On May 23

On this day in ...
... 1889 (120 years ago today), a daughter and only child was born to a couple in a "'little one-room shack'" in Woodsdale, Kansas. As detailed in this superb biographical paper, the family then moved to Missouri then took part in the Oklahoma land rush, and then moved to Michigan. They made their living as printers, newspaper publishers, and farmers, among other occupations. The daughter at 1st was home-schooled, then completed a 2dary school. She began teaching, marrying the principal at a school where she taught. The couple moved to Los Angeles. The marriage collapsed. In 1916 Mabel Walker Willebrandt (left) earned her law degree from the University of Southern California. At age 32 she became the 2d woman U.S. Assistant Attorney General, holding the post from 1922 to 1929. She served with zeal during the period that the 18th Amendment banned alcoholic drinks, and so earned nicknames such as "Prohibition Portia." She died in 1963.
... 1929 (80 years ago today), during the height of popular fascination with aviation, Canada's first airborne wedding ceremony took place, in a biplane over Regina, Saskatchewan.
... 1950, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) was born in Thomasville, Georgia. She'd taught political science at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas for 30 years, and served in the state Senate for 20, before being elected to Congress in November 2008.

(Prior May 23 posts are here and here.)

On May 26

On this day in ...
... 1966, on the 1st day of Guyana's independence from Britain, the new state's 1st constitution came into effect. Sandwiched on the northern coast of South America, between Venezuela and Suriname, the country remains a Republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.
... 1916, Phyllis Norton was born. While an undergraduate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, she married Grant B. Cooper, whom she described as "a well-known trial lawyer." She pursued that same career path; Phyllis Norton Cooper earned her J.D. from USC Law School in 1938. In 2001 she wrote of her law studies:

Perhaps one of the reasons we felt so empowered was the support we received from female graduates who visited us on campus and encourage us to succeed ... women like Georgia Bullock, who graduated in 1914 and became the first woman appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court; 1913 graduate Litta Belle Hibben Campbell, the first woman to graduate No. 1 in the class and the first female deputy district attorney in the nation; 1914 graduate May Lahey, who served on the probate court; 1916 graduate Mabel Walker Willebrandt [far left], who became an assistant U.S. attorney general; and 1918 graduate Anita V. Robbins, who became the first female deputy public defender. They inspired us by the example of their lives in the law.

Herself described as a "trailblazer for women in law," Norton Cooper joined her husband in representing Sirhan Sirhan, who would be convicted of the 1968 assassination of U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy the night of his victory in the California Democratic Presidential primary. (credit for photo of Willebrandt, "an honest, determined U.S. Assistant Attorney General in charge of prohibition," standing behind President Calvin Coolidge)