Almanac

July 16 - July 22

Birthdays

July 16

• In 1849, Clara Shortridge Foltz, who, along with Laura Gorden, successfully challenged the California law that defined an attorney as male.
  

July 17

• In 1834, Clara Swain, the first woman physician to work in India.
  
• In 1898, Bernice (Berence) Abbott, photographer. An art critic described her photos as "...a chess game between light and shadow."
  

July 18

• In 1850, Rose Alnora Hartwick Thorpe, poet (The Clapper Must Not Ring Tonight),
  

July 19

• In 1921, Rosalyn Sussman Yalow, German- born, US Nobel prize-winning scientist, who along with Dr. Solomon Berson developed the MRI. It was only the lack of male students during WWII that made Columbia University admit her (the first woman since 1917). They had previously denied her application because of her status as a woman, poor and a Jew.
  

July 20

• In 1939, Judy Chicago, artist (The Dinner Party).
  

July 21

• In 1856, Louise Blanchard Bethune, the first US woman architect (1889).
  

July 22

• In 1849, Emma Lazarus, poet ("The New Colossus" at the base of the Statue of Liberty).
  
• In 1908, Amy Vanderbilt, author and etiquette expert.
  
  

Happenings

July 17

• In 1972, the first two women begin training as FBI agents at Quantico.
  

July 19

• In 1984, the first female to captain a 747 across the Atlantic (Lynn Rippelmeyer).
  
• In 1985, Christa McAuliffe was chosen to be the first schoolteacher to fly in the space shuttle.
  

July 20

• In 1942, Black as well as white women began officer
  training with the Women's Auxilliary Army Corps. The "men's" army was still segregated.