On April 1

On this day in ...
... 1866, Sophonisba Breckinridge (left) was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Elder by 6 years than her sister Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, whom IntLawGrrls prevoiusly profiled, Sophonisba likewise devoted herself to women's rights and other causes. A graduate of Wellesley, in 1894 she became the 1st woman to pass the Kentucky bar exam. She then moved to Chicago, where in 1901 she became the 1st woman to receive a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago -- the university from which she also earned her J.D. 3 years later. (photo credit) She began to write about women workers and to collaborate with other Chicago women, among them social worker Jane Addams, an IntLawGrrls transnational foremother. Among other activities, Sophonisba attended the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague, took part in the work of the Women's Trade Union League and the NAACP, and lobbied against war and for women's suffrage and juvenile justice reform. She died in 1948.
... 1979 (30 years ago today), a 2-day referendum concluded with 97% of the electorate voting that Iran would be an Islamic republic. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared that the date should mark "'the first day of a Government of God.'"

(Prior April 1 posts are here and here.)

On May 20

On this day in ...
... 1875, in Paris, 17 countries signed the Convention du Mètre (Metre Convention), which founded the Bureau international des poids et mesures (logo at left), a permanent organization responsible for "ensur[ing] world-wide uniformity of measurements and their traceability to the International System of Units." Today -- World Metrology Day -- the convention has 51 states parties, among them the United States.
... 1872, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge was born at Ashland, the Lexington, Kentucky, estate of her great-grandfather Henry Clay, who'd served in Congress and as Secretary of State and aspired in vain to be President. She became a leader of the women's suffrage movement, a leading Progressive reformer, and a supporter of the League of Nations in the years after her 1898 marriage to Lexington Herald editor Desha Breckinridge. In 1917, having just completed a term as Vice President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she published A Mother's Sphere (above right), a pamphlet arguing that the vote was "necessary" so that women could "carr[y] out ... their natural and womanly tasks, as for instance in the education and training of children." Breckinridge (left) died from a stroke on Thanksgiving Day 1920, months after ratification of the 19th Amendment and weeks after she'd joined women across America in voting for President for the 1st time ever.