On May 26

On this day in ...
... 1964, by letter "described ... mainly as a diatribe against the United States," sent by the Chinese Foreign Minister to the British chargé d'affaires in the capital city then called Peking, China refused Britain's request that it intervene to stop fighting in Laos. Fighting had begun in the wake of a coup in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, notwithstanding accords reached 2 years earlier in Geneva, Switzerland, (prior post). China accused the United States of backing one side in the turmoil.

(Prior May 26 posts are here, here, and here.)

On December 14

On this day in ...

... 1955, by Resolution 109, the U.N. Security Council admitted 16 new member states to the United Nations. Simultaneously admitted were Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon (today, Sri Lanka), Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania, and Spain. The vote was 8-0-3; abstaining were Belgium, China, and the United States.

(Prior December 14 posts are here and here.)

On July 23

On this day in ...
... 1920, May Wright Sewall died in Indianapolis, Indiana, 76 years after her birth in Wisconsin, and just a month before women's suffrage -- an issue to which she'd devoted her lifework -- would come into effect in the United States via ratification of the 19th Amendment. She had earned bachelor's and master's degrees from Northwestern Female College in Evanston, Illinois, now part of Northwestern University. She taught throughout the Midwest, founding a girls' school in Indianapolis. Elected president of the National Congress of Women in 1891 and of the International Congress of Women (ICW) in 1899, Sewall, like many feminists of the day, combined her work for women's rights with work for peace. Thus she chaired the ICW standing committee on peace and arbitration and a 1915 Organized Conference of Women Workers to Promote Peace, and sailed in 1915 on Henry Ford's Peace Expedition. As we've posted, Sewall, along with IntLawGrrls transnational foremother Susan B. Anthony and others, led a women's rights meeting at which abolitionist Frederick Douglass gave the last speech of his life. (credit for portrait of Sewall on display in Indiana's capital)
... 1962, in Geneva, Switzerland, Laos and more than a dozen other countries signed the International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos, the result of a 2-month conference. They "pledged to respect Laotian neutrality" and "to refrain from interference 'direct or indirect' in the internal affairs" of that country. The agreement would be breached in the course of the Vietnam War.

(Prior July 23 posts are here and here.)

On October 22

On this day in ...
.. 1953 (55 years ago today), at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris, King Sisavang Vong signed the Traité d’Amitié et d’Association entre le Laos et la France, by which a former French colony in Indochina, Laos, gained its independence. The transfer did not abate anti-royalist resistance nor, eventually, civil war in the country (flag above left).
... 1692, when indigenous Iroquois fighters attacked her settler-family's homestead along the St. Lawrence River in what is now Canada, 14-year-old Madeleine de Verchères "led the defence in a fort in New France until reinforcements came to her aid." She "later gained recognition as a famous heroine for her courageous action in the battle, thanks in part to her own self-promotion." An example of her successful efforts is the eponymous 1922 film about her life, depicted above right. (photo credit)