On this day in ...... 1875, in Paris, 17 countries signed the Convention du Mètre (Metre Convention), which founded the Bureau international des poids et mesures (logo at left), a permanent organization responsible for "ensur[ing] world-wide uniformity of measurements and their traceability to the International System of Units." Today -- World Metrology Day -- the convention has 51 states parties, among them the United States.
... 1872, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge was born at Ashland, the Lexington, Kentucky, estate of her great-grandfather Henry Clay, who'd served in Congress and as Secretary of State and aspired in vain to be President. She became a leader of the women's suffrage movement, a leading Progressive reformer, and a supporter of the League of Nations in the years after her 1898 marriage to Lexington Herald editor Desha Breckinridge. In 1917, having just completed a term as Vice President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she published A Mother's Sphere (above right), a pamphlet 
arguing that the vote was "necessary" so that women could "carr[y] out ... their natural and womanly tasks, as for instance in the education and training of children." Breckinridge (left) died from a stroke on Thanksgiving Day 1920, months after ratification of the 19th Amendment and weeks after she'd joined women across America in voting for President for the 1st time ever.
