Today in History October 05

U.S. women suffragists demonstrating
for the right to vote, February 1913.

October 5 is the 278th day of the year. There are 87 days remaining until the end of the year.

South Australian. Catherine Helen Spence
stood for office in 1897
In a first for the modern world,
South Australia granted women the right to stand
for Parliament in 1895.

Today's Highlight in History 1944 – Suffrage is extended to women in France



Women's suffrage (also known as woman suffrage) is the right of women to vote and to stand for electoral office. Limited voting rights were gained by women in Sweden, Finland and some
western U.S. states in the late 19th century. National and international organizations formed to coordinate efforts to gain voting rights, especially the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (1904), and also worked for equal civil rights
In 1893, New Zealand, then a self-governing British colony, granted adult women the right to vote and the self-governing British colony of South Australia did the same in 1895, the latter also permitting women to stand for office. Australia federated in 1901, and women acquired the right to vote and stand in federal elections from 1902, but discriminatory restrictions against Aboriginal women (and men) voting in national elections were not completely removed until 1962.

The first European country to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Duchy of Finland, then part of the Russian Empire, which elected the world's first female members of parliament in the 1907 parliamentary elections. Norway followed, granting full women's suffrage in 1913. Most European, Asian and African countries did not pass women's suffrage until after World War I. Late adopters were France in 1944, Italy in 1946, Greece in 1952, Switzerland in 1971 and Liechtenstein in 1984. The nations of North America and most nations in Central and South America passed women's suffrage before World War II.
-Wikipedia

World Events

1762 -The British fleet bombards and captures Spanish-held Manila in the Philippines

1795 - The day after he routed counterrevolutionaries in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte accepts their formal surrender.

1813 - U.S. victory at the Battle of the Thames, in Ontario, broke Britain's Indian allies with the death of Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, and made the Detroit frontier safe.

1821 - Greek rebels capture Tripolitza, the main Turkish fort in the Peloponnese area of Greece.

1864 - At the Battle of Allatoona, a small Union post is saved from Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood's army.

1877 - Nez Perce Chief Joseph surrenders to Colonel Nelson Miles in Montana Territory, after a1,700-mile trek to reach Canada falls 40 miles short.

1880 - The first ball-point pen is patented on this day by Alonzo T. Cross.

1882 - Outlaw Frank James surrenders in Missouri six months after brother Jesse's assassination.

1915 - Germany issues an apology and promises for payment for the 128 American passengers killed in the sinking of the British ship Lusitania.

1915 - Bulgaria enters World War I on the side of the Central Powers.

1921 - The World Series is broadcast on radio for the first time.

1931 - Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon complete the first heavier than air nonstop flight over the Pacific. Their flight, begun October 3, lasted 41 hours, 31 minutes and covered 5,000 miles. They piloted their Bellanca CH-200 monoplane from Samushiro, 300 miles north of Tokyo, Japan, to Wenatchee, Washington.

1938 - Germany invalidates Jews' passports.

1943 - Imperial Japanese forces execute 98 American POWs on Wake Island.

1944 – Suffrage is extended to women in France

1947 - US President Harry S Truman delivers the first televised White House address.

1948 - A magnitude 7.3 earthquake near Ashgabat in the USSR kills tens of thousands; estimates range from 110,000 to 176,000.

1962 - The first James Bond film, Dr. No starring Sean Connery, debuts.

1965 - U.S. forces in Saigon receive permission to use tear gas.

1966 - A sodium cooling system malfunction causes a partial core meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration breeder reactor near Detroit. Radiation is contained.

1968 - Police attack civil rights demonstrators in Derry, Northern Ireland; the event is considered to be the beginning of "The Troubles."

1969 - Monty Python's Flying Circus debuts on BBC One.

1970 - The US Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is established.

1970 - Members of the Quebec Liberation Front (QLF) kidnap British Trade Commissioner James Cross in Montreal, resulting in the October Crisis and Canada's first peacetime use of the War Measures Act.

1986 - Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper publishes details of Israel's secret nuclear weapons development program

1988 - Brazil's Constituent Assembly authorizes the nation's new constitution.

2000 - Slobodan Milosevic, president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, resigns in the wake of mass protest demonstrations.