On this day in ...… 1974 (35 years ago today), Isabel Martínez de Perón (right) was sworn in as the 1st woman President of Argentina. (photo credit) The previous President, her husband, Juan Perón, had delegated responsibility to her due to weak health; he died 2 days later. At 43 the youngest Latin American head of state at the time, she inherited a political and economic crisis. Her presidency lasted until 1976, when she was overthrown in a bloodless coup by a military junta. In January 2007, she was arrested under suspicion of having links to right-wing death squads that had abducted and murdered political opponents during her rule.
… 1861, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (left), among the most prominent poets of the Victorian era, died in Florence, Italy, 55 years after her birth in England. (image credit) During the 19th century no women poet was held in higher esteem in both the United States and England than she. Her poetry had an immense impact on the work of the American poet Emily Dickinson. American poet Edgar Allan Poe similarly was inspired by the Briton's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship (1844), borrowing its meter for his own The Raven (1845). Barrett Browning's loathing of social injustices -- such as the slave trade in America, the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, child labor in the mines and mills of England, and the restrictions placed upon women -- is manifested in many of her poems, including Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Aurora Leigh (1857).Prior June 29 posts are here and here.)
