On March 26, ...... 1953 (55 years ago today), U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan. Her family emigrated when she was 8; she attended high school in Long Island, New York, and eventually earned an M.B.A. degree from Harvard. Before assuming her present position in 2001, Chao'd served as Director of the Peace Corps from 1991-92. Appointed to lead the Labor Department in 2001, Chao's the 1st Asian-American woman ever appointed to the Cabinet of a U.S. President.
... 1888 (120 years ago today), Elsa Brändström was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. The daughter of a Swedish diplomat, during World War I she was moved, upon seeing Germans held as prisoners of war in Russia, to become a
nurse. The care she gave those POWs earned her the nickname "Angel of Siberia" and, in 1951, posthumous recognition on a German stamp (right). Having moved to Germany after the war, when Adolf Hitler took power she and her husband fled to the United States, where they helped to care for European refugees. She died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few weeks shy of her 60th birthday.
