On May 15

On this day in ...
... 1948, Kathleen Gilligan was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, where her father was the state's Governor. Eventually she moved to Kansas, where she earned a master's in public administration, Democrat Kathleen Sebelius (above right) served as a member of Kansas' House of Representatives for 8 years and as the state's Insurance Commissioner for another 8 years before being elected Governor of Kansas in 2003 -- a post she held until this year. On April 29, Sebelius was sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Health and Human Services. (credit for photo of Sebelius at her 1st HHS press conference, respecting the flu outbreak; with her are Rear Admiral Anne Schuchat, M.D., of the Centers for Disease Control, left, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, center)
... 1991, French President François Mitterand named Édith Cresson (left), who'd already served as his Minister of Agriculture, Minister of External Trade and Tourism, Minister of Industrial Restructuring and External Trade, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, as France's 1st -- and to date only -- woman Premier. Her tenure was not a success, and she would resign in 1992.

(Prior May 15 posts are here and here.)

On May 11

On this day in ...
.... 2008 (today -- the centennial celebration of Mother's Day in the United States), is the 1st day of National Women's Health Week. "[C]oordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health," the observance is intended to "encourag[e] women to make their health a top priority and take simple steps for a longer, healthier and happier life." Perhaps a good place to start -- besides raising ovarian cancer awareness, as IntLawGrrl Rebecca Bratspies' post did yesterday -- would be figuring out why women's life expectancy is dropping in some parts of the United States.
... 1998 (10 years ago today), in a move that sparked "widespread outrage and concern," India carried out underground nuclear tests, the 1st since 1974, in the Pokhran range about 100 miles from its border with Pakistan (below right). Later the same month "Pakistan retaliated," the BBC reported, "with its own nuclear tests, confirming fears of an arms race in the region." To this day the 2 countries remain among the few nation-states not party to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; others are Cuba and Israel. (photo credit)

On April 23

On this day in ...
... 1702, a founder of the Society of Friends, Margaret Fell, died in Swarthmoor, England. She'd been born in the same country in 1614. Her husband, an older man who rode circuit as a judge and served in Parliament, left to her the duties of managing their estate. In 1652 she and her daughters heard the preaching of George Fox. She married Fox upon her 1st husband's death, and helped Fox to establish the Friends, a group known colloquially as "Quakers," despite persecution and loss of her estate. In 1666, amid a 4-year term of imprisonment, she issued the pamphlet at right, which "[f]eminist historians have recognized ... as a key document, one of the first by a woman, in the evolution of woman's vision as an equal partner with man": Women's Speaking Justified, Proved and Allowed of by the Scriptures, All Such as Speak by the Spirit and Power of the Lord Jesus And How Women Were the First That Preached the Tidings of the Resurrection of Jesus, and Were Sent by Christ's Own Command Before He Ascended to the Father (John 20:17).
... 1984, Margaret M. Heckler (right), then the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced that scientists had discovered a virus believed to cause AIDS, which the BBC described as "the fatal disease sweeping through America." It was hoped that the discovery of the virus, eventually known as HIV, would lead to development of a vaccine; that has not yet occurred. The BBC further reports:

An estimated 24 million people, both homosexual and heterosexual, have died of Aids since the disease emerged in the United States. It has now reached pandemic proportions in some parts of southern Africa, where two million died in 2001 alone.