On November 15

On this day in ...
... 1978 (30 years ago today), in New York City, Dr. Margaret Mead died from cancer. She'd been born 76 years earlier in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a father who was a finance professor and a mother who was a sociologist. While a graduate student at Columbia, Mead was mentored by the anthropologist Franz Boas. At age 23 she traveled to the South Pacific for field research on her dissertation (center left), eventually published as the perennial bestseller Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). She worked with New York's American Museum of Natural History, wrote a column for Redbook magazine, and spoke out on U.S. social issues. Having had the opportunity to hear a Mead lecture shortly before she died, this IntLawGrrl can attest that she was a powerful speaker.
... 1983 (25 years ago today), inhabitants in the north of an Aegean Sea island broke with inhabitants of Greek ancestry to the south, and declared the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to be an independent state. Ever since, as a de facto matter, the U.N.-controlled buffer zone in blue on the map at right has marked the division of Cyprus. As a de jure matter, however, no country other than Turkey recognizes the breakaway territory as a state. On May 1, 2004, "the Republic of Cyprus became a full member" of the European Union. But Community law is "suspended in the area administered by Turkish Cypriots."

On December 16, ...

... 1901, a daughter was born in Philadelphia to Edward and Emily Fogg Mead. An economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the father told his daughter, "It's a pity you aren't a boy; you'd have gone far." In 1928, the daughter published Coming of Age in Samoa; she's pictured at left during her field work. In 1929, she earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University and, as Dr. Margaret Mead, went on to become 1 of the most influential anthropologists of her century. Mead died from cancer in 1978, just a few years after serving as the 2d woman ever to lead the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
... 1966, the U.N. General Assembly adopted 2 treaties designed to make enforceable the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They were the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The latter treaty entered into force on January 3, 1976; the former a few months later, on March 23. Though the rights that the UDHR set forth as one were divided on the premise, in part, that not all states would subscribe to both groups of rights, today nearly all countries have ratified both treaties. An exception is the United States, which signed both but only ratified the ICCPR, and then only in 1992. A longtime holdout, Cuba, has just announced that it soon will sign both covenants, for reasons that a Cuban newspaper details here.