On March 16, ...... 2003 (5 years ago today), in Gaza, 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, a college student from Olympia, Washington, was fatally crushed by an Israeli Army bulldozer as she knelt before a Palestinian home set for razing. part of a group called the International Solidarity Movement, Corrie (left) and 7 other "Americans and Britons ... had been acting as 'human shields' to try to stop the almost daily house demolitions by Israeli forces in Rafah, a town on Gaza's border with Egypt."
... 1936, Marguerite Durand died, 5 years after the opening in Paris of a women's research library in her honor, Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand. Durand had been born out of
wedlock in 1864; after attending a convent school, she embarked on a stage career. By 1879, however, she'd become a journalist. In 1891 the Paris daily Le Figaro sent her to cover -- "with the aim of belittling" it --an international conference organized by a French women's rights organization. Quite to the contrary, she emerged "an inflexible militant for the rights of women." Building on the work of feminist journalist Hubertine Auclert, Durand eventually launched La Fronde, a publication produced exclusively by women. Durand was "elegant" and, as the photo a right demonstrates, she was eccentric: Durand was known for walking about Paris with the pet lioness named Tiger that she kept at home.
