08-10 TABLE of CONTENTS: Soviet Women Combat Pilots of WWII Review of Bolshevik Women book Treason Trial Last Four Years! Women's Surnames (More Information Needed) Boxing Nun Author of Codex Nuttal First Musical Composition Performed When She was 12 Recognized Fission Process; co-Discovered Element 75 Arizona Hall of Fame Inductee DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTES by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonia Fraser. Some WOAH-Herstory: Leading to Better Information About Soviet Women Combat Pilots in World War II When the mail editions of WOAH began in 1994, women's history/herstory was a sometime thing, I.e., "herstorical" or "reliable" sources were sometimes embellished or incorrectly researched. Since WOAH is a secondary source, I.e.,seldom doing "original source" research except in rare situations, WOAH sometimes posts incorrect information. (Most encyclopedias have erroneous entries that are corrected or changed in the next edition. No one is perfect.)       Recogizing this, WOAH posted corrections submitted by readers in the last post of every month. This standardized date for corrections allowed readers to quickly scan for goofs. This method is NOT used on the website because changes can be made immediately.)       One of the readers who responded with corrections was Reina Pennington while she was a graduate student, Dept. of History, Univ. of South Carolina.       Now - Dr. Pennington traveled to the Soviet a number of times. She speaks Russian, an advantage that makes her research remarkable. Hers was pioneering work.       She shared the following with the readers of WOAH: "Hello Irene,       "I've been reading your posts, as they're reprinted in soc.feminism for some time - and greatly enjoying them, even when I don't always agree. I've frequently passed on excerpts to my friends.       "I just wanted to send you a couple of corrections to a recent item you posted on Soviet women pilots (the topic of my M.A. thesis and Ph.D. dissertation). I'm a former Air Force officer (I was a specialist in Soviet fighter tactics), now completing a Ph.D. in history. I've been researching this topic since 1988 and was lucky enough to interview many of the surviving women in 1993 on a trip to Russia. I'm also translating the unpublished memoirs of Colonel Aleksandr Gridnev, who commanded the 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment (initially all-female, later 1/3 male).       "Enthralling material, especially because he was twice repressed ('37 and '41) and believes that the commander of PVO deliberately attempted to discredit the women pilots, even to the point of sending some of them on suicidal missions..." Two Soviet Women Pilots Engaged 42 Enemy Bombers in One of the Most Noteworthy Events of WWII RP continued, "One of the most noteworthy events in the history of the 586th occurred on 19 April 1943, when pilots Raisa Surnachevskaia and Tamara Pamiatnykh engaged a group of 42 enemy bombers and shot down four. All the other aircraft of the regiment were on missions when Pamiatnykh and Surnachevskaia were scrambled on alert. At first, they were told there were two enemy reconnaissance aircraft in the area. When they reached the target area, they discovered instead two groups of German bombers - forty-two aircraft in all.       "Gridnev was in the command post.       "'What was there to do?' he wrote. 'I got on the radio and commanded them, 'Attack!'       "Attack they did. Driving a wedge into the German formation, the pilots managed to scatter the bombers, forcing them to drop their bombs well short of target. Moreover, each woman shot down two enemy bombers.       "The target of the German attack, a rail junction loaded with Soviet troops and fuel supplies, remained unscathed.       "'Some representatives from Great Britain saw all of this,' wrote Gridnev. 'They reported it to the King of England, and he sent the girls inscribed gold watches. But our own people never even found the time to give them the Hero. I believe this is one of the most distinguished victories of the entire war. They should hang two gold stars on each of them for this.'"             [(c) 1993 Reina Pennington, MA thesis, "Wings, Women and War".] Pennington continues: "Without diminishing in the least their achievement, I think it's important to correct the facts presented (in the source that WOA originally quoted.) The 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment was in Air Defense, and as such did not participate in offensive operations like Kursk. And the 586th ended the war in Hungary, not in Germany (and so was nowhere near the Battle of Berlin)." Reina Pennington's notes continue: "Re Lily Litvyak (my particular favorite). If you're interested, I have an extensive biography of her that will be published in Yorkin Publication's forthcoming Women in World History. I spent four days on a train to Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and back with her aircraft mechanic.       "Please note that she died on August 1, 1943, not August 2nd. And she was not ambushed (you implied there was a personal attack); she got separated from her flight during a mass air battle. Also, she had a minor injury in one hand, rather than being badly injured in both hands.'       "Furthermore, her body WAS found and the identity confirmed; she was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union by Gorbachev in 1990; her brother accepted the award for her. [WOA: The 1990 date is correct; Litvyak died in 1943. Her body had not been found immediately. It had been buried under the wing of her plane and when the plane was moved, the site was lost for many years.]        "I hope you don't mind the corrections. As editor of a volume on military women, I've had to attempt to create a database on women from many countries and times. I know how easy it is to pick up errors from secondary sources, and it can be very difficult to recognize that there ARE errors unless someone in the field lets you know. I hope you'll continue your work of disseminating Herstory to a wide audience (as accurately as possible, of course!)       "Best wishes, rjp - Reina Pennington, graduate student, Dept. of History, Univ. of South Carolina." After WOA wrote thanking Reina for her correct information and explained the problems we had getting information about the Soviet flyers and that we were skeptical of some of the information, but "many times by just going ahead with what I have hoping to receive more accurate information (or confirmation that what was written was true.)" Reina wrote further: "Yes - that's what I had to do with my Military Women Worldwide project. I had one professor point out to me that some of my potential subjects' names sounded more like buildings than people (names I had pulled from Salmonson's Encyclopedia of Amazons).       "I would guess you read Bruce Myles (really bad botching of names, facts, dates etc; he interviewed the women, but mixed up their stories and even fictionalized them) and other work based on his. [WOA pleads guilty, but we were told he was a good source. Mea culpa.] My MA thesis gives an analysis of the existing sources, like Myles.       "Here's the quick data [in answer to WOA's query about the true facts about Litvyak]:       "Lidiya Vladimirovna Litvyak, Top Woman Ace in History       "LITVYAK, LIDIYA VLADIMIROVNA (1921-1943). Soviet fighter pilot during World War II, first woman to shoot down an enemy aircraft and top woman ace in history.       "Name variations: Liliya, Lilya. Pronunciation: Lit-VYAHK. Born Lidiya Vladimirovna Litvyak on August 18, 1921, in Moscow, USSR; died August 1, 1943 in Dmitreivka, Ukraine as a result of air combat. Daughter of Vladimir Leontovich Litvyak (a railway employee) and Anna Vasilevna Khmeleva Litvyak (saleswoman). Unmarried; no children. Personal chronology: Became pilot in 1937; instructor pilot, 1939-41; joined Soviet military 1941; fighter pilot with 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment 1942; transferred to 437th Fighter Aviation Regiment and achieved first kill 1942; transferred to 9th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment 1942; transferred to 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment and achieved all subsequent kills, 1943; disappeared in combat August 1943.       "Awards: Order of the Red Star; Order of the Red Banner; medal For the Defense of Stalingrad'; Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree; Hero of the Soviet Union (awarded posthumously in 1990).       "Thanks again for the work you're doing in getting these stories out to the world. It must be a herculean labor, indeed (we need a better metaphor, don't we!).       "Best wishes,       "Reina Pennington" We cannot tell you enough, Reina, how grateful we are for the information... and future generations will thank you for pulling back another curtain of historical neglect to let the glory of brave and accomplished women shine through. Maybe we can call it a "Xenian" task - she has outlasted "Herc" on TV. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | A Social History of Bolshevik Women - Yes, Women Did Aid the Revolution H-Net (Book) Review in the Humanities and Social Sciences Barbara Evans Clements. Bolshevik Women. New York and Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xiv + 338 pp. Illustrations, tables, footnotes, appendix, select bibliography and index. $65.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-521-45403-4; $25.95 (paper, ISBN 0-521-59920-2. Reviewed by Mark Baker, Harvard University. Published by H-Russia (June, 2000) - used by WOAH with permission. A Social History of Bolshevik Women       Barbara Evans Clements has written an imaginative and well-researched history of the first two generations of Bolshevik women. Her monograph is path breaking in its subject and approach, as well as its efforts to present a representative portrait of these women, to integrate their stories into Soviet history, to cross over the daunting, historiographical barrier of 1917, and to create a sympathetic, yet even-handed history of these women's lives.       Surprisingly, though the first historical studies of Russian women appeared over two decades ago, other than Beate Fieseler's recent book, very little has been written about Bolshevik women ("bolshevichki"). [1] Clements' book is the first comprehensive history of their experiences that takes the reader from the tsarist underground, through the revolution, civil war, and into Soviet period. In this reviewer's opinion, it is the most important book on the bolshevichki to appear to date. [2]       Initially planned as a set of short biographical sketches of four important bolshevichki - Inessa Armand, Evgeniia Bosh, Konkordia Samoilova and Elena Stasova - Clements's project eventually blossomed into a general study of the women who joined the Bolshevik party up to the end of the civil war.       By meticulously mining numerous newspapers, periodicals, published document collections, memoirs, and recently available archival documents, Clements was able to construct a database containing the personal information on 545 bolshevichki, whom she divides into two generations: 318 who joined the party prior to 1917 and 227 who joined during the civil war.       Through judicious and sober use of this database, interwoven with the biographies of her four initial subjects, one more prominent bolshevichka, Rozaliia Zemliachka, and two more rank and file women, Alexandra Artiukhina and Klavdiia Nikolaeva, Clements has managed to paint a representative, collective portrait of the bolshevichki.       While recognizing that the women of the first generation became bolshevichki for various reasons, Clements finds common motivations in their origins, childhood and adolescent experiences. Growing up in "families sympathetic to political activism," and longing to escape conventional domesticity, these young, mostly middle and upper-class women were pulled into the revolutionary underground circles of tsarist Russia.       The catalytic event was often a moment of great social unrest, as in 1905 or 1912: "As demonstrators filled the streets, the young women who would be bolshevichki slipped away with their comrades into the parallel universe of the revolutionary movement" (p. 53). The women of this first generation were imbued with a great desire to self-sacrifice; they were in general well-educated (more so than their male counterparts), ambitious and assertive, though they preferred the technical tasks of daily underground work (tekhnika) at home, to the factional infighting and theoretical debates of the male leadership abroad. Strong and steeled personalities, such as Stasova, Zemliachka, Samoilova and Bosh, declared their defining characteristic to be "tverdost" (hardness or toughness); they were "unsentimental, determined, efficient, and industrious" (p. 60). Like the bolshevichki of the first generation, those of the second, who joined from 1917-1921, were mostly of Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish ethnicity, were well-educated, and joined when quite young - the median age for both groups was twenty (p. 164).       But the new bolshevichki were different in important ways: though still including a large number from the middling social ranks, the second generation was composed of more working-class and fewer noble women (though 3.5 percent still came from the latter group). While noting that the two generations were similarly inspired to join the party, Clements stresses that they became politicized under entirely different conditions: the new generation cut their political teeth not in the relatively egalitarian Bolshevik underground, but in the increasingly hierarchical, disciplined, power-hungry party of the civil war:       "The new Bolshevichki learned not just hardness, although that was still highly prized, but also obedience to their superiors and submission to the will of the 'great stern family'" (p. 171). Thus, Clements' collective portrait is not static, but evolves as the book moves through the most tumultuous period in which these women lived and worked.       The reader is able to follow the effects of these great changes on their lives through the wealth of statistical tables included, but more so through Clements' sympathetic descriptions of some of the older bolshevichki's lives.       The interweaving of these biographies with the statistical findings makes the text more readable and elegant. Yet, Clements takes pains to present an even-handed treatment of the bolshevichki. As becomes particularly clear in her discussion of their behavior during the civil war and the purges of the late 1930s, this book is no apologia. As members (though not leaders) of the new "ruling class," the bolshevichki shared responsibility not only for its achievements, but its excesses.       Rozaliia Zemliachka, "the hardest of the hard Bolshevichki," who had taken an active and leading part in "cleansing" the Crimea of White sympathizers during the civil war, "flourished" during the purges. Working closely with the NKVD, Zemliachka zealously investigated and reported on any and all infractions, which might have helped uncover possible "enemies of the people." Sharing the "unhealthy Manicheanism that prevailed among party leaders close to Stalin," Zemliachka became a firm "believer in the plots alleged to be menacing the party" and "an adroit participant in destroying them." By 1940 she was the only woman near the top of Stalin's government. Clements also describes the tragic end of those bolshevichki purged in the late 1930s, but points out that most "managed to escape arrest during the Purges.       Some, especially from the civil war generation, prospered during the late 1930s for they received promotions into the many vacancies the purges created. Many bolshevichki, perhaps the majority, hunkered down while the storm passed over them" (pp. 285-287). Clements carries this balanced approach into the post-WWII period, in which she describes the ways that the now aging bolshevichki struggled to come to terms with the regime's various atrocities, and their resistance to, participation in, or ignorance of them.       Their dilemma is most poignantly expressed through Clements' description of Elena Stasova's experience at the Twentieth Party Congress (February 1956) and her reactions to Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech. Reduced to tears by these revelations, Stasova went immediately home to bed, and never returned to the congress.       To the Italian communist leader, Vittorio Vidali, at her bedside, she bitterly declared, "now everybody is being rehabilitated, but now they are dead!" (p. 309). And yet, even Stasova recovered and reconciled herself to the regime's excesses. "She decided that it was not wise to publicize the party's sins because she believed that knowing the horrors of the Stalin era would disillusion young people about communism" (p. 311).       Because so few left such full records of their later lives, we will probably never know how many reconciled themselves similarly, but as Clements suggests, "the only spiritual recourse such women had, if they were to remain communists, was to cling to their faith that the regime they had built would ultimately prove itself by making the lives of the people better" (p. 312).       All would agree that they were eventually proven wrong, but none of these women lived long enough to witness their regimes ignoble downfall. Of course, there are some problems with this book. At times, this reviewer found Clements's use of the word "feminist" to describe various bolshevichki questionable, in particular because they did not (could not have) described themselves with this term.       One also might wonder whether Clements's biographical portraits could have included a few more rank and file women, who never rose to positions of great prominence. The two she describes, Artiukhina and Nikolaeva, rose to become successive heads of the Department for Work among Women (Zhenotdel) in the 1920s. Including less prominent bolshevichki would have made her general portrait more representative, particularly of the civil war generation.       But these are really minor quibbles in a generally well-conceived and executed project. Finally, it is worth noting that Clements submits no overall conclusions. Her study is a presentation of findings and interesting comparisons, interwoven with well-crafted, biographical narratives of Clements's leading figures.       The book concludes with a poignant description of the death of the stalwart Stasova. Some will consider this an appropriate ending, others may object to the lack of summation. But this reviewer sees in this, as throughout this well-written monograph, an honest, open-ended attempt to explore a new topic, admitting of the complexity and diversity of these women's stories.       Often, worthwhile conclusions must await further research and monographs, hopefully, of the quality and seriousness that Clements has provided in this fine piece of social history. Notes [1]. Beate Fieseler, Frauen auf dem Weg in die russische Sozialdemokratie, 1890-1917: eine kollektive Biographie, (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995). As her title suggests, Fieseler carries her collective biography only up to 1917. Some of Fieseler's findings were presented in: Beate Fieseler, "The Making of Russian Female Social Democrats, 1890-1917," International Review of Social History, XXXIV (1989), pp. 193-226. RETURN TO TEXT [2]. Other studies of the subject include: Richard Stites, The women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 317-421; Mark Chapin Scott, "Her Brothers Keeper: The Evolution of Women Bolsheviks," (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1980); Barbara Evans Clements, "The Enduring Kinship of the Baba and the Bolshevik Woman," Soviet Union 12 (1985), pp. 161-84. Since Clements book was published another closely-related study has appeared: Jane McDermid and Anna Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution: Female Bolsheviks and Women Workers in 1917, (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999). RETURN TO TEXT | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Treason Trial Last Four Years! Lilian Ngoyi - South African activist with the Women's League of the African National Congress. Although she was acquitted of treason after a FOUR year trial during which she was kept in solitary confinement, she was sentenced in 1961 to strict house arrest until her death in 1961. She had been thrust into poverty when her husband died when she was 40, she continued to speak out against the injustices shown black people in South Africa.       She was elected president of the women's league in 1953 and the President of the Federation of South African Women in 1956. She was arrested shortly thereafter. She had three children. Nammu is the primeval earth goddess of Sumerian mythology. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Women's Surnames (Information Needed) Historically married women in French Canada (Quebec) retain their birth-name in legal documents but usually use their husband's surname socially. This was changed in the mid 1990s so that women were REQUIRED to retain their birthnames and had to go to court to adopt their husband's name. Children can be registered under either name or a hyphenated surname that must be limited to two names. In Belgium as in Norway, women are legally required to retain their birth names. Even tourists are required to use their birth names even if their culture (such as in the U.S.) Forces them to use their husband's name. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Boxing Nun Ng Miu (Nui) (Ming dynasty 1600s) Chinese martial nun who developed wu shu, the Chinese national martial art, during the Ming Dynasty (ca. 1600s). She was a nun in the famed Shoolin temple, legendary for its boxing abilities. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Author of Codex Nuttal Zelian Nuttall - archaeologist of Coyoacan, Mexico who is noted for her work in Mexican archaeology and colonial history. She is the author of Codex Nuttal a facsimile of an ancient Mexican codex which is in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. (Dorland) Nonae Caprotinae is the festival honoring an aspect of Juno, the Roman chief goddess. Juno was the female counterpart of Jupiter. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | First Musical Composition Performed When She was 12 Dika Newling - Born 1923 in Portland Oregon. An outstanding pianist, she showed interest in composing at an early age and her Cradele Song was performed by the Cincinnati Orchestra in 1935 (when she was 12) as well as other orchestras.       A genius, she was a sophomore in college at 13. Her doctoral dissertation has become the standard reference work on several composers. She headed the newly formed department of music at Drew University in New Jersy (1952-65), taught at North Texas State University, directed the Electronic Music Laboratory at Monclair State College, N.J., and developed the doctoral program in music at Virginia Commonwealth Unversity in Richmond. Most of her work is for piano with Chamber Symphony being her best known work. Always a modernist, she used the twelve-tone scale but used unusual tone colors. Later in life she began using taped and computer- generated sounds. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Recognized Fission Process; co-Discovered Element 75 Ida Noddack - German chemist. She and her husband searched for the missing elements 43 and 75. They discovered the 75 which they named rhenium after the Rhine River.       When Enrico Fermi reported observations regarding the neutron bombardment of uranium, IN suggested fission as the cause. Five years later, she was given credit for the "discovery" - well, the idea. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | Arizona Hall of Fame Inductee Amy Cornwall Neal (1888-1972) rancher and museum founder was one of the 24 women who ere first inductees of the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 08-10 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 08-10-1833/1840?, Eliza Frances Andrews authored the bestellers A Family Secret (1876) and The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl (1908) which were about her life during the Civil War. She wrote, "Oh the slavery it is to be a woman and not a fool." in one of her journal. She often wrote under the alias "Elzey Hay." Her first stories were published just after the Civil War.       She appeared to lose interest in writing as things returned to normal at her platation home in north Georgia, although she vowed never to marry - which she didn't. However, bad investments by her financial advisor for her, at age 33, to earn her living for the first time. She became a schoolteacher and over the next 40 years her work ranged from principal at a girls' seminary to teaching French and literature at Wesleyan Female College at Macon, Ga., the nation's oldest woman's college.       She also began to write again and her novel A Family Secret was very successful. Her other novels continued to describe "her abiding distaste for the vulgar postwar plutocracy and her resentment of the limited sphere of action prescribed for women."       But her fame would rest on the diaries she had kept during the last years of the Civil War and its aftermath. When she published them 40 years after they were written, one critic said, that it gave an "unexcelled [insight into] the minds and sentiments of many Southern women during wartime and early Reconstruction."       In her later years she turned to socialism as the answer to the economic problems in the South, noting that the confederacy was doomed to lose because of economic pressures. A self-taught botanist from childhood, she published two textbooks, Botany All the Year Round (1903) and A Practical Course in Botany (1911) that was translated and used in French schools. B. 08-10-1859(?), Anna Julia Haywood Cooper - Afro-American educator. AJH called herself "Black Woman of the South" and believed education was the only true way to freedom and equality.       She spoke out against the efforts of black men towards vocational schools rather than classical education and also for not supporting black women in their efforts for education.       She was removed from her position as principal of the M Street School because her opinions that didn't agree with those of Booker T. Washington and other influential black male leaders. She did continue to teach at the school. At 65 she finally gained her Ph.D. from the Sorbonne in France but received no official recognition from the school authorities. B. 08-10-1885, Louise Leonard McLaren - U.S. labor educator. LLM founded the Southern Summer School for Women Workers in 1921 that she had modeled after the Bryn Mawr Summer School.       She taught economics, English, and assorted educational disciplines in order to train women leaders. She was completely dependent on her salary and even supported her husband when he lost his job. B. 08-10-1889 Irene Steer - British athlete. IS was one of the 4 X 100m relay swimmers who won the Olympic gold in 1912. B. 08-10-1894, Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca - Latvian-born American labor leader. DJB was active in organizing the garment industry and getting equal recognition for women in the unions.       DJB helped form the United Garment Workers of American in 1908 and was chosen to lead it in 1910. She persuaded the men who made buttonholes by machine (women had to make theirs by hand) to join her union and she then joined it with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of American in 1914, becoming a full-time organizer for the ACWA in 1917. She served on a great many governmental and international commissions and boards at the appointment of such as La Guardia, governors Herbert H. Lehman and Thomas E. Dewey of New York, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Early in World War 11 she was an adviser on women workers to the War Manpower Commission and the Department of Labor. B. 08-10-1900, Josephine Holt Perfect Bay - U.S. banker. JHPB was the first women to head a member firm of the New York Stock Exchange. She was noted for her relief work in alleviating the miseries of Europe following World War II. B. 08-10-1904, Norma Shearer - Canadian-born film actor. NS won the Academy Award for her work in The Divorce (1929/30). Married to the head of one of the Hollywood studios, she had her choice of great roles and was nominated five more times. B. 08-10-1923, Rhonda Fleming - U.S. film actor. B. 08-10-1930, Martha Elizabeth Keys - U.S. Congressional Representative from Kansas 1975-79. She was a democrat in a heavily republican state. Her official congressional biography reads, "As a freshmen Member of the Ninety-fourth Congress, Keys won a prized seat on the Committee on Ways and Means. Much of her term, however, was spent maintaining support in her district where she faced a tough contest for reelection and narrowly defeated her Republican opponent. In 1978 she lost her seat to Jim Jeffries. Keys served as a special adviser to the secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in 1979 and 1980 and as assistant secretary of Education in 1980 and 1981. She remained in Washington as a consultant and was director of the Center for a New Democracy in 1985 and 1986. She is a resident of Arlington, Virginia." B. 08-10-1941, Anita Lonsbrough - British swimmer who won the 200m backstroke event to win the Olympic gold in 1960. B. 08-10-1942 Betsy Johnson - U.S. fashion designer who won the 1971 Winnie Award. B. 08-10-1948, Patti Austin - U.S. soul singer. PA started performing at age three, toured with Harry Belafonte at 16, and sang lead with Quincy Jones in The Dud which won 1982 Grammy. B. 08-10-1952, Ashley Putnam - U.S. coloratura opera and concert singer. AP joined the New York City Opera company in 1978. B. 08-10-1959, Rosanna Arquette - U.S. actor. Event 08-10-1985: Marie Prezioso becomes the first woman to serve as president of the Young Democrats of America. B. 08-10-1917, Clara Peller - U.S. actor who struck it rich in her twilight years. She is best known for her gravelly-throated "Where's the beef?" in TV commercials in the mid 1990s. Event 08-10-1995: Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. history.       Seldom has an appointee had greater credentials. RBG was a member of the bar for 30 years and she was one of the first women in the nation to teach law.       But most important, she successfully argued more than 20 precedent-setting cases regarding gender bias before the high court she now sits on. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR GINSBURG, RUTH BADER:       "I pray that I may be all that she [my mother] would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons."             -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg when nominated to the high court by President Bill Clinton. FRASER, ANTONIA:       "... [women/warrior queens] sank back into that kind of historical obscurity to which lack of literary evidence can consign a whole people for a whole century: 'the world forgetting by the world forgot.'"             -- Antonia Fraser in her book Warrior Queens expanding on a quote of Alexander Pope when referring to the various queens who led their people, some gloriously, some in vain... and who were erased from history. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE | | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |