On this day in ...… 1762, Anne Josephe Théroigne de Méricourt (right), French revolutionary and feminist, was born in Marcourt, Luxembourg province, in modern Belgium. (image credit) She called for equality with men with an eloquence that was vigrous even for the National Assembly of the day. She demanded that women be permitted to arm themselves and to enlist in the army:
Fellow women citizens, why should we not enter into rivalry with the men? . . . And we too would wish to earn a civic crown and court the honor of dying for a liberty which is dearer perhaps to us than it is to them, since the effects of despotism weigh still more heavily upon our heads than upon theirs. . . . let us open a list of French Amazons; and let all who truly love their Fatherland write their names there.... 1905, Norwegians voted overwhelmingly -- 368,208 to 184 -- in favor of dissolving the union of Norway and Sweden. This followed by a couple months a similar action in Sweden's legislature (prior post), and dissolution took effect later in the year.
(Prior August 13 posts are here and here.)
