... 1678, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, a multilingual scholar in mathematics, science, grammar, and music, became the 1st woman ever to receive the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Her initial application to University of Padua, Italy, for a doctorate in theology, had been rebuffed. On account of "the multitude of spectators" her oral examination had to be transferred from Padua's University Hall to its Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin; her "brilliant answers amazed and awed" all. The session's depicted in a stained-glass window at the Vassar College library (right). Piscopia dedicated the remaining years of her life to charity; her death in 1684, at age 38, has been attributed to tuberculosis....1945, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (D-Mich.) was born in Detroit.
...1981, by a 6-3 vote in Rostker v. Goldberg, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge to reinstatement of a men-only military draft on the ground that it violated the equal protection component of the 5th Amendment's due process clause.
