On this day in ...... 1933 (75 years ago today), Ruth Bryan Owen (left) became the 1st woman chief of a U.S. diplomatic mission when she was appointed Minister to Denmark. Daughter of 3-time Democratic Presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, Owen presented her credentials on May 29, 1933 and served until June 27, 1936. During World War I she'd been a member of the executive committee of the American Women’s War Relief Fund in London, England, and served as a war nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment in the Middle East. In 1929 she had become the 1st woman Member of Congress from Florida. After completing her mission in Denmark she was a special assistant at the San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations and an alternate delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. She died on July 26, 1954, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
... 1946, on account of the campaigning of Marthe Richard, a onetime prostitute and spy turned
politician (shown below pursuing another of her pastimes, aviation), a law that bore her name, which mandated the official closure of all brothels in France, took effect in that country. (photo credit)
