May 15/16, 1995 - Episodes 290 and 291, Women of Achievement and Herstory

      IF you missed the PBS feature _Nobody's Girls: Five Women of
the West_, directed by Mirra Bank (it was shown on my PBS station
Friday night), call your local outlet and find out when it's going to
play again ... It was EXCELLENT, what TV can be. History without
histrionic gun-slinging and overblown territorial machismo.

05-15 Anniversaries ...............................................

      B. 05-15-1759, Maria Theresia von Paradis, athough blind from
early childhood, this Austrian pianist, organist, and singer composed
organ music and light opera and toured Europe giving concerts. 
Founded a music school for girls in Vienna. 

      B. 05-15-1857, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming, English born
astronomer who developed the _Draper Catalogue of Stellar Spectra_
of more than 10,000 stars. She identified 222 variable stars,
discovered 10 novae, and 94 Wolf-Rayet stars. 

      B. 05-15-1863, Annie Fellows Johnston, her Little Colonel series
of more than 50 books made her one of the most popular writers of
her day especially with young girls, selling more than one million
copies during her lifetime. 

      B. 05-15-1890, Katherine Anne Porter, author.  _Pale Horse, Pale
Rider_. Won Pulitzer Prize for her _Collected Stories_ (1965).

      B. 05-15-1919, Mary Eugenia Charles, prime mister of the
Commonwealth of Dominico (1980).

      B. 05-15-1937, Madelaine Albright, appointed by President Bill
Clinton as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was a member
of President Jimmy Carter's National Security Council 1978-1981. 

      Event: 05-15-1984, Kristine Holdereid, completed her four years at the
U.S. Naval Academy with a 3.88 average (4.0 possible) to head her graduating
class, the first time a woman had topped the grading which includes military
performance as well as academic scholarship. Women were admitted to Annapolis
in 1976.

      Event: 05-15-1991, Edith Cresson becomes the first woman to head the
French government as premier.

05-16 Anniversaries ...............................................

      B. 05-16-1804, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, American author, educator, and
historian; in 1860 founded first kindergarten in US.

      B. 05-16-1906, Mary Thygeson Shepardson, anthropologist. Her studies
focused on Navajo law and the relationship between tribal and federal courts. 

      B. 05-16-1929, Betty Carter, jazz and innovative bebop and blues singer,
composer.

      B. 05-16-1929, Adrienne Cecile Rich, poet, feminist.

      B. 05-16-1955, Olga Korbut, Russian gymnast, winner of three Olympic
gold medals in 1972. 

      B. 05-16-1957, Joan Benoit, winner of a 1984 Olympic Gold medal the first
time the 26 mile marathon was an Olympic event, many times winner of
marathons such as the Boston marathon.

Quotes du jour ...............................................

      "We must believe in ourselves or no one else will believe in us ... 
      "I never got the message that girls were not as important as boys."
            --Dr. Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Prize winner in medicine.


(C) 1995 Irene Stuber, PO Box 6185, Hot Springs National Park, AR 71902,
irenestuber@delphi.com. Distribute verbatim copies freely with copyright notice
for non-profit use. Don't let anyone tell you there weren't notable and
effective women throughout history.  They were always there, but historians
failed to note them in our histories so that each generation of women has had
to reinvent themselves.