On October 19, ...

... 2000, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda affirmed the conviction of Jean Kambanda, who'd been Prime Minister during the mass killings and brutality that took place in Rwanda in spring 1994. In upholding the Trial Chamber's 1998 judgment and sentence to life in prison, the Appeals Chamber made Kambanda, who'd been convicted by way of a guilty plea, the 1st head of state convicted by an international criminal tribunal since the post-World War II era, and the 1st person ever whom an international criminal trbunal convicted of genocide.
... 1944, following many months of urging by civil rights leaders, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the induction of African-American women into the previously all-white women's unit of the Navy. A Navy press release proclaimed: "The plan calls for the immediate commissioning of a limited number of especially qualified Negro women to serve as administrative officers." The branch, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, typically known as WAVES, itself had been established just 2 years earlier, thus marking a return of women to the Navy after a 23-year hiatus. The continuing role of African-American women in the Navy is reflected in the Vietnam-era recruiting poster above.
 
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