This Day…

August 17, 1893  – Mae West, iconic actress and sex symbol, started in Vaudeville, starred in plays, movies, radio, and television

1911 – Harriet Quimby became the first American woman to earn an official pilot’s license (License #37) from the Aero Club of America.

1940 – Patricia Schroeder, U.S. Representative from Colorado (1973-1997), first woman to serve in U.S. Congress from Colorado, first woman on the House Armed Services Committee, promoted the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers (1997-2008)

1879 – Lucy Burns, suffragist, formed National Woman’s Party with Alice Paul, picketed the White House for women suffrage and arrested 6 times

1900 – Zelda Fitzgerald, American author, poet, dancer, and wife/muse to F. Scott Fitzgerald, was born.

1856 – Louise Bethune was born, becoming the first professional woman architect in the United States. In 1881, she opened the first architectural firm entirely run by a woman in Buffalo, New York, and went on to become the first female member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

1848  – the Seneca Falls Convention—the first formal women’s rights convention in the United States—convened in Seneca Falls, New York. Spearheaded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the two-day event launched the American women’s suffrage movement with the adoption of the historic Declaration of Sentiments.

1898 – The birth of Berenice Abbott, a groundbreaking photographer and artist celebrated for her portraiture, scientific photography, and visual documentation of New York City’s architecture.

July 15, 1899 – Artist Estelle Ishigo was born. During World War II, she joined her Japanese-American husband in a Wyoming internment camp, where she created vital visual sketches and later published a memoir documenting the harsh realities of the internment experience.

1848 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, Mary Ann McClintock, and host Jane Hunt gathered for tea. During this afternoon, Stanton voiced deep frustrations with the legal and social limitations placed on women, prompting the group to hastily organize the first official women’s rights convention in U.S. history, which was held just a few days later.