, but without admitting liability.

• February 19, 1949–Danielle Bunten Berry born as Daniel Paul Bunten, American game designer and programmer, noted for the 1984 game The Seven Cities of Gold; in 1998, awarded the Lifetime Achievement by the Computer Game Developers Association.

• February 19, 1950–Bebe Moore Campbell born, African American novelist, non-fiction writer and journalist; Singing in the Comeback Choir, What You Owe Me and Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, which won a 1992 NAACP Image Award for Literature.

• February 19, 1952–Amy Tan born, American novelist, essayist, and short story writer; best known for her novel, The Joy Luck Club.

• February 19, 1953–Cristina Fernández de Kirchner born, Argentinian lawyer and Justicialist (social democrat) politician; Vice President of Argentina since 2019; Member of the Senate of Argentina for Buenos Aires 2017-2019 (and previously 2005-2007); second woman President of Argentina (2007-2015).

• February 19, 1958–Helen Fielding born, English novelist and screenwriter, best known for her Bridget Jones series of novels and the screenplay for the film Bridget Jones’s Diary.

• February 19, 1963– The publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique reawakens the Feminist Movement in the United States as women’s organizations and consciousness raising groups spread.

• February 19, 1963–Laurell K. Hamilton born, American paranormal fiction and urban fantasy author; noted for her Anita Blake series

• February 19, 1966–Justine Bateman born, American writer, director, producer and actress; founder of FM78.tv, a digital production company, producing shorts, including Easy to Assemble and Five Minutes, which she also wrote and directed.

• February 19, 2007 – New Jersey becomes the third U.S. state to offer civil unions to same-sex couples.

• February 19, 2017 – Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said the ride-hailing company would conduct an "urgent investigation" into sexual harassment accusations made by a former employee in a blog post. Susan Fowler, former Uber software programmer, said that her manager propositioned her in chat messages. She took screenshots of the messages and showed them to human resources, but said she was told that her boss was a "high performer" and senior managers didn't want to punish him for something they saw as an "innocent mistake." Travis Kalanick would resign as CEO under pressure from top investors in June of 2017, as fallout over allegations and lawsuits concerning sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and a toxic work environment at Uber continued. He remained on the Board of Directors.  

• February 19, 2019 –Vet Girls Rock Day is launched to raise awareness of the many contributions of women veterans to the U.S. military.

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• February 20, 1784–Judith, Lady Montefiore, born Judith Barent Cohen, British linguist, musician, travel writer and philanthropist. Her father was a wealthy Ashkenazi Jew. At the time, marriages between Sephardim and Ashkenazim Jews were not approved, but Sir Moses Montefiore, from an Italian-Jewish family, was a British financier and banker, who thought this caste prejudice was hurtful to Judaism. Both the bride and groom were 28 years old when they married. It was a partnership which lasted 50 years, as Lady Montefiore traveled with her husband on all his foreign missions up to 1859, when her declining health made it impossible for her to continue. It was Lady Montefiore who directed the administration of most of their philanthropic endeavors, and her linguistic abilities were a great asset on their many journeys. She published two of her travel journals anonymously. In September, 1862, three months after celebrating their golden wedding anniversary, she died in her sleep. Sir Moses founded the Judith Lady Montefiore College in her memory. It became a Sephardic seminary for training young men as rabbis and teachers of religion. Shrinking enrollment caused the college to close its doors in the 1980s, but it was re-opened in 2005 as a college to promote advanced Torah study.

• February 20, 1805–Angelina Grimké Weld born, American abolitionist, suffragist and political activist; with her sister Sarah, only known white Southern women to take active part in the abolitionist movement; her essays and speeches are incisive arguments for ending slavery and advancing women’s rights.

• February 20, 1893–Elizabeth Holloway Marstonborn, American psychologist, attorney and author; co-developer of the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception (predecessor of the polygraph), and one of the inspirations for her husband William Moulton Marston’s comic book character, Wonder Woman.

• February 20, 1893–Gabrielle Petit born, Belgian Red Cross volunteer and spy for the British Secret Service during WWI, arrested by the German military and executed by firing squad.

• bruary 20, 1902–Katharine Way born, pioneer in developing techniques for the retrieval, evaluation and dissemination of information on nuclear structure; she earned a Ph.D. in nuclear theory at University of North Carolina (1938), developed Way-Wigner formula for fission produced decay; she worked for National Bureau of Standards (1947-1968).  Way moved to Washington, D.C., in 1949, where she went to work for the National Bureau of Standards. Four years later, she persuaded the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council to establish the Nuclear Data Project (NDP), an organization with special responsibility for gathering and disseminating nuclear data, under her leadership. The NDP moved to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1964, but Way remained its head until 1968. Beginning in 1964, the NDP published a journal, Nuclear Data Sheets, to disseminate the information that the NDP had gathered. This was joined the following year by a second journal, Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables. She also persuaded the editors of Nuclear Physics to add keywords to the subject headings of articles to facilitate cross-referencing. In 1968, she became an adjunct professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, although she continued as editor of Nuclear Data Sheets until 1973, and Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables until 1982. In later life she became interested in the health problems of seniors, and lobbied for improved health care for them, which led to the founding of Durham Seniors for Better Health in the City of Medicine.

• February 20, 1903–Aniela Jaffé born, Swiss psychoanalyst and author; worked with Carl Jung. She was the author of several books, including The Myth of Meaning, and Parapsychology, Individuation, Nazism. She also recorded and edited Jung’s semi-autobiographical book Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Some experts believe that Jung only wrote the first three chapters, and it was Jaffé who actually wrote most of the rest of the book, from recordings and her notes on conversations with Jung.

• February 20, 1918 –Leonore Annenberg born, American businesswoman, philanthropist, former U.S. Chief of Protocol (1981-1982). After leaving her post at the State Department, Lee Annenberg began to promote cultural appreciation in the United States, and continued to donate money to worthy causes. In 2001, Annenberg was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy.

• February 20, 1926 –Dame Gillian Lynne born, British ballerina, choreographer and theatre-television director; choreographer for Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.

• February 20, 1928 –Jean Kennedy Smith born, American diplomat, U.S. Ambassador to Ireland (1993-1998), made on honorary citizen of Ireland in 1998 in recognition of her aid in the Northern Ireland peace process; founder of Very Special Arts; received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

• February 20, 1935 – Caroline Mikkelsen, Danish explorer working with her husband on a Norwegian expedition, becomes the first woman to stand on an Antarctic island, five miles off the coast of Antarctica.

• February 20, 1935 –Ellen Gilchrist born, American author and poet; she won the 1984 National Book Award for her short story collection, Victory Over Japan.

• February 20, 1937–Nancy Wilson born, versatile African American singer whose career spanned over five decades; she won Grammy Awards in 2005 and 2007 for Best Jazz Vocal Album, and a Grammy in 1965 for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording. She received an award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in 1993, the NAACP Image Award/Hall of Fame Award in 1998, and was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1999. She is the co-founder of the Nancy Wilson Foundation, which exposes inner-city children to the country. In 2005, Wilson was honored as a Civil Rights activist, and inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. She said, "This award means more to me than anything else I have ever received."

• February 20,1941–Buffy Sainte-Marie born, Canadian-American Cree singer-songwriter, producer, and social activist, founder of the Cradleboard Teaching Project.

• February 20, 1963–Mariliza Xenogiannakopoulou born, Greek lawyer and politician; Member of Greek Parliament (2004-2007); Minister for Health and Social Solidarity (2009-2010).

• February 20, 1971–Calpernia Addams born, American author, performer and activist for transgender rights; co-founder of Deep Stealth Productions in Hollywood.

• February 20, 1988–Rihanna born Robyn Rihanna Fenty, R&B singer-songwriter from Barbados. She has sold more than 20 million albums, and has a Billboard record for youngest solo artist with eleven #1 singles. Noted for her studio album, Rated R, recorded after she was assaulted during an argument with her boyfriend at the time, Chris Brown, who was charged and found guilty of assault and making criminal threats. The songs for Rated R have notably darker lyrical themes. In 2006, she started Believe Foundation to help terminally ill children, and has staged a number of fundraising concerts for the foundation; also contributed fashion designs to the 2008 H&M Fashion Against AIDS project, and was one of the stars who helped raise $100 million USD for cancer research during the “Stand Up to Cancer” television special. In 2012, she honored her grandparents by launching the Clara - Lionel Foundation, which funded the Clara Braithwaite Center for Oncology and Nuclear Medicine at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados, which hosts an annual Diamond Ball fundraiser, and funds emergency response and relief efforts for national disasters, especially hurricanes in the Caribbean. The foundation is assisting in retrofitting homes to better resist disaster damage, and, in partnership with International Planned Parenthood Federation and Engineers Without Borders, to make reproductive health clinics in the Caribbean more resilient to disasters. She also gave $100,000 to the food bank for victims of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

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Sources

• http://www.nwhp.org/events/february/
• http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/important-dates-us-womens-history
• http://www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/february.htm
• http://www.onthisday.com/day/february/
• Women Trailblazers of California: Pioneers to the Present, © 2012 by Gloria G. Harris and Hannah S. Cohen — The History Press
• todayinsci.com
• A Book of Days for the Literary Year, edited by Neal T. Jones
• The Music-Lover’s Birthday Book, Metropolitan Museum of Art

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