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

Welcome to WOW2!

WOW2 is a thrice-monthly sister blog to This Week in the War on Women. This edition covers women and events from February 21 through February 29. The Early March WOW2 will post on Saturday, March 14.

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.

February is Black History Month, and there are a number of outstanding trailblazing black women here — from the U.S., the Caribbean and Africa, like these — their inspiring stories are included in this edition of WOW2.

For the entire previous LATE FEBRUARY list as of 2019, click HERE:

www.dailykos.com/...

Otherwise, what you’re seeing on this Late February 2020 page are the new-to-WOW2 people and events discovered, or additional information or new visuals, found since last year.

This Week in the War on Women will post shortly, so be sure to go there next and catch up on the latest dispatches from the frontlines.

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

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

Late February’s Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History

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February 21, 1621 –Rebecca Nurse born, the first victim of the Salem witch trials in America.

February 21, 1846 – Sarah G Bagley, the first recorded woman telegrapher, becomes superintendent of the Lowell, MA telegraph office; she was also the organizer and president of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association.

February 21, 1855–Alice Freeman Palmer born, American educator who was the co-founder in 1881 (and first president) of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, which by 1884 had grown into a national organization and was renamed the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She was president of Wellesley College from 1881 to 1887, when she resigned to get married. She became a nationally known public speaker, advocating for opening college education to women, using her image as a “respected, financially independent, successful academic woman” to advance the idea of a ‘New Woman.’ She was later Dean of Women at the newly founded University of Chicago (1892-1895), where she doubled the percentage of the woman students at the school from 24% to 48%, which resulted in a backlash, mainly from male faculty members. Discouraged by the faculty and staff's response, she resigned in 1895, and resumed her career on the lecture circuit. She died in Paris at age 47, of a heart attack, after emergency surgery to remove a bowel obstruction, in 1902.

February 21, 1866–Lucy B. Hobbs is the first woman to graduate from dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.

February 21, 1878–Mirra Alfassa born in France, spiritual guru, occultist and collaborator of the Indian yogi, guru and nationalist Sri Aurobindo, who considered her to be of equal yogic stature to him. Alfassa, called “The Mother” by her followers, founded the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, and established Auroville as a universal town.

February 21, 1888–Clemence Daneborn as Winifred Ashton, English novelist and playwright;her first novel, Regiment of Women, was a semi-veiled treatment of lesbian relationships; noted for A Bill of Divorcement, Third Person Singular and Enter Sir John, coauthored with Helen Simpson.

February 21, 1903 –Anaïs Nin born in France of Cuban parents, writer, began 69 volumes of journals with a letter to her father; noted for the novels Delta of Venus and Little Birds.

February 21, 1909 –Helen Octavia Dickens born, daughter of a former slave, and the first African-American woman to be admitted to the American College of Surgeons. She was a doctor, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and an associate dean of medicine. At Crane Junior College, she sat at the front of her classes, to avoid the racist comments and gestures aimed at her by fellow students. She earned a B.S. from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1932, and her M.D. in 1934. She was one of two women in her class and was the only African-American woman in her class. After her residency at Chicago’s Provident Hospital, she worked at the Aspiranto Health Home in North Philadelphia for 7 years, then spent a year at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She passed the board examinations and became the first female African American board-certified Ob/gyn in Philadelphia. In 1943, Dickens was accepted into a residency at Harlem Hospital in New York City. She finished her residency in 1946, and was certified by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in the same year. In 1948, she became director of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Philadelphia’s racially segregated Mercy Douglass hospital, where she remained until 1967. After leaving Mercy Douglass, she opened a clinic at the University of Pennsylvania for teen parents, offering group counseling, therapy, education, and prenatal care. Dickens also became dean of admissions (1967-1972), increasing the number of minority students at UPenn from three to 64.

February 21, 1914 –Jean Frances Tatlock born, American physician and psychiatrist; a member of the Communist Party who wrote for their publication, Western Worker; when she began a relationship with physicist Robert Oppenheimer in 1936, her Communist associations brought her under surveillance by the FBI and her phone was tapped; stress and clinical depression led to her suicide in January, 1944.

February 21, 1915–Claudia Cumberbatch Jones born in Trinidad, came to the U.S. as a child, American author, Communist and black nationalist; wrote a column called “Half the World,” for the Daily Worker; when deported from the U.S. in 1955, she moved to the UK, and founded Britain’s first major black newspaper, The West Indian Gazette, in 1958; noted for “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!”

February 21, 1924 –Thelma Estrin born, American computer scientist and engineer, pioneer in expert systems and biomedical engineering, applying computer technology to medical research and healthcare; IEEE Centennial Medal (1984).

February 21, 1924 – Dorothy Blum born, American cryptanalyst and computer scientist who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) and its predecessors from 1944 to 1980, becoming the first woman in the NSA’s management hierarchy in 1972, as chief of NSA Computer Operations.

February 21, 1927–Erma Bombeck, humorist and columnist, began writing obituaries and columns on gardening, eventually wrote books of humor, supported the Equal Rights Amendment, appeared on “Good Morning America” for 11 years. She published 15 books, including the best-seller, The Grass Is Always Greener over the Septic Tank.

February 21, 1933 – Nina Simone born, iconic singer, songwriter, arranger and civil rights activist. Her song,"Mississippi Goddam," in response to Medgar Evers’ murder and the Birmingham Alabama church bombing that killed 4 pre-teen black girls and blinded a 5th, was boycotted in parts of the South and banned at some radio stations.

February 21, 1936 –Barbara Jordan born, American lawyer, civil rights leader and Democratic politician; because of segregation, she was not allowed to be a student at the University of Texas at Austin, so she attended Texas Southern University, an historically-black institution, majoring in political science and history. At Texas Southern, Jordan was a national champion debater, defeating opponents from Yale and Brown and tying Harvard University. She graduated magna cum laude in 1956. After unsuccessfully running for a seat in the Texas State House of Representatives, she was elected to the Texas State Senate in 1966, becoming the first African-American state senator since 1883 and the first black woman to serve in that body (1967-1973). She then was the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1973-1978) from a Southern state. President Lyndon Johnson used a bit of his influence to see that she served on the House Judiciary Committee. By 1975, Speaker of the House Carl Albert had appointed her to the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. In 1976, Jordan became the first woman to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. In the U.S. House, she sponsored expanding coverage of the Voting Rights Act, and voted to impeach Richard Nixon. In all, she sponsored or co-sponsored over 300 bills, many of which became laws. Jordan retired from politics in 1979, and taught ethics for 17 years as an adjunct professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, ironically at the University of Texas at Austin, where segregation had kept her from being a student. Jordan was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1990. She was again a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in 1992. In 1994, President Clinton awarded Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the NAACP presented her with the Spingarn Medal. She suffered from leukemia, but died from pneumonia complications in January, 1996, at the age of 59. President Bill Clinton revealed he wanted to nominate her to the U.S. Supreme Court, but by the time the opportunity arose, her health was already in decline.

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February 21, 1942–Margarethe von Trotta born, German film director, a notable member of the New German Cinema movement, considered Germany’s foremost postwar woman director; her Sister films, Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness (Schwestern oder die Balance des Glücks, Marianne and Juliane (Die Bleierne Zeit, and Three Sisters (Paura e amore) established her career.

February 21, 1947–Olympia Snowe (Republican-Maine) House 1979-1995, Senate 1995-2013, centrist Republican, health care access and abortion rights advocate;cited extreme partisanship causing Congressional dysfunction when she retired; now co-chair of Bipartisan Policy Center Commission on Political Reform.

February 21, 1950–Sahle-Work Zewdeborn, Ethiopian career diplomat; President of Ethiopia since 2018; the first woman to hold the office, she was elected unanimously by the Federal Parliamentary Assembly. Previously, she was Under Secretary-General, Head of the United Nations Office to the African Union (1918), and Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi (2011-2018). She was the second Ethiopian woman to serve as an ambassador, appointed to embassies in France, Tunisia and Morocco, Djbouti, and Senegal, as well as serving as her country’s Permanent Representative to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and as Permanent Representative to UNESCO.

February 21, 1954–Christina Rees born, British Labour Co-operative politician and barrister; Member of Parliament for Neath since 2015.

February 21, 1967–Sari Essayah born, Finnish Christian Democratic politician; member of the European Parliament (2009-2014); party secretary for the Christian Democrats (2007-2009);Member of the Finnish Parliament (2003-2007 and current member since 2015) Former race walker who won the 1993 World Championship, and the 1994 European Championship, as well as holding seven Finnish national records.

February 21, 2017 –A federal judge temporarily blocked Texas from cutting off Medicaid money to Planned Parenthood over secretly recorded videos released by anti-abortion activists in 2015. The activists claimed that the videos showed Planned Parenthood officials trying to illegally profit from the sale of fetal tissue, but U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin said that Texas health authorities had not presented “even a scintilla of evidence” to justify punishing Planned Parenthood and denying Medicaid patients the right to go to the group’s 34 health centers in Texas. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the state would appeal the court’s temporary injunction.

February 21, 2019–Over 50 girls are missing from a Nigerian science and technical schoolafter an attack by Boko Haram militants. “Out of the 926 students in the school, over 50 are still unaccounted for,” Abdullahi Bego, a spokesman for Governor Ibrahim Gaidam, said in an emailed statement two days after the attack. He said there was no clear evidence yet that the girls had been “taken hostage by the terrorists.” The military and other security forces are looking for the missing girls. The state borders Borno state in the African nation’s northeast, the center of Boko Haram’s nine-year insurgency. The group caused an international outcry when it kidnapped more than 200 girls in the Borno town of Chibok in 2014. and again when they took 100 girls from the town of Dapchi in 2018.

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February 22, 705–Empress Wu Zetian, who became the de facto ruler of China from 690 to 705, after her husband Emperor Gaizong’s debilitating stroke and his later death, is forced to abdicate after a successful coup. Wu Zeitan was the only woman in Chinese history to wear the yellow robes as monarch which had been reserved for the sole use of emperors.

February 22, 1805– Sarah Fuller Flower Adams born, English poet and hymn lyricist, best known for writing the words for the hymn “Nearer, My God, To Thee.”

February 22, 1822–Isabella Beecher Hooker born, suffragist and lecturer; one of the founders of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, and of the Connecticut Women’s Association and Society for the Study of Political Science. After the U.S. Civil War, with legal advice from her husband, she wrote a bill to give property rights to married women, and presented it to Connecticut General Assembly, every year until it passed in 1877.

February 22, 1876 –Zitkala-Sha (Red Bird) born, also known as Getrude Bonnin, writer, editor, musician, teacher and Sioux Indian activist of the Yankton Dakota. In 1913, she wrote the libretto and lyrics for the first American Indian opera, The Sun Dance Opera. She was co-founder of the National Council of American Indians in 1926, a group which lobbied for U.S. citizenship and civil rights for Indians, and served as NCAM’s first President (1926-1938).

February 22, 1889–Olave Baden-Powell born, wife of Robert Baden-Powell, becomes English Chief Commissioner of the reorganized Girl Guides (1915-1918), then Chief Guide (1918).

February 22, 1892–Edna St. Vincent Millay born, American poet and playwright; in 1923, she was the third woman to win Pulitzer Poetry Prize for The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver and Other Poems. She also wrote prose pieces under the pen name Nancy Boyd to pay the bills. In 1943, she was the second woman to be awarded the Robert Frost Medal for “distinguished lifetime service to American poetry.”

February 22, 1892 –Thillaiaadi Valliammaiborn, South African Tamil activist, worked with Gandhi during protests in South Africa; she fell ill soon after being sentenced to three months hard labor and refused early release, then died soon after serving her term.

February 22, 1900–Meridal LeSueur born, poet, short fiction writer, activist and essayist on unfair labor conditions and land rights of Southwest and Minnesota Native American tribes. After studying dance and physical fitness, in the early 1920s, she moved to New York City to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Acting, and lived in an anarchist commune. By 1925, she was a member of the Communist Party. She found work in Hollywood as an extra and a stunt woman in silent pictures, but also continued to write articles for newspapers and journals, and children’s books which became popular, including biographies like Nancy Hanks of Wilderness Road, and Sparrow Hawk. She was blacklisted in the 1950s as a communist, and taught writing classes in her mother’s home. In the 1960s, she travelled the U.S., attending and writing about the student protests, and in the 1970s, she lived among the Navajo people in Arizona. Her work was discovered by feminists in the 1970s, and enjoyed a revival. Le Sueur’s unpublished novel, The Girl, written in the 1930s, was finally published in 1978. Noted for her memorable 1932 portrait of women during the Great Depression, “Women on the Bread Lines.”

February 22, 1906 – Willa Brown Chapell born, African American aviator, civil rights activist and lobbyist; first black woman officer in the U.S Civil Air Patrol; co-founder with Cornelius Coffey of a school of aeronautics, the first private flight training academy owned and operated by African Americans.

February 22, 1906 –Constance Stokes born, modernist Australian painter; one of only two women artists included in a major traveling exhibition of Australian artists in the 1950s which was shown in Canada, the UK and Italy.

Head of a Young Girl - by Constance Stokes

February 22, 1917–Jane Bowles born, American playwright-novelist, best known for In the Summer House.

February 22, 1926–World Thinking Day is launched by the Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, as a day of international friendship, and speaking out on issues affecting girls and young women, and fundraising projects.

February 22, 1933–Sheila Hancock born, English theatre, television and radio actress; author of a memoir, The Two of Us, about her marriage to actor John Thaw, and Just Me, her account of coming to terms with widowhood after his death in 2002. In 2014, she published her debut novel, Miss Carter’s War. She read Maya Angelou’s poem “Touched by an Angel” at an ‘I Do to Equal Marriage’ event in 2014 celebrating the legalization of same-sex marriage in England and Wales. She is a Patron of the London HIV charity The Food Chain, and worked with the Kids Company, a charity for disadvantaged inner city children, and young ex-offenders.

February 22, 1937–Joanna Russ born, American science fiction and fantasy author, feminist essayist and activist; known for her novels, Picnic on Paradise; The Female Man; and The Zanzibar Cat. Also known for her non-fiction books, How to Suppress Women’s Writing, describing the systematic social forces that stifle widespread recognition of the work of women authors, and To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction.

February 22, 1959–Bronwyn Oliver born, Australian sculptor, noted for her large metal sculptures commissioned as public art.

February 22, 1966–Rachel Dratch born, American comedian and writer; part of the improvisational theatre group The Second City in Chicago, and a cast member on the TV show Saturday Night Live (1999-2006); author of Girl Walks Into a Bar: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters and a Midlife Miracle.

February 22, 1967–Playwright Barbara Garson’s satire MacBird premieres in New York City.

February 22, 1969–Barbara Jo Rubin becomes the first woman jockey to win a U.S. thoroughbred horse race, riding Cohesian in the 9^th race at the Charles Town Race Track in West Virginia.

February 22, 2001–A U.N. war crimes tribunal convicts three Bosnian Serbs charged with rape and torture, in the first wartime sexual enslavement case to go before an international court. Some of the evidence used in preparation of the indictments issued by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague was gathered by Serbian human rights campaigner Natasa Kandic.

February 22, 2017–The Trump administration rescinded Obama-era anti-discrimination protections for transgender students. Donald Trump overruled Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ concerns about the move. The Obama administration had ordered schools to let transgender students use public school restrooms corresponding to their gender identity, and Democrats immediately criticized Trump for rolling back the policy. “No student should face discrimination at school because of who they are,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) said in a statement. “Transgender students have the same right to a safe environment at school and in their community as everyone else.”

February 22, 2019 –The Trump administration issued a new rule thatexcludes abortion providers and abortion referrers from Title X funding, and which would re-direct almost all of the family planning program’s $286 million budget to faith-based reproductive health groups. The rule took effect 60 days after it was published in its final form on the federal register. Under the rule, Planned Parenthood, which has served 40% of Title X patients, and all other similar providers, can’t conduct abortions or issue referrals at the same facilities it uses for other reproductive services, such as STD and breast cancer screenings. Since its inception in 1970, Title X has been a bedrock, cost-effective health care program helping ensure that poor and low-income individuals have access to critical family planning care, including a full range of contraceptives, pelvic exams, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, and screening for breast and cervical cancer. The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, and Cedar River Clinics, represented by the ACLU, filed a challenge to the changed rule. A separate lawsuit was filed by Bob Ferguson, the State Attorney General of Washington.

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February 23, 1539 –Salima Sultan Begum born, fourth wife of the Mughal Emperor Akbar; she was highly educated, and known for her love of reading and extensive library. She became a senior-ranking wife, wielding much influence with both her husband and his son Janhangir, as well as being a political power in the Mughal court. She was also a poet, who wrote under the pseudonym Makhfi (Hidden One), which was later also used as a pen name by her great-great-granddaughter, Princess Zeb-un-Nissa.

February 23, 1787–Emma Hart Willard, American educator and women’s right activist; founder of the first American school for secondary and higher education for women, the Troy Female Seminary, which taught girls mathematics, classical languages, history, geography and the sciences, as well offering training as teachers; now called Emma Willard School, a private college preparatory school for women.

February 23, 1868 –Anna Hofman-Uddgren born, Swedish cabaret and music hall performer who later worked as a theatre director, and then became the first woman to direct a film in Sweden, the 1911 silent picture, Stockholmsfrestelser. She also made silent film versions of August Strinberg’s Fadren (The Father) and Fröken Julie (Miss Julie) in 1912.

February 23, 1879 –Agnes Arber born, British botanist and author; noted for her studies of comparative anatomy of plants, especially monocotyledons (flowering plants with embryos bearing a single seed leaf, called a cotyledon); her first book, Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution, became a standard text. She was the first woman botanist to be made a member of the Royal Society. Included among her later works are Water Plants: A Study of Aquatic Angiosperms, Monocotyledons, and The Gramineae: A Study of Cereal, Bamboo and Grass.

February 23, 1889 –Musidora born as Jeanne Roques; French actress, silent film director and screenwriter; she became a silent film star playing a vampire in the 10-part film serial, Les Vampires (1915-1916). She produced and directed ten films, but only Soleil et Ombre (Sun and Shadow– 1922) and La Terre des Taureaux (The Land of Bulls -1924) have survived. One of her lost films was La vagabonda (The Vagabond – 1924), which she co-wrote with Colette, based on the author’s novel of the same name.

February 23, 1892 –Agnes Smedley born, American journalist and novelist; known for her semi-autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth, and her sympathetic reporting on the Chinese Communist forces during the Chinese Civil War (1927-1937, resumed 1945-1949). She was also an advocate for women’s rights, birth control and children’s welfare.

February 23, 1900 –Elinor Warren born, composer, gifted pianist, wrote art songs, major orchestral works: “The Harp Weaver,”“The Legend of King Arthur” and “Crystal Lake.”

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February 23, 1901 –Ruth Rowland Nichols born, American aviation pioneer; the only woman pilot to simultaneously hold speed, altitude, and distance world records.

Ruth Roland Nichols, next to a Crosley Radio Lockheed Vega, in 1930

February 23, 1904 –Helen Nearing born, determined to live a more simple life, she and husband Scott learned better techniques for surviving independently, lectured on ‘The Good Life’ practices, based on their Maine homestead and organic garden.

February 23, 1915 –Nevada Bill AB-11, turning back the state’s residency requirements for divorce from one year to just six months, is signed into law by Governor Emmet Boyle, paving the way for Reno to become the “Divorce Capital of America,” a $5 million-a-year industry in the 1930s, after the residency requirement was lowered again in 1931, to a mere 6 weeks.

Vintage postcard from Reno, “Divorce Capital of America”

February 23, 1923 – Mary Francis Shura born, American author of over 50 novels; wrote children’s books like her Kids of the Neighborhood series; and gothic, romance, historical fiction and suspense novels, mainly for teen readers. She used several pen names, including M.F Craig, Alexis Hill, and Mary S. Craig. Elected President of the Mystery Writers of America in 1990.

February 23, 1936 –Sylvia Chase born, American broadcast journalist; correspondent (1979-1985) for ABC’s 20/20; after working as a news anchor at KRON in San Francisco (1985- 1990), she co-anchored Prime Time Live (1991-2001), then moved to PBS, working on the program, Now with Bill Moyers (2002-2004).

February 23, 1947 –Pia Kjærsgaard born, Danish politician; leader of the right-centrist Danish People’s Party (1995-2012); Member of Parliament since 1984, and the first woman Speaker of the Danish Parliament, from 2015 to the present.

February 23, 1950–Rebecca Newberger Goldsteinborn, Americanphilosopher and author; noted for the “mattering theory” introduced in her novel The Mind-Body Problem.

February 23, 1954–Rajani Thiranagamaborn, Tamil physician, human rights activist and feminist; she and her sister Nirmala became involved as students with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE). In 1982, while Rajani was in Britain at the Liverpool Medical School for postgraduate studies in anatomy, Nirmala was arrested under Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act during the civil war in which the Tamil insurgents were fighting for an independent Tamil state. Rajani launched an international campaign for her sister’s release. She joined human rights groups that were exposing the atrocities in Sri Lanka, and grassroots organizations campaigning for women’s rights and ending discrimination against Black people in Britain. Returning to Sri Lanka, she began to feel that all the violence was wrong, and began criticizing the narrow nationalism of the LTTE, and started collecting evidence of human rights violation and atrocities committed by the LTTE, the Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front, the Indian Peace Keeping Force and the Sri Lankan government forces. She co-authored a book, The Broken Palmyra, documenting the violence in 1989. A few weeks after its publication, she was shot to death by a gunman while cycling home from work. The LTTE and the EPRLF have both been suspected of the killing.

February 23, 1956–Sandra Osborne born, Scottish Labour politician; Member of Parliament for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (1997-2015); served on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (2005–2010 + 2013-2015); was a member of the Defence Select Committee (2010-2013); and also a member of the Council of Europe.

February 23, 1965–Constance Baker Motley is elected as Manhattan Borough president, the highest elective office held by a black woman in a major American city up to that time. She later became the first African-American woman appointed to the federal judiciary.

February 23, 1969–Martine Croxallborn, British media journalist; she began her career at BBC radio in 1991, then became one of BBC television’s news presenters. She was the main BBC World News presenter on-camera continuously for two and half hours during the Paris attacks in November 2015 in which 130 people were killed, and 413 people were injured. Croxall was highly praised for her professionalism, and her skillful coordination of reports coming in live from correspondents at the scenes of the attacks, sorting through conflicting reports, and clarifying what was unsubstantiated, and what was confirmed.

February 23, 2003–Norah Jones wins 5 Grammy Awards for her album Come Away With Me, whichtied her with Lauryn Hill and Alicia Keys for most Grammy Awards received by a female artist in one night.

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February 23, 2011– The Obama administration said it will no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriage.

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February 24, 1604–Arcangela Tarabottiborn as Elena Cassandra, Italian nun and writer; her health problems as a child caused her father to send her at the age of 11 to the Benedictine Convent of Sant’Anna. Monachization, placing a child in a monastery or convent, especially by force, was a common practice, often used to solve the problem of daughters deemed “unmarriageable.” It was a major theme in Tarabotti’s writings. She became Archangela, taking her first vows at 16, and her final vows in 1623, when she was 19, making her monastic status permanent. During her early years in the cloister, Tarabotti was rebellious and outspoken, refusing to wear the religious habits or cut her hair until directly ordered to do so by Catholic Cardinal and Patriarch of Venice Federico Baldissera Cornaro. She wrote of Cardinal Cornaro, “He made me amend my vanities. I cut off my hair, but I did not uproot my emotions. I reformed my life, but my thoughts flourish rampantly, and just like my shorn hair, grow all the more." She wrote that living like a nun, she was “living a lie.” Most enclosed women lived isolated from the rest of society, prohibited by Canonical law from interacting with people outside the cloister. Tarabotti educated herself, reading and writing a great deal during her years in the convent. She also managed to circulate her works among an impressive network of correspondents who were writers, scientists and political figures, in direct disobedience of Church officials. Tarabotti wrote at least seven works, and five were published during her lifetime. She frequently compared the number of women followers of Jesus in the New Testament with the increasing limitation of women’s roles within the Catholic Church, and argued that women should have more educational opportunities and larger roles in the church and in society. She is the only woman writer in Venice documented to have the patronage of Giovanni Francisco Loredan, founder of the Accademia degli Incogniti. Her Letters Familiar and Formal, when she had them published,show the extent of her network of powerful allies in Northern Italy and France, which probably helped protect her from retaliation for her outspoken criticisms of the church and society. Her text, Paternal Tyranny, scathing and deeply subversive for the day,was not published until two years after her death, and was added to the Index librorum prohibitorum, the banned books list of the church, in 1661.

February 24, 1827–Lydia E. Becker born, pioneer in the British women’s suffrage movement; amateur in astronomy and botany who devised a method to dry plants so they retain their original colour, and advocate for including girls in scientific education, arguing for a national non-gendered education system; founder of Manchester Women’s Suffrage Committee in 1867, first group of its kind in England; in 1869, she was a leader in a successful campaign to secure the vote for women in municipal elections, and granting them inclusion on school boards; in 1870, she's one of four women elected to the Manchester School Board; co-founder of the Women’s Suffrage Journal (1870-1890), with Jessie Boucherett, which became the most widely read British publication on women’s suffrage, publishing speeches, and the editors’ correspondence with supporters and opponents. She differed from many other feminists, arguing more strenuously for the voting rights of unmarried women. Women connected to husbands and stable sources of income, Becker believed, were less desperately in need of the vote than widows and single women. This attitude made her a target of frequent ridicule in newspaper commentary and editorial cartoons.

February 24, 1837 – Rosalia de Castro born, major Galician Romantic poet and author (Galicia is a region of Spain), who wrote mostly in her native language, Galego; May 17, 1863, the publication date of her first poetry collection, is now celebrated as Día das Letras Galegas (Galician Literature Day), an official holiday in the Autonomous Community of Galicia.

February 24, 1864–Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the first black American woman to earn a medical degree, from New England Female Medical College; her Book of Medical Discourses may be the first medical publication by an African American.

February 24, 1869–Zara DuPont born, American suffragist and member of the wealthy DuPont family. In 1910, she worked unsuccessfully to include women's suffrage in the reformed state constitution of Ohio. In 1911, she joined the Cuyahoga Woman's Suffrage Association, going on the serve as the first Vice President of the Ohio Woman Suffrage Association. Du Pont worked with Florence Ellinwood Allen (the first U.S. woman to serve on a state supreme court) on the Ohio portion of Maud Wood Park’s national tour of U.S. colleges, which she began in 1900 to stir up support for suffrage among a new generation of women, resulting in the founding of the National College Equal Suffrage Association. DuPont was also a civil rights and trade union activist, specifically as a pro-labor shareholder activist at Bethlehem Steel and Montgomery Ward.

February 24, 1877–Ettie Rout born in Tasmania, but raised in New Zealand from the age of seven. She was a social reformer who founded the WWI New Zealand Volunteer Sisterhood, women volunteers who went to Egypt, and later to France, to aid the ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand troops). When Rout discovered how wide-spread venereal disease was among the soldiers, and how ineffectual the military’s torturous after-sex treatment was, she launched a campaign in France to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, including inspecting French brothels and rating them for newly-arriving soldiers. She also put together a safe sex kit, which was distributed by the British and Australian Armys. By 1917, even the New Zealand Army, which had initially resisted her idea, made free distribution of her preventative kits compulsory. Ironically, this made Rout persona non grata in New Zealand, where she was made into such a scandalous figure that she was vilified in the press by the New Zealand Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and publishing her name became subject to a ₤100 fine. Even after the war was over, her 1922 book, Safe Marriage:A Return to Sanity, a manual of contraception and prophylactics for women, was banned in New Zealand. It was published in Australia, and in Britain, where it became a best-seller. The British Medical Journal tepidly recommended the book for medical men and women, warning that "many readers will disagree with the author's point of view, and some will feel grave misgivings about the effect of her teaching; but none can doubt the sincerity of her purpose." Ettie Rout was aware that she was ahead of her time. She knew author H.G. Wells, and they exchanged letters. She wrote to him in 1922 that "It's a mixed blessing to be born too soon." Following her only postwar return to New Zealand in 1936, Ettie Rout, suffering from malaria, died at age 59 from a self-administered overdose of quinine at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.

February 24, 1887–Mary Ellen Chase born, American educator, scholar and author, Windswept, and Edge of Darkness.

February 24, 1900–Irmgard Bartenieff born, German-American dancer and physical therapist, leading pioneer of dance therapy.

February 24, 1907–Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer born, a South African museum official who discovers a modern-day coelacanth in 1938, a fish found in fossils from 200 million years ago, but long considered extinct.

February 24, 1912–Henrietta Szold founds Hadassah, the largest Jewish organization in American history, focus on healthcare and education in Israel and U.S.

February 24, 1932–Brazilian women winthe right to vote.

Brazilian political cartoon about women voting

February 24, 1934–Renata Scotto born, Italian bel canto soprano and opera director.

YouTube Video

February 24, 1942 – Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak born, Indian literary scholar and feminist; founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society; noted for her essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Spivak was awarded the 2012 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for “speaking for the humanities against intellectual colonialism.”

February 24, 1948–Jayaram Jayalalithaa born, Indian AIADMK politician and film actress; served as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu (1991-2016); general secretary (1989-2016) of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam(AIADMK), a Dravidian party based on the ideology of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy; during the 1960s, she was dubbed “Queen of the Tamil Cinema” and appeared in 140 films.

February 24, 1951– Laimdota Straujuma born, Latvian politician and economist; the first woman Prime Minister of Latvia (2014-2016); Minister of Agriculture (2011-2014); Secretary of State of the Ministry for Regional Development and Local Government (2007-2010).

February 24, 1951– Helen Shaver born, Canadian actress, film and television director. Summer’s End was her TV movie directorial debut in 1999, which was nominated for Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing in a Children’s Special, and for Outstanding Directing for a Children’s Special. Shaver has also directed a number of television shows and made-for-cable movies. She won a Gemini award in 2003 for Best Direction in a Dramatic Series for the Just Cause series episode "Death's Details."

February 24, 1952–Judith Ortiz Cofer born, Puerto Rican American author; 1990 Pushcart Prize for “More Room”; she was the first Hispanic to win the O Henry Prize, for her story, “The Latin Deli.”

February 24, 1954–Aurora Levins Morales born, Puerto Rican Jewish American writer and poet; significant in Latina and Third World feminism, and other social justice movements, including advocating for people with disabilities. She lives with multiple disabilities and chronic illnesses, including epilepsy, several brain injuries, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue and multiple chemical sensitivities. After a stroke, she was wheelchair bound from 2007 to 2009, when she traveled to Cuba and underwent extensive treatment. Known for Medicine Stories: Essays for Radicals and Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas.

February 24, 1956 – Judith Butler born, American philosopher, gender theorist and LGBT rights activist; her book, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, has had an impact on feminist and LGBT scholarship.

February 24, 1956 –Paula Zahn born, American journalist and newscaster; she is currently the host of the true crime documentary series, On the Case with Paula Zahn.

February 24, 1967–Jocelyn Bell Burnell makes the first discovery of a pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star.

February 24, 1982–Stella Young born, Australian comedian, journalist and disability rights activist. She was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, and used a wheelchair for most of her life. Young became an activist at the age of 14 when she audited the accessibility of the main street businesses of her hometown. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Public Relations and a diploma in Education in 2004, and worked as a secondary school teacher, then on public programs at the Melbourne Museum, before becoming the editor of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s online magazine Ramp Up. In a Ramp Up editorial in July 2012 she deconstructed society's habit of turning disabled people into what she called "inspiration porn." After she began appearing in comedy showcases, she made her festival debut at the 2014 Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and won Best Newcomer for her show Tales from the Crip. She was a member of the boards of the Ministerial Advisory Council for the Department of Victorian Communities, Victorian Disability Advisory Council, the Youth Disability Advocacy Service and Women with Disabilities Victoria. She died at age 32 in 2014, and was posthumously inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women for her work as a “journalist, comedian and fierce disability activist.”

February 24, 2015 – Hot-Yoga empire founder Bikram Choudhury, 69, is facing six civil lawsuits filed by women accusing him of rape or assault, The New York Times reported. The most recent accusation was filed by Canadian Jill Lawler, who accused Choudhury of raping her during a teacher-training session in 2010. The first of the complaints surfaced in 2013. It triggered a series of other accusations ranging from assault to harassment. Choudhury denied doing anything wrong. In 2016, Choudhury was ordered to pay a 6.5 million dollar judgment. In 2017, a Los Angeles judge issued a warrant for Choudhury’s arrest on the grounds that he had fled the country without paying his former lawyer, Minakshi Jafa-Boden, the $7 million USD he owed her in compensation and punitive damages after he fired her. She gained control of his U.S. yoga business, but Choudhury was still training teachers in Spain and Mexico as of 2019.

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February 25, 1570–Pope Pius V issued papal bull Regnans in Excelsis (reigning on high) declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime", to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her: "We charge and command all and singular the nobles, subjects, peoples and others afore said that they do not dare obey her orders, mandates and laws. Those who shall act to the contrary we include in the like sentence of excommunication." It sanctioned the right of Catholics to “deprive her of her throne.” Elizabeth’s limited tolerance of Catholic worship (in private) was ended after two rebellions in 1569: the “First Desmond Rebellion” in Ireland, and the “Northern Rebellion” by Catholic nobles trying to depose her and put Mary, Queen of Scots on her throne. This Papal Bull led Elizabeth to execute any Catholic nobles who refused to vow allegiance to her.

February 25, 1670–Maria Margaretha Kirch born, German astronomer, one of the first astronomers of her time to become famous, for her writings on the conjunction of the Sun with Saturn, Venus and Jupiter in 1709 and 1712. She was educated by her uncle, astronomer Christoph Arnold, as his unofficial apprentice and later assistant. She married astronomer and mathematician Gottfried Kirch, who was appointed as Astronomer Royal to Frederick III of Prussia. He continued her education, along with his sister; as a team, they made observations and calculations to produce calendars, and recorded weather information, both valuable to navigation. When she discovered the “Comet of 1702” during her nightly observations, her husband initially took credit for it, but eventually admitted that the discovery was hers. After her husband’s death, she applied to the Royal Berlin Academy of Sciences, asking that she and her son Christfried be allowed to continue producing calendars. Kirch noted that during her husband’s illness, she had already been being doing the work required on her own. Gottfried Leibniz, mathematician and president of the academy, was the only supporter of Kirch’s petition, which was rejected because other academy members felt that having a woman produce its calendar would be an embarrassment. Instead, an inexperienced astronomer, Johann Heinrich Hoffmann, was appointed as the Astronomer Royal with the responsibility of producing the calendars.

February 25, 1806–Emma Manley Embury born, American author, poet and editor, who used the pen name ‘Ianthe’ to contribute stories and poems to periodicals and newspapers like the New York Mirror, which were later collected and published as books, including The Blind Girl and Other Tales; Glimpses of Home Life; Pictures of Early Life; and Nature’s Gems, or American Wild Flowers. She had a wide circle of literary friends and acquaintances, and was described as a sparkling conversationalist. But in the late 1840s, she suffered an illness from which she never recovered, becoming bed-ridden, and withdrawn from the world in her last years. She died in Brooklyn at age 56, in 1863.

February 25, 1842–Idawalley Zorada Lewis born, American lighthouse keeper, who took over the Lime Rock Light after her parents died; she became the highest-paid lighthouse keeper in the U.S. – $750 a year –"in consideration of the remarkable services of Mrs. Wilson in the saving of lives." She made her first rescue at the age of 12, and received the Gold Lifesaving Medal from the U.S. Government in 1881 for rescuing two soldiers who fell through ice; made her last rescue at age 63; She was called “the Bravest Woman in America.” Lime Rock and the Lime Rock Lighthouse were renamed Ida Lewis Rock and Lighthouse, the only time a U.S. Light has been renamed for its keeper.

February 25, 1871–Lesya Ukrainka born as Larysa Kosach-Kvitka, Ukrainian author of poetry, plays, and essays; she is considered the foremost woman of Ukrainian literature. She was stricken with tuberculosis in 1881, and began making extended stays in drier climates. She joined Ukrainian Marxist organizations in 1902, and was arrested in 1907, but was released and then kept under surveillance by tzarist police. She died in 1913 at age 42.

February 25, 1890 –Myra Hess born, notable British pianist, who organized Monday through Friday lunchtime concerts, and performed in 150 of them at the National Gallery, beginning during the WWII London Blitz, when all the concert halls were blacked out at night to avoid becoming German bombing targets. In all, 824,152 people attended 1,968 concerts, held without fail for 6½ years, even when London was being bombed (the concert was simply moved to a safer room). Every artist was paid five guineas for their participation, no matter who they were, and admission was one shilling. Since 2005, the National Gallery has hosted concerts for Dame Myra Hess Day on October 6, commemorating the original Hess concerts.

YouTube Video

February 25, 1896 –Ida Noddack born, German chemist; co-discoverer with Walter Noddack of the element rhenium; they worked on photochemistry as well, on sensitizing coloring substances, and the photochemistry of the human eye. She postulated the possibility of fission based on reports of Fermi’s 1934 observations of the neutron bombardment of uranium, five years before Otto Frisch first advanced his theoretical explanation of nuclear fission, which was accepted, but her earlier idea aroused no interest, and remained dormant.

February 25, 1900–Illa Kesselburg Martin born, German dendrologist (wooded plants study) botanist, conservationist and dentist. In 1951, she and her husband Ernst Martin founded the sequoia farm Sequoiafarm Kaldenkirchen using Sequoiadendron giganteum seeds sent from the U.S. It is now a famous arboretum with over 600 tree species.

February 25, 1900–Marina Yurlova born, Russian child soldier and author; at age 14, she became a soldier in the Russian army, joining the Reconnaissance Sotnia (100 horse squadron) of the 3rd Ekaterinodar Regiment. She started as a groom in Armenia, and then in 1915 began going on missions. She was shot in the leg while blasting bridges across the Araxes River near Yeredan, and after her recovery, trained as an auto mechanic to qualify as a military driver on the Eastern Front. She was wounded several more times, and was awarded the Russian Cross of Saint George for bravery three times. In 1922, she emigrated to the U.S., and became an American citizen in 1926. She published her autobiography as a trilogy: Cossack Girl; Russia, Farewell; and The Only Woman.

**Marina Yurlova** with her arm in a sling

February 25, 1906–Mary C. Chase born, American playwright, best known for her play Harvey; Chase also worked as a feature writer for the Denver Times and Rocky Mountain News.

February 25, 1908–Mary Locke Petermann born, American cellular biochemist, she was the first person to isolate animal ribosomes, the molecular complexes which carry out protein synthesis. She was the first woman chemist on the staff of the physical chemistry department (1939-1945) at the University of Wisconsin, where she worked on analysis of antibody-antigen interactions, especially between diphtheria toxin and antitoxin. Her research on antibodies contributed to Rodney Porter’s determination of immunoglobulin structure, for which he received the 1972 Nobel Prize. In 1945, she took a position as a chemist at Memorial Hospital in New York City, studying the role of plasma proteins in metastasis, then in 1946 researched the role of nucleoproteins in cancer at the newly-formed Sloan-Kettering Institute for cancer research. Initially a Finney-Howell Foundation fellow, she was promoted to an associate member in 1960 and full member in 1963, Sloan-Kettering Institute's first female full member. She taught biochemistry at Cornell University and became the first woman full professor at Cornell University’s medical school. She was awarded the Sloan Award for cancer research in 1963, and the American Chemical Society’s Garvan Medal in 1966. Author of The Physical and Chemical Properties of Ribosomes, and about 100 papers.

February 25, 1910 –Millicent Fenwick born, fashion editor, journalist and Republican politician; served on New Jersey Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (1958-1974); Congresswoman (R-NJ, 1975-1983); U.S. Ambassador to the UN (1983-1987). She was a moderate Republican, an outspoken supporter of civil and women’s rights; considered the inspiration for Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury character Lacey Davenport.

February 25, 1922 –Molly Reilly born, the first Canadian woman pilot to reach the rank of captain, the first woman to become a Canadian corporate pilot, and the first woman to fly to the Arctic professionally. Her modifications to the Beechcraft Duke, a twin-engine fixed-wing plane with room for five passengers, were used to improve the aircraft. Over the course of her career, Reilly logged over 10,000 flight hours as a pilot-in-command — without a single accident. She was inducted into the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame in 1974.

February 25, 1966 –Téa Leoni born as Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni, American television and film actress and producer; she most recently played the title role in the CBS political drama Madam Secretary (2014-2019); Leoni was named as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 2001, following in the footsteps of Helenka Pantaleoni, her grandmother, who was president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF for more than 25 years.

February 25, 1968 –Oumou Sangaré born, Malian musician, singer-songwriter in the Wassoulou tradition, an ancient regional music of Mali, and women’s rights advocate. When her father took a second wife and abandoned her mother and his first family, she began singing on the streets of Bamako. At age five, in 1973, she won a singing competition, which led to her performing before an audience of thousands at Bamako’s Omnisport stadium. At 16, she went on tour with the percussion group Djoliba, touring in Europe and the Caribbean. When she returned home, she formed her own group, and recorded her first album, Moussoulou (Women), with Amadou Ba Guindo, a renowned maestro of Malian music. The album sold over 200,000 copies in Africa. Her songs often include social criticism, especially women’s low status in Malian society. She has performed at the Melbourne Opera, Roskilde Festival, Gnaoua World Music Festival, WOMAD, Oslo World Music Festival and the Opéra de la Monnaie. Sangaré was a goodwill ambassador for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and won a 2001 IMC-UNESCO International Music Prize. In 2017, she was honored with the Artist Award at WOMEX for her music and her advocacy for women’s rights.

February 25, 1971 –Nova Peris born, Australian athlete and politician; Senator for the Northern Territory (2013-2016); she was the first Aboriginal Australian to win an Olympic gold medal, as a member of the Australian women’s hockey team at the 1996 Olympic Games.

February 25, 1975 –Chelsea Handler born, American comedian, writer television host, producer and activist; noted for her observational and sketch comedy, her late-night talk show Chelsea Lately (2007-2014) on the E! network, and five NY Times best-selling books, including My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea. She is an outspoken advocate for LGBT and human rights.

February 25, 1976–Rashida Jones born, American actress, writer and producer; member of the cast of the comedy series Parks and Recreation (2009-2015); Jones was the creator of Frenemy of the State, a comic book series, and co-wrote the screenplay based on the comic series. Since 2004, she has been on the board of Peace First, a nonprofit which teachers children to resolve conflict without violence, and has also given time to events for Stand Up to Cancer, and ONE: The Campaign to Make Poverty History. In 2007, she was the honorary chair of the annual Housing Works benefit, which fights homelessness in New York City. She campaigned in 2008 and 2012 for Barack Obama. She is the daughter of Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton.

February 25, 1986 –Corazon Aquino is sworn in as the first woman President of the Philippines, after Ferdinand Marcos flees the country.

February 25, 1986 –Jameela Jamil born in London to an Indian father and Pakistani mother; English actress, radio presenter, writer and activist for people with disabilities, and against fat shaming and fad diets. In 2015, she launched Why Not People? which hosts entertainment events accessible to people with disabilities, aiming to increase awareness of accessibility issues. She was a presenter on the long-running BBC Radio 1 show, The Official Chart (2013-2015), and was a member of the cast of the American TV series, The Good Place (2016-2020).

February 25, 2013–British Liberal Democratic women activists are furious, as at least ten women who allege they were molested by the party’s former chief executive Lord Rennard are shrugged off by Liberal Democratic peer Tony Greaves, "We don’t know the details of anything that may have happened. But it is hardly an offence for one adult person to make fairly mild sexual advances to another. What matters is whether they are . . . rebuffed. In passing, I would note and guess that if the allegations as made are a matter for resignation, perhaps around a half of the male members of the Lords over the age of 50 would probably not be seen again." When Helena Morrissey, who headed the party’s investigation after the scanda , published her report of findings from dozens of interviews into how the Liberal Democrats dealt with sexual harassment complaints, she said there had been ‘no malicious attempt’ to cover up the claims but that the way they dealt with them had been ‘haphazard’. Party leader Nick Clegg said: “It makes sobering reading. It shows that stretching over a 20-year period a series of mistakes were made which left a number of women feeling seriously let down, and for that there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever.”

February 25, 2016– A three-year independent investigation led by Dame Janet Smith, former High Court Judge, concluded that an "atmosphere of fear" at the BBC prevented the British network from stopping one of its stars, the late Jimmy Savile, from sexually abusing 72 victims, including children. Many of the BBC staff members interviewed for the inquiry did so only after being assured their names would not be published, as they still feared reprisals. "Celebrities were treated with kid gloves and were virtually untouchable," said Janet Smith. In October 2012, almost a year after Savile’s death, an ITV documentary examined claims of sexual abuse by Savile, which led to extensive media coverage, a substantial and rapidly growing body of witness statements and sexual abuse claims, and accusations against public bodies for covering up or failure of duty. Dame Janet Smith’s report did not recommend holding the BBC responsible, but did find that dozens of BBC employees had heard rumors about Savile, but did nothing.

February 25, 2018– The Weinstein Company announced it will file for bankruptcy protection after a $500 million deal to sell the company to an investment group fell through. The board of the once-powerful film studio allegedly cut off negotiations when the investor group declined to offer to put up enough interim financing to keep the struggling company afloat. The Weinstein Company was already in financial trouble, due to mismanagement and a lack of entertainment hits, when the sexual assault and harassment allegations against co-founder Harvey Weinstein thrust it into turmoil. The board said bankruptcy was "an extremely unfortunate outcome for our employees, our creditors, and any victims," but claimed it was the "only viable option to maximize the company's remaining value."

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February 26, 1746 –Maria Amalia born, Archduchess of Austria; one of sixteen children of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa. She and her mother didn’t get along, and the Empress forced her into marriage with Ferdinand of Parma in 1769, even though Maria Amalia was in love with Prince Charles of Zweibrücken. She never forgave her mother. As Duchess of Parma, she had to contend with first minister Guillaume du Tillot, a Frenchman who was the de facto ruler of Parma, who kept the compliant Ferdinand out of politics. By 1771, she had acquired enough support to secure du Tillot’s dismissal, replacing him with a Spanish appointee, Jose del Llano. In 1772, she fired del Llano, insuring that Parma would not become a Spanish puppet state, and replaced him with an Italian prime minister and a cabinet of native Parmesans who were loyal to her. Ferdinand was not interested in ruling, happier occupying himself with his religious duties and raising their five children who survived infancy, so Maria Amalia became the real ruler of Parma. Because she and Ferdinand were so ill-suited, she caused a scandal because she replaced most of her ladies-in-waiting with an entourage of Royal Guards who were handsome young men. She also stole out at night into the streets, incognito in men’s clothing, and had affairs with members of her guards, while Ferdinand had affairs with a series of peasant women. The Parmesan nobility greatly disliked her, but she was very popular among the people, and known for her great and genuine generosity toward the poor. Among her more famous public gestures were the tables she had set up for poor guests, who enjoyed the same meals as the nobles, at her gala parties. She resisted her imperious mother's efforts to control her from afar, and was ostracized by most of her siblings. In May 1796, the French invaded Italy under Napoleon Bonaparte. Against the opposition of Maria Amalia, who detested the French after the execution of her sister Marie Antoinette, Ferdinand (who was half French himself), declared the Duchy neutral, but Napoleon’s troops occupied Parma anyway. Ferdinand was forced to agree to terms dictated by the French. Though Ferdinand and Amalia were formally allowed to keep their titles, they were under French guard, and French representatives ruled the Duchy, levying taxes to finance the French army. In the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, the Duchy of Parma was declared to be annexed to a newly founded French puppet state, the Kingdom of Etruria, effective upon Ferdinand’s death. Ferdinand and Maria Amalia were placed under house arrest. On October 9, 1802, Maria Amalia was appointed head of the Regency Council in Parma by Ferdinand on his death bed. Her official reign lasted only 13 days before the French under Napoleon I annexed the Duchy and expelled her from Parma. Maria Amalia died in Prague in 1804, at age 58.

Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma —
by Martin van Meytens

February 26, 1858 –Lavinia Lloyd Dock born, American nurse, educator, feminist and social activist; founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service; contributing editor to the American Journal of Nursing; author of a four-volume history of nursing and a pioneering nurse’s manual of drugs, which became the standard manual for many years.

February 26, 1859 –Louise Bowen born, Chicago philanthropist, saved Hull House financially in 1935, funded the Woman’s Club building, demanded removal of health hazards from Pullman Company, obtained minimum wage for women at International Harvester Company and raised $12,000 for families of strikers.

February 26, 1893 –Dorothy Whipple born, English novelist and children’s author. Noted for They Were Sisters;The Priory; and They Knew Mr. Knight.

February 26, 1900–Halina Konopacka born, Polish athlete, writer and poet; the first Polish Olympic champion, winning the women’s discus throw at the 1928 Olympic Games. She wrote her first book of poetry, Któregoś dnia (Some Day), in 1929, and was a regular contributor to Polish literary publications. At the onset of WWII, she helped her husband, Ignacy Matuszewski, and Henryk Floyar-Rajchman, on a secret mission to evacuate the gold reserves, 75 tons of gold, of the Polish National Bank to France to help finance the Polish government-in-exile. After France surrendered to the Nazis in 1940, the couple sought refuge in the U.S., finally arriving by a circuitous route in 1941. Her husband died suddenly in New York in 1946, and she worked at a series of jobs before remarrying in 1949. Widowed a second time in 1959, she moved to Florida and took up painting. Where she died in January, 1989. The Polish government posthumously awarded her the Silver Cross of Merit later that year.

February 26, 1908–Leela Majumdar born, Indian Begali writer, scholar, children’s playwright for radio programmes,and All India Radio producer. Majumdar was awarded the Bhubaneswari Medal for lifetime achievement. She died in 2007 at the age of 99.

February 26, 1909–Fanny Cradock born as Phyllis Pechey, English television chef, restaurant critic, and writer. She was co-author with her husband of the column "Bon Viveur" for The Daily Telegraph (1950-1955), which led to her variously named cookery shows for the BBC (1955-1975). Cradock wrote novels and children’s books under the pen name Frances Dale, and cook books as Fanny Cradock, several of them co-authored with husband John Cradock.

February 26, 1915 –Elisabeth Eybers born, South African poet who mainly wrote in Afrikaans, although she translated some of her own poems, as well as those of other Afrikaans poets, into English. Noted for Die Ander Dors (The other thirst), and Kruis of Munt (Head or tail). She moved to Amsterdam in 1966, remaining there the rest of her life.

February 26, 1921 –Wilma Heide born, educator and women’s studies pioneer, president of NOW (1971- 1972); she spearheaded sex discrimination charges against AT&T.

February 26, 1944 – First woman U.S. Navy captain: Sue Dauser of nurse corps is appointed. She became a Navy Nurse in 1917 during WWI, and then went on to serve as Superintendent of the Navy Nurse Corps during WWII (1939-1945).

February 26, 1948–Sharon McCrumb born, American Appalachian “Ballad” novelist, and author of the Elizabeth MacPherson mystery series, whose books are often either about or set in the Appalachian region.

February 26, 1949 –Elizabeth George born, American author of mystery novels set in Great Britain; best known for her Inspector Thomas Lynley series; adapted as a BBC television series in 2001.

February 26, 1949 – Dame Emma Kirkby born, English soprano and world-renowned early music specialist, who made well over 100 recordings, including A Feather on the Breath of God: Gothic Voices of sequences of Hildegard of Bingen,(1981); and George Frideric Handel's Messiah, conducted by Christopher Hogwood (1980), which was named as one of the top 20 recordings of all time by BBC Music Magazine.

YouTube Video

February 26, 1950–Helen Clark born, New Zealand politician, second woman to be Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008). She was the Administrator of the UN Development Programme (2009-2017).

February 26, 1958–Susan Helms born, U.S Air Force Lt. General and NASA Astronaut, crew member on five Space Shuttle missions and lived aboard the International Space Station for over five month s in 2001; with Jim Voss, she is the co-holder of the international record for longest spacewalk, 8 hours and 56 minutes.

February 26, 1974 –Lola Shoneyin born, Nigerian poet and author, known for her debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, and her poetry collections, So All the Time I was Sitting on an Egg; Song of a River Bird; and For the Love of Flight. She runs the annual Aké Arts and Book Festival in Lagos.

February 26, 1974–Irina Vlah born, Moldovan politician; Governor of Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia since 2015; Member of Moldovan Parliament (2005-2009).

February 26, 1976–Nalini Anantharaman born, French mathematician; Professor at Université de Strasbourg since 2014. In 2018, she was awarded the Infosys Mathematical Sciences Prize for work on “Quantum Chaos.” She won the 2011 Salem Prize for her work on the Fourier Series; and was the co-winner in 2012 of the Henri Poincaré Prize for mathematical physics for her work in “quantum chaos, dynamical systems and Schrödinger equation, including a remarkable advance in the problem of quantum unique ergodicity.” Also in 2011, she took the Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand from the French Academy of Sciences.

February 26, 1998– A Texas jury rejects an $11 million lawsuit by Texas cattlemen, blaming Oprah Winfrey for the price drop on beef after her on-air comment about mad-cow disease.

February 26, 2019– Delegates at a conference of the United Methodist Church, the second biggest U.S. Protestant denomination, voted to strengthen bans on same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBT clergy. Conservatives from the U.S. and overseas pushed through the so-called ‘Traditional Plan’ and defeated a rival proposal to let regional and local church bodies determine whether to adopt more gay-friendly policies. "The church in Africa would cease to exist" if the bans were eased, said the Rev. Jerry Kulah of Liberia. Council of Bishops President Kenneth H. Carter said he feared progressive churches would now leave the denomination. Former Methodist pastor Rebecca Wilson called the vote devastating. "As someone who left because I'm gay," she said, "I'm waiting for the church I love to stop bringing more hate."

**Rebecca Wilson, center, with other LGBTQ advocates, after the vote.**

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February 27, 1847 – Ellen Terry born, British stage actress, the leading Shakespearean actress of her day; after retiring from the stage, she gave wonderful lectures on Shakespeare’s woman and child characters, and the use of letters in his plays.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, Beatrice in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and Portia in ‘Merchant of Venice’

February 27, 1850–Laura Howe Richards born, American author (who used Laura E. Richards as her pen name), poet and biographer. She wrote more than 90 books, including biographies, poetry, and several for children. She and her sisters won the 1917 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for their book about their mother, Julia Ward Howe, who was best known for penning the words of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

February 27, 1854 –Elizabeth Almira Allen born, American teacher for 48 years, and first woman president of the New Jersey Education Association. As an advocate for teachers’ pensions, Allen led the campaign for the passage in 1896 of the first statewide teacher retirement law in the U.S., passed by the New Jersey state legislature. The bill provided for a half-pay annuity to teachers with at least 20 years of service who were no longer able to work, but it was a voluntary plan, with contributions taken from teacher salaries. Allen launched a campaign to enroll as many teachers as possible, and within three months, she and her team had enrolled over half of the state’s teachers. Allen became the first secretary of the Teachers’ Retirement Fund.

February 27, 1859 – Bertha Pappenheim born, Austrian-Jewish feminist and author (anonymously, or under the pen name “P. Berthold”). She became the director of an orphanage for Jewish girls, radically changing the curriculum from preparation for marriage to vocational training. She was a founding member and first president of the Jüdischer Frauenbund (Jewish Women’s Association). Pappenheim translated Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" into German, and was an advocate for women’s education and equal rights, as well as an activist campaigning against the trafficking of women. She co-founded theZentralwohlfahrtsstelle der Juden in Deutschland (Central Welfare Agency of German Jewry).

February 27, 1869 – Dr. Alice Hamilton born, American pathologist, research scientist and physician. Hamilton was the first woman appointed to the faculty of Harvard University, and a pioneer in the field of toxicology. She focused on occupational illnesses and the dangers of exposure to industrial metals and chemical compounds. In 1911, she was appointed as a special investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Labor, inspecting mines, mills and smelters. She compiled statistics, beginning with lead, the poison most widely used by industry, which dramatically documented the high mortality and morbidity rates of exposed workers. She followed this by compiling statistics on aniline dyes, picric acid, arsenic, carbon monoxide, and many other industrial poisons and work hazards. Her work contributed greatly to the passage of workmen's compensation laws and to the development of safer working conditions. Hamilton was president of the National Consumers League (1944-1949). She was also an activist in social welfare reform and the peace movement, and a volunteer at Chicago's Hull House. She lived to be 101 years old.

February 27, 1872–Charlotte E. Ray becomes the first woman graduate from Howard University School of Law, and the first African American woman lawyer. Ray opened her own law office, advertising in a newspaper run by Frederick Douglass, but she practiced law for only a few years because prejudice against African Americans and women made her business unsustainable. Ray eventually moved to New York, where she became a teacher in Brooklyn. She was involved in the women's suffrage movement and was a member of the National Association of Colored Women.

February 27, 1877–Adela Verne born, English composer; considered the greatest woman pianist of her era; she is also noted for composing a march dedicated to Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

YouTube Video

February 27, 1890 –Mabel Staupers born in Barbados, American nurse and administrator; 1917 graduate of Freedman’s Hospital of Nursing (now Howard University), she led the Harlem Committee of NY Tuberculosis and Health Association, organized health education, public lectures, free exams and dental care for school children, and teamed with Representative Frances Bolton, the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress from Ohio, in a fight for for full racial integration of U.S. Army and Navy nurses.

MabelStaupersshowsMaryMahonyAwardtonursesattheHarlemHospitalNursesResidencein1947.jpg — Mabel Staupers showing her Mary Mahony Award to nurses at the Harlem Hospital Nurses Residence in 1947.
(The award, named for the first professionally trained black nurse in the U.S., is still being given in the 21st century.)

February 27, 1897 –Marian Anderson born, African-American contralto, who achieved European fame prior to her American popularity, largely due to racial prejudice. In 1939, Howard University tried to hire the DAR’s Constitution Hall for a Marian Anderson concert, the only venue in Washington DC large enough to hold the expected crowd. The Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow a black performer to appear on their stage. Many DAR members resigned, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote about it in her weekly column, gaining world-wide attention. Supported by the First Lady and FDR, an open air concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial was arranged; Marian Anderson sang for an interracial crowd of 75,000 and a radio audience of millions, opening with “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” In 1964, she began her final concert tour on the stage at Constitution Hall.

February 27, 1912–Johanna Catharina JacobaCornelius born, South African organizer for the Garment Worker’s Union (GWU); she was elected as GWU president (1934-1935), and as GWU general secretary (1952-1974).

Garment workers stage a protest in support of GWU leader Solly Sachs after his arrest in 1932

February 27, 1922–U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision in Leser v. Garnett, upholds the principle that the 19th Amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote; Judge Oscar Leser had sued to have the names of two women, Cecelia Street Waters and Mary D. Randolph, removed from the voting rolls in Baltimore because the Maryland Constitution limited suffrage to men, and the Maryland legislature had refused to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court’s decision insured that the right to vote could actually be used by American women, as citizens of the United States, no matter what state they live in.

February 27, 1924–Samella Sanders Lewis born, artist, and art historian; first African American woman to earn a degree in fine arts and art history; founder of Contemporary Crafts in 1969, the first black-owned art publishing house.

February 27, 1925–Pía Sebastiani born, Argentine pianist and composer; as a composer, best known for her composition for piano and orchestra; as a pianist, she was noted for her performances of Beethoven piano concertos.

Sorry for the lack of English subtitles, but her playing speaks for itself:

YouTube Video

February 27, 1930–Joanne Woodward born, American actress, producer, stage director, philanthropist and activist. Woodward was nominated four times for Best Actress Oscars, and won in 1958 for The Three Faces of Eve. Co-founder with her husband Paul Newman of the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in 1988, a non-profit residential summer camp, and year-round center providing free services to thousands of children with cancer and other serious conditions, and to their families. In 1994, she and her husband were jointly presented with the Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged by the Jefferson Awards of the American Institute for Public Service. She is a long-time supporter of the Nature Conservancy. In 2014, the conservancy built a fishway on an Aspetuck River dam on property owned by Woodward.

February 27, 1932 –Elizabeth Taylor born in London, American movie star and Academy Award winning actress, noted humanitarian; one of the first celebrities to be an HIV/AIDS activist, as a co-founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the founder of the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991. Taylor was supported the Jewish National Fund, and served on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

February 27, 1933–First woman in U.S. Cabinet: Frances Perkins is appointed by Franklin Roosevelt as Secretary of Labor.

February 27, 1936–Sonia Johnson born, American feminist, activist and writer; outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and vocal critic of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) which led to her excommunication from the church. Born a fifth-generation Mormon, she began speaking in favor of the ERA in 1977, and co-founded Mormons for ERA. In 1978, she testified before the U.S. Senate Subcomittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights. The church began disciplinary proceedings against Johnson after she delivered her speech "Patriarchal Panic: Sexual Politics in the Mormon Church" at a meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) in New York City in September 1979, denouncing the nationwide lobbying efforts of the LDS church to prevent passage of the ERA. Her husband divorced her in October 1979. In December 1979, she was charged with hindering the LDS worldwide missionary program, damaging Mormon social programs, and teaching false doctrine, and was excommunicated. She ran in 1984 as the U.S. Citizens Party candidate for President, but only received 72,161 votes, which left her bitter and disillusioned. Among her books are From Housewife to Heretic, and Going Out of Our Minds: The Metaphysics of Liberation, in which she rejects all efforts to improve the lives of women through legislation and government, likening the male-dominated State to an abusive husband, alternately battering and rewarding women to keep them under control.

February 27, 1942–Charlayne Hunter-Gault born, African American journalist and foreign correspondent for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

February 27, 1950–Julia Schwab Neuberger born, Baroness Neuberger, she was the second English woman rabbi, and the first to become senior rabbi of a congregation. Liberal politician, appointed DBE (2003). In 2004, she became a Life peer as Baroness Neuberger, of Primrose Hill in London Borough of Camden; served as a Liberal Democrat health spokesperson (2004-2007), but resigned when she was appointed senior rabbi. She is the author of Ethics and Healthcare: the role of Research Ethics Committees in the UK. Britain's vote in 2016 to leave the European Union had a personal impact on Rabbi Neuberger: she decided to seek German citizenship, laying to rest her family's painful legacy of the Nazi era. She is among a number of Jewish Britons whose dismay over Brexit has led them to invoke a German law allowing people stripped of German citizenship by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945, and their descendants, to have it restored.

RabbiJuliaNeubergerholdinghergrandmothersNazi-eraGermanpassportmarkedJforJewish.jpg — Rabbi Julia Neuberger holding her grandmother's Nazi-era German passport marked J for Jewish

February 27, 1958–Margaret Wood Hassan born, American attorney and Democratic politician; Governor of New Hampshire (2013-2017); and since 2017, U.S. Senator from New Hampshire.

February 27, 1971–Sara Blakely born, American businesswoman, founder of Spanx Inc.

February 27, 1971–Chelsea Clinton born, American author, journalist, and global heath advocate; daughter of Hillary and Bill Clinton. Special correspondent for NBC News (2011-2014). She has written five books for children on getting involved in social issues and biographies of notable women in history, and co-authored with Devi SridharGoverning Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?, a scholarly book on global health policy. She also co-authored The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience with her mother. Since 2011, she has served as vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, working on improving global health, and creating more opportunities for women.

February 27, 1998– Britain's House of Lords agreed in principle with giving a monarch's first-born daughter the same claim to the throne as any first-born son, but the Succession to the Crown Act, ending 1,000 years of Royal primogeniture, isn’t passed until 2013, finally going into effect in March 2015. In 2017, Daughters' Rights, a group of women who are daughters of peers, but unable to stand for election to the House of Lords because of their gender, began a challenge to eliminate primogeniture in the peerage, which dictates that titles pass down through the male line, meaning only men are eligible to stand for election, and also places limits on who shall inherit property. "To give women the same political opportunities as men and remove this discrimination from the statue books, all we need to change the law is the removal of one word - 'male'," said Charlotte Carew Pole, chair of Daughters' Rights.

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February 28, 1797–Mary Lyon born, American educator, founder Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College) and Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now Mount Holyoke College).

February 28, 1882–Geraldine Farrar born, American soprano and actress; she made a sensational debut at the Berlin Hofoper as Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s Faust in 1901, and appeared in different Eurpean venues until her debut at the NY Metropolitan Opera in Romeo et Juliette in 1906; sang the title role in the first Met production of Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, and remained at the Met until her retirement in 1922. She had a following among young women who were nicknamed “Gerry flappers.”

YouTube Video

February 28, 1898–Molly Picon born, Yiddish actress, entertained troops in Korea and Japan during World War II, renowned for somersaults and flips well into her seventies, wrote her one-woman show, “Hello, Molly” (1979), and an autobiography, Molly (1980).

February 28, 1909–Ketti Frings born as Katherine Hartley; American author, playwright and screenwriter; she won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her adaptation of Thomas Wolfe’s novel Look Homeward, Angel as a play which opened on Broadway in 1957; also known for her 1940 novel, Hold Back the Dawn.

February 28, 1920–Jadwiga Piłsudska, Polish pilot, served in the British women’s Air Transport Auxiliary during WWII. In 1937, she began flying gliders and earned a glider pilot's license. In 1939, she graduated from secondary school and decided to study aircraft engineering at the Warsaw Polytechnic. But in September 1939, Poland was invaded by Germany, so she fled with her mother and elder sister to Lithuania, eventually arriving in Britain. In 1940, She resumed her studies, and graduated from Newnham College, Cambridge University in architecture. Later she acquired her aircraft pilot's license, and in July 1942, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary. After the war, the Communists took over Poland, so she remained in England as a political émigré. Never accepting British citizenship, she used a Nansen passport, valid for all countries in the world, except Poland. In 1990, with the collapse of the Communist government, she returned to Poland and lived in Warsaw, where she died at the age of 94 in 2014.

February 28, 1928–Sylvia del Villard born, Puerto Rican American actress, dancer, choreographer and Afro-Puerto Rican activist; director of Afro-Puerto Rican Affairs at the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture (1981-1988).

February 28, 1945–Linda Preiss Rothschild born, American mathematician and academic; worked on polynominal factorization, partial differential equations, harmonic analysis, and the theory of several complex variables; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2005.

February 28, 1948–Bernadette Peters born as Bernadette Lazzara, American Broadway actress and singer, a two-time Tony Award winner, who has also appeared on film and television. She is also a children’s book author. In 1999, she and Mary Tyler Moore co-founded Broadway Barks, a pet adoption charity which has an annual adopt-a-thon that has made over 2,000 adoptions possible. She also held a combined benefit concert for both Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Broadway Barks in 2009 that raised $615,000 for the two charities.

Bernadette Peters “singing a duet” at Broadway Barks adopt-a-thon in 2015

February 28, 1958–Natalya Estemirova born, Russian newspaper correspondent, documentary filmmaker and human rights activist who was a board member of the Russian human rights organization Memorial. She was abducted from her home in 2009, and found shot to death in a wooded area. Civil Rights Defenders, a human rights organization based in Sweden, named the ‘Natalia Project’ after Estemirova. The project is an alarm and positioning system for human rights defenders at risk. Natalya Estemirova’s murder remains unsolved.

Protesters holding photos of Natalya Estemirova after her murder

February 28, 1959–Megan McDonald born, American children’s author; noted for her series Judy Moody and The Sisters Club.

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February 29, 1736– Mother Ann Lee born in Great Britain, founder and first leader of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Coming, more commonly known as the Shakers, who moved to America in 1774.

February 29, 1828–Emmeline B. Wells born, American journalist, editor, poet, women’s rights advocate, diarist, and Mormon plural wife. She served as General President (1910-1921) of the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). She represented the state of Utah at both the National and American Women's Suffrage conventions and was president of the Utah Woman's Suffrage Association. She was the editor (1877-1914) of the Women's Exponent, a newspaper aimed at Mormon women, which was not an official publication of the church, but was closely tied to the Relief Society.

February 29, 1892–Augusta Savage born as Augusta Fells, African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance; she also mentored and taught many younger artists, and worked for equal rights for African Americans in the arts.

February 29, 1916–Dinah Shore born as Fannye Rose Shore; American singer, actress, radio and television musical variety show host, and long-time supporter of women’s professional golf. She helped found the Dinah Shore Golf Tournament in 1972, one of the major women’s golf tournaments, although now under a different name. She also broke the gender barrier at Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles, becoming its first woman member around 1969-1970.

February 29, 1928–Jean Adamson born, British author and illustrator of children’s books, best known for her Topsy and Tim books.

February 29, 1940–Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African American to win an Academy Award, as Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Mammy in the 1939 film Gone With the Wind.

Hattie McDaniel with Oscar and presenter Fay Bainter

February 29, 1944 –Ene Ergma born, Estonian scientist and politician; professor of Astronomy at the University of Tartu (1988-2003); most of her scientific research was on the evolution of the compact objects (such as white dwarfs and neutron stars) and gamma ray bursts. Ergma was President of the Riigikogu (2003-2006). The Riigikogu is the Estonian parliament. She was a second Vice-President of the Riigikogu (2006-2007), then was elected again as President of the Riigikogu (2007-2014). She is currently the chair of the Space Research Committee of the Riigikogu.

February 29, 1948 – Dame Hermione Lee born in Hampshire, then grew up in London, academic and biographer, particularly of women writers. President of Wolfson College, Oxford (2008-2017); Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature (1998-2008)) at the University of Oxford. She became the first woman professorial fellow of New College. She is also a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature.

February 29, 1948 –Patricia A. McKillip born, American author of fantasy and science fiction; her first novel, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, won the 1974 World Fantasy Award – Novel, and she won it again for Ombria in Shadow in 2003. Harpers in the Wind won the 1980 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1995 for Something Rich and Strange, and in 2007 for Solstice Wood.

February 29, 1952 –Sharon Raiford Bush born, African-American television newscaster and print journalist; correspondent and executive producer for Black Entertainment Television.

February 29, 1964– In Sydney, Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser sets a new world record in the 100-meter freestyle swimming competition of 58.9 seconds.

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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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WOW2: Late February's Trailblazing Women and Events in Our History - 2020

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