Friday 7 November 2014

Today in History: November 7 - Mary Robinson 7th President of Ireland and first female President.

November 7 is the 311th day of the year. There are 54 days remaining until the end of the year.
Mary Robinson World Economic Forum 2013 crop.jpg
Mary Robinson 7th President of Ireland


Today's Highlight in History.
1990 – Mary Robinson becomes the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Ireland.



Born Mary Therese Winifred Bourke in Ballina, County Google, in 1944, she is the daughter of two medical doctors. Her father was Dr. Aubrey Bourke of Ballina, County Mayo, while her mother was Dr. Tessa Bourke (née O'Donnell) of Carndonagh, Inishowen.

Mary Bourke attended Mount Anville Secondary School in Dublin and studied law at Trinity College, Dublin, King's Inns and Harvard Law School. In her twenties, she was called to the Inner Bar as Senior Counsel and was appointed Reid Professor of Law in the college, considered to be a prestigious appointment made to accomplished lawyers.A subsequent holder of the title was her successor as Irish president, Mary McAleese. In 1965 she was elected as a Scholar of Trinity College Dublin.

In 1970, Bourke married Nicholas Robinson, with whom she had had a relationship since they were fellow law students and who was then practising as a solicitor. Despite the fact that her family had close links to the Church of Ireland, her marriage to a Protestant caused a rift with her parents, who did not attend her wedding. The rift was eventually overcome in subsequent months. Together they have three children.
Robinson was inaugurated as the seventh President of Ireland on 3 December 1990. She proved a remarkably popular president, earning the praise of Brian Lenihan himself who, before his death five years later, said she was a better president than he ever could have been. She took an office that had a reputation as being little more than a retirement position for prominent politicians and breathed new life into the role. Robinson brought to the presidency legal knowledge, deep intellect, and political experience. She reached out to the Irish diaspora (the large number of Irish emigrants and people of Irish descent). She also changed the face of Anglo-Irish relations, when she was the first serving Irish president to visit the United Kingdom and meet Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. She welcomed visits by senior members of the British royal family, most notably the Prince of Wales, to her official residence, Áras an Uachtaráin.
She served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate (1969–1989). She defeated Fianna Fáil's Brian Lenihan and Fine Gael's Austin Currie in the 1990 presidential election becoming, as an Independent candidate nominated by the Labour Party, the Workers' Party and independent senators, the first elected president in the office's history not to have had the support of Fianna Fáil.
Robinson in Somalia, 2011.
She is widely regarded as a transformative figure for Ireland, and for the Irish presidency, revitalising and liberalising a previously conservative, low-profile political office. She resigned the presidency two months ahead of the end of her term of office to take up her post in the United Nations. During her UN tenure, she visited Tibet (1998), the first High Commissioner to do so; she criticised Ireland's immigrant policy; and criticised the use of capital punishment in the United States. She extended her intended single four-year term by a year to preside over the World Conference against Racism 2001 in Durban, South Africa; the conference proved controversial, and under continuing pressure from the US, Robinson resigned her post in September 2002.
After leaving the UN in 2002, Robinson formed Realizing Rights: the Ethical Globalization Initiative which came to a planned end at the end of 2010. Its core activities were 1) fostering equitable trade and decent work, 2) promoting the right to health and morehumane migration policies, and 3) working to strengthen women's leadership and encourage corporate responsibility. The organisation also supported capacity building and good governance in developing countries. Robinson returned to live in Ireland at the end of 2010, and has set up The Mary Robinson Foundation -

Climate Justice, which aims to be 'a centre for thought leadership, education and advocacy on the struggle to secure global justice for those many victims of climate change who are usually forgotten - the poor, the disempowered and the marginalised across the world.'

Robinson is Chair of the Institute for Human Rights and Business and Chancellor of the University of Dublin. Since 2004, she has also been Professor of Practice in International Affairs at Columbia University, where she teaches international human rights. Robinson also visits other colleges and universities where she lectures on human rights. Robinson sits on the Board of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, an organisation which supports good governance and great leadership in Africa, and is a member of the Foundation’s Ibrahim Prize Committee. Robinson is an Extraordinary Professor in the Centre for Human Rights and the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria. Robinson served as Oxfam's honorary president from 2002 until she stepped down in 2012 and is honorary president of the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation EIUC since 2005. She is Chair of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and is also a founding member and Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders. Robinson was a member of the European members of the Trilateral Commission.



In 2004, she received Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award for her work in promoting human rights

.In July 2009, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour awarded by the United States.In presenting the award to Robinson, U.S. President Barack Obama said
"Mary Robinson learned early on what it takes to make sure all voices are heard. As a crusader for women and those without a voice in Ireland, Mary Robinson was the first woman elected President of Ireland, before being appointed U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. When she traveled abroad as President, she would place a light in her window that would draw people of Irish descent to pass by below. Today, as an advocate for the hungry and the hunted, the forgotten and the ignored, Mary Robinson has not only shone a light on human suffering, but illuminated a better future for our world."
Robinson receiving the Presidential
Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.
Amnesty International congratulated Mary Robinson on being named as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. "Mary Robinson has long defended the rights of the underdog and has never shirked from speaking truth to power,” said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International. "As an outspoken, passionate and forceful advocate for human rights and human dignity in all regions of the world, Mary Robinson has helped countless individuals from Sierra Leone to Rwanda to the Balkans to Somalia and to the Middle East," she continued. Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel also congratulated Robinson on her acceptance of the award.

United States Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, United States Senate Assistant Majoriy Leader Dick Durbin, and some other legislators welcomed the presenting of the award to Robinson." Forty-five Republican Congressmen sent a letter to President Obama raised issue with the presentation citing "her failed, biased record as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights".

In a letter to President Obama, Nancy Rubin, a former American ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission, welcomed the award and praised Robinson as a "dedicated crusader for human rights for all people". Oxfam confederation also expressed its strong support for Robinson. The Council of Women World Leaders, the Champalimaud Foundation, and the Imagine Nations Group welcomed the presentation of the Medal of Freedom to Robinson.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission congratulated Robinson, saying she "helped advance recognition of the human rights of LGBT people in her capacity as President of Ireland and as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She has been unwavering in her passionate call to end torture, persecution, and discrimination against LGBT people globally."
Wikipedia



World Events


1914 – The first issue of The New Republic magazine is published.
1920 – Patriarch Tikhon issues a decree that leads to the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.
1929 – In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art opens to the public.
1931 – The Chinese Soviet Republic is proclaimed on the anniversary of the October Revolution.
1933 – Fiorello H. La Guardia is elected the 99th mayor of New York City.
1940 – In Tacoma, Washington, the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses in a windstorm, a mere four months after the bridge's completion.
1941 – World War II: Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German planes while evacuating refugees and wounded military and staff of several Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that over 5,000 people died in the sinking.
1944 – A passenger train derails in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico from excessive speed when descending a hill. Sixteen people are killed and 50 are injured.
1944 – Soviet spy Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German World War I veteran, is hanged by his Japanese captors along with 34 of his ring.
1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America.
1949 – The first oil was taken in Oil Rocks (Neft Daşları), oldest offshore oil platform.
1956 – Suez Crisis: The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the United Kingdom, France and Israel to immediately withdraw their troops from Egypt.
1963 – Wunder von Lengede: In Germany, eleven miners are rescued from a collapsed mine after 14 days.
1967 – Carl B. Stokes is elected as Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, becoming the first African American mayor of a major American city.
1967 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
1973 – The U.S. Congress overrides President Richard M. Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.
1983 – 1983 United States Senate bombing: a bomb explodes inside the United States Capitol. No one is injured, but an estimated $250,000 in damage is caused.
1987 – In Tunisia, president Habib Bourguiba is overthrown and replaced by Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
1987 – Singapore's first Mass Rapid Transit line was opened, starting with train services between Yio Chu Kang and Toa Payoh stations.
1989 – Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia, becoming the first elected African American governor in the United States.
1989 – David Dinkins becomes the first African American to be elected mayor of New York City.
1989 – East German Prime Minister Willi Stoph, along with his entire cabinet, is forced to resign after huge anti-government protests.
1990 – Mary Robinson becomes the first woman to be elected President of the Republic of Ireland.
1991 – Magic Johnson announces that he is infected with HIV and retires from the NBA.
1994 – WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world's first internet radio broadcast.
2000 – Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected to the United States Senate, becoming the first former First Lady to win public office in the United States, although she was actually still the First Lady.
2000 – Controversial US presidential election that is later resolved in the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court Case.
2000 – The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration discovers one of the country's largest LSD labs inside a converted military missile silo in Wamego, Kansas.
2002 – Iran bans advertising of United States products.
2004 – Iraq War: The interim government of Iraq calls for a 60-day "state of emergency" as U.S. forces storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
2007 – Jokela school shooting in Tuusula, Finland, resulting in the death of nine people.
2012 – An earthquake off the Pacific coast of Guatemala kills at least 52 people.

Thursday 6 November 2014

Today in History November 6 : Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.

November 6 is the 310th day of the year. There are 55 days remaining until the end of the year.



Tammy Baldwin, official portrait, 113th Congress.jpg
Tammy Baldwin



Today's Highlight in History:
2012 – Tammy Baldwin becomes the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.


Tammy Suzanne Green Baldwin (born February 11, 1962) is the junior United States Senator from Wisconsin and a member of the Democratic Party. She previously served as the U.S. Representative from Wisconsin's 2nd congressional district from 1999 to 2013, as well as serving three terms in the Wisconsin Assembly representing the 78th district.

Baldwin defeated her Republican opponent, former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, in the 2012 U.S. Senate election. She is the first woman elected to represent Wisconsin in the Senate and the first openly gay U.S. Senator in history. As of 2012, Baldwin's voting record makes her one of the most liberal members of Congress.

Baldwin was born and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, the daughter of Pamela (née Green) and Joseph Edward Baldwin. She was raised by her mother and her maternal grandparents. Her maternal grandfather was Jewish (the son of immigrants from Russia and Germany), and her maternal grandmother, who was Anglican, was English-born. Baldwin graduated from Madison West High School in 1980 as the class valedictorian. She earned a B.A. degree from Smith College in 1984 and a J.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 1989. She practiced law from 1989 to 1992.

Baldwin was first elected to political office in 1986 when she was elected to the Dane County Board of Supervisors, a position she held until 1994. She also served one year on the Madison City Council to fill a vacancy in the coterminous district
Baldwin presiding over the House
while serving as Speaker Pro Tempore


Baldwin was the first openly lesbian member of the Wisconsin Assembly and one of just six openly gay political candidates nationwide to win a general election in 1992.

In 1993, Baldwin said she was disappointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton's compromise on LGBT rights in supporting the military's don't ask, don't tell policy. In early 1994, she proposed legalizing same-sex marriage in Wisconsin. In 1995, she proposed domestic partnerships in Wisconsin Baldwin opposes capital punishment in Wisconsin
US Senator Tammy Baldwin from
Wisconsin speaking at a US Department of Justice event.
An outspoken advocate of single-payer, government-run health insurance since her days as a state legislator, Baldwin introduced the Health Security for All Americans Act, aimed at creating such a system, multiple times, beginning in 2000.

On July 26, 2004, Baldwin spoke at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in prime time on the issue of health care. During the 110th Congress, Baldwin wrote several pieces of legislation that were passed by the House. The Reeve Paralysis Act authorizes additional funding for the treatment of ailments that result in immobility, while the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program Act increases funding for low-income women to receive preventative screenings. Another bill she authored, the Veteran Vision Equity Act, guarantees benefits for military veterans.
Baldwin speaks during the second day of the
2008 Democratic National Convention
in Denver,Colorado.


Baldwin introduced provisions to the healthcare reform bill that specifically addressed disparities in health care for queer and trans* communities. Most significant among them were the “Early Treatment for HIV Act,” which sought to allow states to provide Medicaid coverage to low-income individuals living with HIV or AIDS.

The Tax Equity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act, which sought to end the tax for gay employees whose partners are covered under their employment health insurance coverage.

In November 2009, Baldwin voted for the version of healthcare reform that included a public option, a government-run healthcare plan that would have competed with private insurers, but only the House passed that version. She ultimately voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that become law in 2010.
Baldwin and Thompson debating during the 2012 election

Baldwin ran as the Democratic nominee against Republican nominee Tommy Thompson, who had formerly been governor and Secretary of Health and Human Services. She announced her candidacy on September 6, 2011, in a video emailed to supporters. She ran uncontested in the primary election, and spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention about tax policy, campaign finance reform, and equality in the United States.
She was endorsed by Democracy for America, and she received campaign funding from EMILY's List, the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, and LPAC. Baldwin was endorsed by the editorial board of The Capital Times, who wrote that "Baldwin's fresh ideas on issues ranging from job creation to health care reform, along with her proven record of working across lines of partisanship and ideology, and her grace under pressure mark her as precisely the right choice to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl." Former Gov. Tommy Thompson claimed that her “far left approach leaves this country in jeopardy.”

On November 6, 2012, Baldwin became the first openly gay candidate to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Because of her 14 years in the House of Representatives, under Senate rules she had the highest seniority in her entering class of senators.

The senator was featured in Time's November 19 edition in the Verbatim section, where she was quoted as saying "I didn't run to make history" on her historic election. In a separate section, she was also mentioned as a new face to watch in the Senate.

Wikipedia



World Events



1789 – Pope Pius VI appoints Father John Carroll as the first Catholic bishop in the United States.
1844 – The first constitution of the Dominican Republic is adopted.
1856 – Scenes of Clerical Life, the first work of fiction by the author later known as George Eliot, is submitted for publication.
1861 – American Civil War: Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America.
1913 – Mohandas Gandhi is arrested while leading a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1917 – World War I: Third Battle of Ypres ends: After three months of fierce fighting, Canadian forces take Passchendaele in Belgium.
1918 – The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed.
1935 – Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
1935 – First flight of the Hawker Hurricane, with its K5083 first prototype.
1935 – Parker Brothers acquires the forerunner patents for Monopoly from Elizabeth Magie.
1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
1947 – Meet the Press makes its television debut (the show went to a weekly schedule on September 12, 1948).
1962 – Apartheid: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
1991 – The last Kuwaiti oil field fire is extinguished.
1995 – The Rova of Antananarivo, home of the sovereigns of Madagascar from the 16th to 19th centuries, is destroyed by fire.
1999 – Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.
2004 – An express train collides with a stationary car near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing seven and injuring 150.
2012 – Tammy Baldwin becomes the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.

    Wednesday 5 November 2014

    Today in History November 5 : Susan B. Anthony the first non-fictitious woman to be depicted on U.S. currency

    November 5 is the 309th day of the year. There are 56 days remaining until the end of the year
    Susan B Anthony c1855.png
    Portrait of Susan B. Anthony
    that was used in the 
    History of Woman Suffrage



    Today's Highlight in History:
    1872 – Women's suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.


    Susan Brownell Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer who played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement.

     Born into a Quaker family, to Daniel Anthony and Lucy Read in Adams, Massachusetts, the second oldest of seven children. Anthony's father was an abolitionist and a temperance advocate. A Quaker, he had a difficult relationship with his traditionalist congregation, which rebuked him for marrying a non-Quaker.Their father encouraged them all, girls as well as boys, to be self-supporting, teaching them business principles and giving them responsibilities at an early age

    Her family shared a passion for social reform. Her brothers Daniel and Merritt moved to Kansas to support the anti-slavery movement there. Merritt fought with John Brown against pro-slavery forces during the Bleeding Kansas crisis. Daniel eventually owned a newspaper and became mayor of Leavenworth. Anthony's sister Mary, with whom she shared a home in later years, became a public school principal in Rochester, and a woman's rights activist committed to social equality,

    In 1851, she played a key role in organizing an anti-slavery convention in Rochester. She was also part of the Underground Railroad. An entry in her diary in 1861 read, "Fitted out a fugitive slave for Canada with the help of Harriet Tubman." In 1837, at age 16, Anthony collected petitions against slavery as part of organized resistance to the newly established gag rule that prohibited anti-slavery petitions in the U.S. House of Representatives.In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

    Anthony embarked on her career of social reform with energy and determination. Schooling herself in reform issues, she found herself drawn to the more radical ideas of people like William Lloyd Garrison, George Thompson and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Soon she was wearing the controversial Bloomer dress, consisting of pantaloons worn under a knee-length dress. Although it was more sensible than the traditional heavy dresses that dragged the ground, she reluctantly quit wearing it after a year because it gave her opponents the opportunity to focus on her apparel rather than her ideas
    Headmistress Susan B. Anthony
    in 1848 at age 28
    When Anthony tried to speak at the New York State Teachers' Association meeting in 1853, her attempt sparked a half-hour debate among the men about whether it was proper for women to speak in public. Finally allowed to continue, Anthony said, 

    "Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman." 

    At the 1857 teacher's convention, she introduced a resolution calling for the admission of black people to public schools and colleges, but it was rejected as "not a proper subject for discussion." When she introduced another resolution calling for males and females to be educated together at all levels, including colleges, it was fiercely opposed and decisively rejected. One opponent called the idea "a vast social evil... the first step in the school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind this picture I see a monster of social deformity.

    "In 1851, Anthony was introduced to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who had been one of the organizers of the Seneca Falls Convention and had introduced the controversial resolution in support of women's suffrage. Anthony and Stanton soon became close friends and lifelong co-worker in social reform activities, primarily in the field of women's rights.The two women had complementary skills. Anthony excelled at organizing, while Stanton had an aptitude for intellectual matters and writing. Because Stanton was homebound with seven children while Anthony was unmarried and free to travel, Anthony assisted Stanton by supervising her children while Stanton wrote.
    Elizabeth Cady Stanton (sitting) with Anthony
    In 1852, they founded the New York Women's State Temperance Society after Anthony was prevented from speaking at a temperance conference because she was a woman. Temperance was very much a women's rights issue at that time because of laws that gave husbands complete control of the family and its finances. A woman with a drunken husband had little legal recourse even if his alcoholism left the family destitute and he was abusive to her and their children. Anthony and her co-workers collected 28,000 signatures on a petition for a law to prohibit the sale of alcohol in New York State. She organized a hearing on that law before the New York legislature, the first that had been initiated in that state by a group of women.
    Susan B. Anthony


    In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and Anthony and nearly fifty other women in Rochester attempted to vote in the presidential election of 1872. Fifteen of them convinced the election inspectors to allow them to cast ballots, but the others were turned back. When Anthony voted, however, the reaction was different, and her case became a national controversy.Anthony was arrested on November 18, 1872, by a U.S. Deputy Marshal and charged with illegally voting. The other fourteen women were also arrested but released pending the outcome of Anthony's trial In 1878, Anthony's trial was a major step in the transition of the women's rights movement into the women's suffrage movement. The trial began on July 17, 1873, and was closely followed by the national press. she was convicted and asked to pay a fine of $100, Although she refused to pay the fine, the authorities declined to take further action.
    They founded the Women's Loyal National League, which conducted the largest petition drive in the nation's history up to that time, collecting nearly 400,000 signatures in support of the abolition of slavery. In 1866, they initiated the American Equal Rights Association, which campaigned for equal rights for both women and African Americans. Anthony and Stanton arranged for Congress to be presented with an amendment giving women the right to vote. Popularly known as the Anthony Amendment, it became the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

    Anthony and Stanton began publishing a weekly newspaper called The Revolution in New York City in 1868. It focused primarily on women's rights, especially suffrage for women, but it also covered other topics, including politics, the labor movement and finance. One of its goals was to provide a forum in which women could exchange opinions on key issues from a variety of viewpoints. Anthony managed the business aspects of the paper while Stanton was co-editor along with Parker Pillsbury, an abolitionist and a supporter of women's rights. Initial funding was provided by George Francis Train, the controversial businessman who supported women's rights but who alienated many activists with his political and racial views.
    Printing House Square in Manhattan in 1868,
    showing the sign for The Revolution's office
    at the far right below
    The World and aboveScientific American.


    In 1869, they founded the National Woman Suffrage Association as part of a split in the women's movement. In 1890 the split was formally healed when their organization merged with the rival American Woman Suffrage Association to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association, with Anthony as its key force. In 1876, Anthony and Stanton began working with Matilda Joslyn Gage on what eventually grew into the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage. The interests of Anthony and Stanton diverged somewhat in later years, but the two remained close friends.
    Their interests began to diverge somewhat as they grew older. As the drive for women's suffrage gained momentum, Anthony began to form alliances with more conservative groups, such as the Women's Christian Temperance Union, the nation's largest women's organization and a supporter of women's suffrage. Such moves irritated Stanton, who said, "I get more radical as I get older, while she seems to grow more conservative." In 1895 Stanton published The Woman's Bible, which attacked the use of the bible to relegate women to an inferior status. It became a highly controversial best-seller. The NAWSA voted to disavow any connection with it despite Anthony's strong objection that such a move was unnecessary and hurtful. Even so, Anthony refused to assist with the book's preparation, telling Stanton: "You say 'women must be emancipated from their superstitions before enfranchisement will have any benefit,' and I say just the reverse, that women must be enfranchised before they can be emancipated from their superstitions."Despite such friction, their relationship continued to be close until Stanton death in 1902,
    Anthony traveled extensively in support of women's suffrage, giving as many as 75 to 100 speeches per year and working on many state campaigns. She worked internationally for women's rights, playing a key role in creating the International Council of Women, which is still active. She also helped to bring about the World's Congress of Representative Women at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

    When she first began campaigning for women's rights, Anthony was harshly ridiculed and accused of trying to destroy the institution of marriage. Public perception of her changed radically during her lifetime. During the six remaining years of her life, Anthony spoke at six more NAWSA conventions and four congressional hearings, completed the fourth volume of the History of Woman Suffrage, and traveled to eighteen states and to Europe. As Anthony's fame grew, some politicians (certainly not all of them) were happy to be publicly associated with her. Her seventieth birthday was celebrated at a national event in Washington with prominent members of the House and Senate in attendance.Her eightieth birthday was celebrated at the White House at the invitation of President William McKinley
    U.S. dollar coin with image of
    Susan. B. Anthony
    She became the first non-fictitious woman to be depicted on U.S. currency when her portrait appeared on the 1979 dollar coin.
    Susan B. Anthony
    commemorative stamp, 1936 issueIssued 
    on the 16th anniversary of ratification of
     the 19th Amendment,
    allowing women to vote.

    Susan B. Anthony died at the age of 86 of heart failure and pneumonia in her home in Rochester, New York, on March 13, 1906. She was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester.

    Anthony did not live to see the achievement of women's suffrage at the national level, but she was proud of the progress the women's movement had made. At the time of her death, women had achieved suffrage in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and Idaho, and several larger states followed soon after. Legal rights for married women had been established in most states, and most professions had at least a few women members. 36,000 women were attending colleges and universities, up from zero a few decades earlier." Two years before she died, Anthony said, "The world has never witnessed a greater revolution than in the sphere of woman during this fifty years".

    Legacy

    Anthony's home in Rochester is now a National Historic Landmark called the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House. The house of her birth in Adams, Massachusetts, and her childhood home in Battenville, New York, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

    The rotunda of the U.S. Capitol contains a statue that honors three leading women's rights leaders: Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan, one of the world's largest, has a sculpture honoring four spiritual heroes of the twentieth century: Anthony, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, and Mohandas Gandhi.

    In 1936, the U.S. Post Office issued its first postage stamp honoring Susan B. Anthony. A second stamp honoring Anthony was issued in April 1958.

    In 1979, the United States Mint began issuing the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, the first U.S. coin to honor a real woman rather than an allegorical female figure.The Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed the right of women to vote, was popularly known as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. After it was ratified in 1920, the National American Woman Suffrage Association, whose character and policies were strongly influenced by Anthony, was transformed into the League of Women Voters, which is still an active force in U.S. politics.

    wikipedia



    World Events

    1831 – Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.
    1872 – Women's suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.
    1895 – George B. Selden is granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile.
    1912 – Woodrow Wilson is elected to the presidency of the United States.
    1916 – The Kingdom of Poland is proclaimed by the Act of November 5th of the emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
    1917 – St. Tikhon of Moscow is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
    1925 – Secret agent Sidney Reilly, the first "super-spy" of the 20th century, is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union.
    1937 – Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people.
    2006 – Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi'a Muslims in 1982
    2007 – China's first lunar satellite, Chang'e 1 goes into orbit around the Moon.
    2007 – Android mobile operating system is unveiled by Google.
    2009 – U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan murders 13 and wounds 32 at Fort Hood, Texas in the deadliest mass shooting at a U.S. military installation.
    2013 – India launches the Mars Orbiter Mission, its first interplanetary probe.

    Tuesday 4 November 2014

    Today in History November 4: Nellie Tayloe Ross: the first woman to be elected governor of a U.S. state

    November 4 is the 308th day of the year. There are 57 days remaining until the end of the year.

    Nellie Tayloe Ross.jpg
    Nellie Tayloe Ross
    14th Governor of Wyoming
    In office


    Today's Highlight in History:

    1924 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is elected the first female governor in the United States.


    Nellie Tayloe Ross (November 29, 1876 – December 19, 1977) was an American politician, the 14th Governor of Wyoming from 1925 to 1927, and director of the United States Mint from 1933 to 1953. She was the first woman to be elected governor of a U.S. state, and remains the only woman to have served as governor of Wyoming. She was a staunch supporter of Prohibition during the 1920s.

    After she graduated from Miltonville High School in 1892, her family moved to Omaha, Nebraska. During this time she taught private piano lessons, and also attended a teacher-training college for two years. She then taught kindergarten for four years. Nellie was sent on a trip to Europe in 1896 by two of her brothers.

    While on a visit to her relatives in Dover, Tennessee, in 1900, she met William Bradford Ross, whom she married on September 11, 1902. Ross practiced law and planned to live in the American West. He moved to Cheyenne and established a law practice, bringing his wife to join him there. Ross became a leader in the Democratic Party in Wyoming. He ran for office several times unsuccessfully, losing to Republican candidates each time.

    In 1922, William Ross was elected governor of Wyoming by appealing to progressive voters in both parties. However, after little more than a year and a half in office, he died on October 2, 1924, from complications from an appendectomy. The Democratic Party then nominated his widow, Nellie Ross, to run for governor in a special election the following month.

    Nellie Tayloe Ross refused to campaign, but easily won the race on November 4, 1924. On January 5, 1925, she became the first female governor in the history of the United States. As governor she continued her late husband's policies, which called for tax cuts, government assistance for poor farmers, banking reform, and laws protecting children, women workers, and miners. She urged Wyoming to ratify a pending federal amendment prohibiting child labor. Like her husband, she advocated the strengthening of prohibition laws.

    Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. It is the 10th most extensive, but the least populous and the second least densely populated of the 50 United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and range lands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High Plains. Cheyenne is the capital and the most populous city in Wyoming, with a population estimate of 62,448 in 2013.
    Wyoming state welcome sign on Interstate
     80 in Uinta County (at the Utah border).


    Ross ran for re-election in 1926, but was narrowly defeated. Ross blamed her loss in part on her refusal to campaign for herself and her support for prohibition. Nevertheless, she remained active in the Democratic Party and campaigned for Al Smith in the 1928 presidential election though the two disagreed on prohibition. At the 1928 Democratic National Convention, she received 31 votes from 10 states for vice president on the first ballot. She also gave a speech seconding Smith's nomination. After the convention, she served as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee and as director of the DNC Women's Division.

    U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her as the first female director of the U.S. Mint on May 3, 1933, where she served five full terms until her retirement in 1953, when Republicans under Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon regained the executive branch of government. She is famous for establishing the Franklin Half Dollar and starting the making of proof coins for public sale.

    After her retirement, Ross contributed articles to various women's magazines and traveled extensively. She made her last trip to Wyoming in 1972 at the age of ninety-six. Five years later, she died in Washington, D.C., at the age of 101; at the time of her death, she was the oldest ex-governor in the United States. She is interred in the family plot in Lakeview Cemetery in Cheyenne.





    World Events


    1847 – Sir James Young Simpson, a British physician, discovers the anaesthetic properties of chloroform.
    1852 – Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour becomes the prime minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expands to become Italy.
    1861 – The University of Washington opens in Seattle as the Territorial University.
    1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Johnsonville – Confederate troops bombard a Union supply base and destroy millions of dollars in material.
    1868 – Camagüey, Cuba revolts against Spain during the Ten Years' War.
    1890 – City and South London Railway: London's first deep-level tube railway opens between King William Street and Stockwell.
    1921 – Japanese Prime Minister Hara Takashi is assassinated in Tokyo.
    1921 – The Italian unknown soldier is buried in the Altare della Patria (Fatherland Altar) in Rome.
    1922 – In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
    1924 – Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming is elected the first female governor in the United States.
    1939 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
    1952 – The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA.
    1960 – At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.
    1970 – Genie, a 13-year-old feral child is found in Los Angeles having been locked in her bedroom for most of her life.
    1970 – Salvador Allende takes office as President of Chile, the first Marxist to become president of a Latin American country through open elections.
    1973 – The Netherlands experiences the first Car-Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are deserted and are used only by cyclists and roller skaters.
    1979 – Iran hostage crisis: a mob of Iranians, mostly students, overruns the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American).
    1991 – Former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos was granted a presidential pardon by Corazon Aquino and allowed to return from exile.1993 – A China Airlines Boeing 747 overruns Runway 13 at Hong Kong's Kai Tak International Airport while landing during a typhoon, injuring 22 people.
    1994 – San Francisco: First conference that focuses exclusively on the subject of the commercial potential of the World Wide Web.
    1995 – Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated by an extremist Israeli.
    2002 – Chinese authorities arrest cyber-dissident He Depu for signing a pro-democracy letter to the 16th Communist Party Congress.
    2008 – Barack Obama becomes the first man of African-American descent to be elected President of the United States.

    Monday 3 November 2014

    Focus:Indira Gandhi, the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of India and the only woman to hold the office.

    Indira2.jpg
    Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi

    Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi ( née Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was the third Prime Minister of India and a central figure of the Indian National Congress party. Gandhi, who served from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, is the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of India and the only woman to hold the office.

    Indira Gandhi was the only child of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She served as the Chief of Staff of her father's highly centralised administration between 1947 and 1964 and came to wield considerable unofficial influence in government. Elected Congress President in 1959, she was offered the premiership in succession to her father. Gandhi refused and instead chose to become a cabinet minister in the government. She finally consented to become Prime Minister in succession to Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966.

    As Prime Minister, Gandhi was known for her political ruthlessness and unprecedented centralisation of power. She went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in an Indian victory and the creation of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India's influence to the point where it became the regional hegemon of South Asia. Gandhi also presided over a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 during which she ruled by decree and made lasting changes to the constitution of India. She was assassinated in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star.

    Indira Gandhi was born Indira Nehru in a Kashmiri Pandit family on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad. Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, led India's political struggle for independence from British rule, and became the first Prime Minister of the Union (and later Republic) of India. She was an only child (a younger brother was born, but died young), and grew up with her mother, Kamala Nehru, at the Anand Bhavan; a large family estate in Allahabad. Indira had a lonely and unhappy childhood .Her father was often away, directing political activities or being incarcerated in prison, while her mother was frequently bed-ridden with illness, and later suffered an early death from tuberculosis. She had limited contact with her father, mostly through letters.

    Indira was mostly taught at home by tutors, and intermittently attended school until matriculation in 1934. She went on to study at the Viswa Bharati University in Shantiniketan. It was during her interview that Rabindranath Tagore named her Priyadarshini, and she came to be known as Indira Priyadarshini Nehru. A year later, however, she had to leave university to attend to her ailing mother in Europe. While there, it was decided that Indira would continue her education at the University of Oxford. After her mother died, she briefly attended the Badminton School before enrolling at Somerville College in 1937 to study history. Indira had to take the entrance examination twice; having failed at her first attempt, with a poor performance in Latin. At Oxford, she did well in history, political science and economics, but her grades in Latin—a compulsory subject—remained poor.

    During her stay in the UK, young Indira frequently met her future husband Feroze Gandhi, whom she knew from Allahabad, and who was studying at the London School of Economics. The marriage took place in Allahabad according to Adi Dharm rituals though Feroze belonged to a Parsi family of Gujarat.

    In the 1950s, Indira, now Mrs. Indira Gandhi after her marriage, served her father unofficially as a personal assistant during his tenure as the first Prime Minister of India. After her father's death in 1964 she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house) and became a member of Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

    When Indira became Prime Minister in 1966, the Congress was split in two factions, the socialists led by Gandhi, and the conservatives led by Morarji Desai. Rammanohar Lohia called her Gungi Gudiya, which means 'Mute Doll'. The internal problems showed in the 1967 election where the Congress lost nearly 60 seats winning 297 seats in the 545-seat Lok Sabha. She had to accommodate Desai as Deputy Prime Minister of India and Minister of Finance. In 1969, after many disagreements with Desai, the Indian National Congress split. She ruled with support from Socialist and Communist Parties for the next two years. In the same year, in July 1969 she nationalised banks.

    On 31 October 1984, two of Gandhi's bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, shot her with their service weapons in the garden of the Prime Minister's residence at 1 Safdarjung Road, New Delhi. The shooting occurred as she was walking past a wicket gate guarded by Satwant and Beant. She was to have been interviewed by the British actor Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. Beant Singh shot her three times using his side-arm, and Satwant Singh fired 30 rounds. Beant Singh and Satwant Singh dropped their weapons and surrendered. Afterwards they were taken away by other guards into a closed room where Beant Singh was shot dead. Kehar Singh was later arrested for conspiracy in the attack. Both Satwant and Kehar were sentenced to death and hanged in Delhi's Tihar jail.

    Indira Gandhi was brought at 9:30 AM to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where doctors operated on her. She was declared dead at 2:20 PM. The post-mortem examination was conducted by a team of doctors headed by Dr. T.D. Dogra. Dr. Dogra stated that as many as 30 bullet wounds were sustained by Indira Gandhi, from two sources, a Sten gun and a pistol. The assailants had fired 31 bullets at her, of which 30 had hit; 23 had passed through her body while 7 were trapped inside her. Dr. Dogra extracted bullets to establish the identity of the weapons and to correlate each weapon with the bullets recovered by ballistic examination. The bullets were matched with respective weapons at CFSL Delhi. Subsequently Dr. Dogra appeared in the court of Shri Mahesh Chandra as an expert witness (PW-5), and his testimony lasted several sessions. The cross examination was conducted by Shri P. N. Lekhi, the defence counsel Salma Sultan gave the first news of assassination of Indira Gandhi on Doordarshan's evening news on 31 October 1984, more than 10 hours after she was shot.
    Indira Gandhi with Jacqueline Kennedy in New Delhi, 1962

    Gandhi was cremated on 3 November near Raj Ghat. The site where she was cremated is today known as Shakti Sthala. Her funeral was televised live on domestic and international stations, including the BBC. Following her cremation, millions of Sikhs were displaced and nearly three thousand were killed in anti-Sikh riots. Rajiv Gandhi on a live TV show said of the carnage, "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes

    In 2001, Gandhi was voted the greatest Indian Prime Minister in a poll organised by India Today. She was also named "Woman of the Millennium" in a poll organised by the BBC in 1999.

    Wikipedia.

    Focus: William Shakespeare an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language,

    Shakespeare.jpg
    William Shakespear
    William Shakespeare ( 26 April 156 – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.


    William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, Saint George's Day. He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.

    John Shakespeare's house, believed to be Shakespeare's birthplace, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

    At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage. The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna,Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596.

    After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the 'complaints bill' of a law case before the Queen's Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589. Scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years"

    Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later.
    Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories and these works remain regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres even today. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.

    Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but for all time". In the 20th and 21st century, his work has been repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.

    From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed by only the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king,James I, and changed its name to the King's Men

    Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there. By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot named Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear

    Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear. Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.

    In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English. Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type. Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech
    Shakespeare's grave,
    sitting next to Anne Shakespeare,
    his wife, and toThomas Nash,
    the husband of his granddaughter.

    Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52.He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in “perfect health”. There is no extant contemporary source that explains how or why he died. After half a century had passed,John Ward, the vicar of Stratford, wrote in his notebook: “Shakespeare, Drayton and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and, it seems, drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.” This is not impossible, for Shakespeare knew Jonson and Drayton. Of the tributes that started to come from fellow authors, one refers to his relatively early death: “We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went’st so soon/From the world’s stage to the grave’s tiring room.”

    He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare's death. Shakespeare signed his last will and testament on 25 March 1616.

    In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body".The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare's direct line

    Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death. The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008:

    Wikipedia.

    Today in History November 3: Olympe de Gouges; French playwright, journalist and feminist is guillotined

    November 3 is the 307th day of the year. There are 58 days remaining until the end of the year.
    Marie-Olympe-de-Gouges.jpg
    Olympe de Gouges


    Today's Highlight in History: 1793 – French playwright, journalist and feminist, Olympe de Gouges is guillotined.

    Olympe de Gouges (7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793), born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience.

    She began her career as a playwright in the early 1780s. As political tension rose in France, de Gouges became increasingly politically involved. She became an outspoken advocate for improving the condition of slaves in the colonies as of 1788. At the same time, she began writing political pamphlets. Today she is perhaps best known as an early feminist who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male–female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government.
    Historic replicas (1:6 scale) of the two
    main types of French guillotines
    : Model 1792, left, and Model 1872
    (state as of 1907), right

    A guillotine is an apparatus designed for carrying out executions by beheading. It consists of a tall upright frame in which a weighted and angled blade is raised to the top and suspended. The condemned person is secured at the bottom of the frame, with his or her neck held directly below the blade. The blade is then released, to fall swiftly and sever the head from the body. The device is best known for its use in France, in particular during the French Revolution, when it "became a part of popular culture" and it became celebrated as the people's avenger by supporters of the Revolution and vilified as the pre-eminent symbol of the Reign of Terror by opponents."

    Olympe de Gouges was a passionate advocate of human rights, She greeted the outbreak of the French Revolution with hope and joy, but soon became disenchanted when égalité(equal rights) was not extended to women.

    She was part of the Society of the Friends of Truth, an association with the goal of equal political and legal rights for women. Also called the "Social Club", members sometimes gathered at the home of the well-known women's rights advocate, Sophie de Condorcet. Here, De Gouges expressed, for the first time, her famous statement, "A woman has the right to mount the scaffold. She must possess equally the right to mount the speaker's platform.

    In response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, she wrote the Déclaration des droits de la Femme et de la Citoyenne("Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen"). This was followed by her Contrat Social ("Social Contract", named after a famous work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau), proposing marriage based upon gender equality.She became involved in almost any matter she believed to involve injustice.

    She opposed the execution of Louis XVI of France, partly out of opposition to capital punishment and partly because she preferred a relatively tame and living king to the possibility of a rebel regency in exile. This earned her the ire of many hard-line republicans. As the Revolution progressed, she became more and more vehement in her writings. Finally, her poster Les trois urnes, ou le salut de la Patrie, par un voyageur aérien ("The Three Urns, or the Salvation of the Fatherland, By An Aerial Traveller") of 1793, led to her arrest. That piece demanded a plebiscite for a choice among three potential forms of government: the first, unitary republic, the second, a federalist government, or the third, a constitutional monarchy.

    After she was arrested, the commissioners searched her house for evidence. When they could not find any in her home, she voluntarily led them to the storehouse where she kept her papers. It was there that the commissioners found an unfinished play titled La France Sauvée ou le Tyran Détroné ("France Preserved, or The Tyrant Dethroned"). Both De Gouges and her prosecutor used this play as evidence in her trial. The prosecutor claimed that Olympe's depictions of the queen threatened to stir up sympathy and support for the Royalists, whereas De Gouges stated that the play showed that she had always been a supporter of the revolution.
    The execution of Olympe de Gouges
    She spent three months in jail without an attorney, trying to defend herself. The presiding judge denied De Gouges her legal right to a lawyer, on the grounds that she was more than capable of representing herself. It seems as though the judge based this argument on De Gouges's tendency to represent herself in her writings. Through her friends, she managed to publish two texts: Olympe de Gouges au tribunal révolutionnaire ("Olympe de Gouges at the revolutionary tribunal"), where she related her interrogations and her last work, Une patriote persécutée ("A [female] patriot persecuted"), where she condemned the Terror. The Jacobins were in no mood to tolerate any opposition from the intellectuals. De Gouges was sentenced to death on 2 November 1793, for seditious behaviour and attempting to reinstate the monarchy. She was executed the following day, at the age of 45 and her body disposed of in the Madeleine Cemetery.

    She wrote on such gender-related topics as the right of divorce and argued in favour of sexual relations outside of marriage she wrote some forty works - essays, manifestos, literary treatises, political pamphlets and socially-conscious plays and numerous other works,:

    "Denied a place in the powerful circles of her day she found her political voice by writing an astonishing number of pamphlets and posters that she freely disseminated around Paris. Her texts chart her battles against injustice and inequality, her belief that solidarity and cooperation should predominate, her hatred of dictatorships and the corrupting influence of power, her profound pacifism, her respect for humankind, her love of nature, and, of course, her desire that women be allowed a worthwhile role in society. She pleaded against slavery and the death penalty, dreamt of a more equal society and proposed intelligent taxation plans to enable wealth to be more fairly divided. She called for a form of welfare state, trial by jury and reasonable divorce laws to protect women and children from penury. Believing in the power of drama to encourage political change she wrote several plays that ingeniously highlight contemporary concerns."

    Wikipedia



    World Events



    1793 – French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges is guillotined..

    1817 – The Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest chartered bank, opens in Montreal.

    1838 – The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English language daily broadsheet newspaper is founded as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce.

    1868 – John Willis Menard was the first African American elected to the United States Congress. Because of an electoral challenge, he was never seated.

    1903 – With the encouragement of the United States, Panama separates from Colombia.

    1911 – Chevrolet officially enters the automobile market in competition with the Ford Model T.

    1954 – The first Godzilla film is released and marks the first appearance of the character of the same name.

    1964 – Washington D.C. residents are able to vote in a presidential election for the first time.

    1969 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon addresses the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort and to support his policies.

    1978 – Dominica gains its independence from the United Kingdom.

    1986 – Iran–Contra affair: The Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reports that the United States has been secretly selling weapons to Iran in order to secure the release of seven American hostages held by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon.

    1986 – The Federated States of Micronesia gain independence from the United States of America.

    1988 – Sri Lankan Tamil mercenaries try to overthrow the Maldivian government. At President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's request, the Indian military suppresses the coup attempt within 24 hours.

    1996 – Death of Abdullah Çatlı, leader of the Turkish ultra-nationalist organisation Grey Wolves in the Susurluk car-crash, which leads to the resignation of theTurkish Interior Minister, Mehmet Ağar (a leader of the True Path Party, DYP).

    1997 – The United States of America imposes economic sanctions against Sudan in response to its human rights abuses of its own citizens and its material and political assistance to Islamic extremist groups across the Middle East and Eastern Africa.

    2013 – A solar eclipse sweeps across Africa, Europe and the Eastern United States.

    Mr Omoruyi Uwuigiaren, Cartoonist & Writer

    Author's Hangout with Zizi Mr Omoruyi Uwuigiaren, popularly known as Ruyi, is a former freelance cartoonist at Vanguard Newspapers.  He ...