Almanac

December 03 - December 09

Birthdays

December 03

• In 1892, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, author of all 55 of the Nancy Drew mysteries and most of the Hardy Boys and Toms Swift Jr., series as well as numerous books in the Bobbsey Twins and other books in the Stratemeyer publishing empire. Took over the organization in 1930 when her father died. In all wrote almost 200 books under the names of Victoria Appleton II, May Hollis Barton, Franklin W. Dixon, Larua Lee Hope, Carolyn Keene, Ann Sheldon and Helen Louis Thorndyke.
• In 1895, Anna Freud, internationally renowned Austrian-American psychoanalyst, daughter of Sigmund. Founder of child psychoanalysis. She was an outspoken critic of Adolph Hitler and was forced to flee Europe. Wrote the classic Ego and Mechanisms of Defence (1936) and founded the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic.
  

December 05

• In 1822, Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, educator instrumental in founding the Harvard University Annex for women students, renamed in 1894 as Radcliffe College in honor of Ann Radcliffe, founder of the first Harvard Scholarship (1643). She served as its president until 1899.
• In 1922, Ann Shaw Carter, first woman to hold a helicopter rating. ASC had served with the Women's Army Service Pilots (WASPS), which ferried fighters and bombers during World War II.

December 07

• In 1760, Marie Tussaud, Swiss-born Frenchwoman founded the famous wax museum and the original Chamber of Horrors.
  
• In 1801, Abigail Hopper Gibbons, her New York home was a stop for runaway slaves, worked and influenced legislation to establish a reform woman's prison to improve conditions for female prisoners who were often regularly raped by their men guards.
  

December 08

• In 1542, Mary Queen of Scots.
• In 1903, Zelma Watson George, sociologist and singer. Her mother was a college teacher and her sisters became a chemist, a housing executive, a supervisor of schools, and an actuary. Taught in Chicago, founded the Avalon Community Center in Los Angeles. Her doctorate dissertation was a definitive annotated bibliography of black folk art and music. Member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, served in an advisory capacity regarding women in the armed service.
  

December 09

• In 1895, (Isidora) Dolores Ibarruri (Gomez), "La Passionaria," Spanish Communist leader, an impassioned orator during the Spanish Civil War, she coined the Republican battle cry, "They shall not pass!"
• In 1902, Margaret Hamilton, stage, screen and TV actor with hundreds of credits but that one defining, perfect role as the Wicked Witch of the West in Wizard of Oz (1939) will last as long as film endures.
• In 1906, Admiral Grace Murray Hopper developed the concept of automatic programming with a compiling system using words instead of mathematical symbols. Also contributed to development of COBOL. Ph.D. in mathematics. Worked on UNIVAC. Retired from U.S. Navy in 1986 with rank of Rear Admiral.
  

Happenings

December 03

• In 1918, the gentlemen of the Union of Streetcar Conductors went on strike against the employment of women conductors. The following spring, the War Labor Board voted with the women and their right to their jobs.
  

December 04

• In 1975, Hannah Arendt, German/US sociologist, died at age 69.
  

December 05

• In 1906, The Woman's Hospital in New York City opened.
  
• In 1922, Lucile Atcherson Curtis was named to the Latin Affairs Department in the US Foreign Service, the first woman to be employed by the service.
  

December 06

• In 1989, at the University of Montreal's school of engineering, fourteen women were murdered in cold blood by a lone gunman. They were all shot down because they were women, because as the killer said, "You're all fucking feminists. I'm against feminism. That's why I'm here."
  

December 08

• In 1978, Golda Meir, Israel's PM (1969-74), died in Jerusalem at age 80.
  

For more information, check out Women of Achievement and Herstory.