Almanac

July 23 - July 29

Birthdays

July 23

• In 1907, Elspeth Huxley, historian of Kenya. Because her book Red Strangers spoke of clitoridectomies, Macmillan refused to publish it.
  
• In 1931, Dame Te Arikinui Te Ata-irangi-kaahu, Maori Queen.
  

July 24

• In 1920, Bella Abzug (Rep-D-NY).
  
• In 1940, Cynthia Moss, US wildlife biologist. She proved that elephants are led by the oldest and wisest cow.
  

July 25

• In 1905, Margaret Zattau Roan, US author, musician, and
  psychologist. She organized the first urban, community-owned food cannery in US.
  
• In 1920, Rosalind Franklin, British biophysicist
  who proved the following about the structure of the nucleic acid DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): 1) that the phosphate groups lie on the outside of the molecule and 2) that the DNA chain has a helical conformation. Watson-Wilkins-Crick stole her work, not unheard of at the time. It didn't help that Dr. Franklin was Jewish and anti-Semitic feelings in British scientific circles was very high.
  

July 27

• In 1768, Charlotte Corday, French anarchist. She assassinated French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat. She was guillotined.
  
• In 1841, Linda Richards, US nurse and educator. She received the first diploma from the first school of nursing in the US.
  

Happenings

July 23

• In 1958, the first four women were named to peerage in House of Lords in Britain.
  
• In 1994, Chiaki Mukai, a heart surgeon and the first Japanese woman in space, spent a then-record 15 days doing scientific experiments aboard a US spacecraft.
  
• In 1999, NASA's first space mission commanded by a
  woman, Air Force Colonel Eileen Collins took place.
  

July 25

• In 1984, Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.
  

July 28

• In 1869, the Daughters of Saint Crispin, an all-woman union of shoemakers with a membership of almost 800 women, was organized.
  

July 29

• In 1974, the first eleven women priests in the Episcopal Church were ordained in Philadelphia's Church of the Advocate.