On March 17

On this day in ...
... 1969 (40 years ago today), a native of Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire, who had already served as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister, Golda Meir, was elected Prime Minister of Israel. Meir (far right) held the position till 1974, and remains the only woman so to serve, although the outgoing Foreign Minister and Kadima Party leader at center right, Tzipi Livni, would like to become the 2d.
... 1959 (50 years ago today), amid an anti-Chinese uprising in Tibet, the Dalai Lama escaped the capital city Lhasa along with 20 others. Their whereabouts would remain unknown for the more than 2 weeks it took them to traverse the Himalayas (below left) and seek refuge in India. (photo credit) The New York Times reported that just last Tuesday the Dalai Lama, now 73 and still in exile a half-century after the failed uprising,

delivered one of his harshest attacks on the Chinese government in recent times ... saying that the Chinese Communist Party had transformed Tibet into a 'hell on earth' and that the Chinese authorities regarded Tibetans as 'criminals deserving to be put to death.'
'Today, the religion, culture, language and identity, which successive generations of Tibetans have considered more precious than their lives, are nearing extinction.'

(Prior March 17 posts are here and here.)

On May 3

On this day in ...
... 1898 (110 years ago today), Golda Mabovitch was born in Kiev, in what was then the Russian Empire and is now Ukraine. She immigrated to the United States in 1906, joining her father, a carpenter, who had made the move 3 years earlier. She lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, until 1921, when she, her husband, and her sister went to Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the woman eventually known as Golda Meir (the last name means "illuminate") entered governmental service. Among the offices she held: Member of the Knesset, Israel's Parliament, 1st Israeli Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Israel's 1st woman Foreign Minister (the only other woman, Tzipi Livni, now holds the post), and, from 1969 to 1974, Israel's only woman Prime Minister. Meir (above left) died from cancer in Jerusalem in 1978.
... 1808 (200 years ago today), near Príncipe Pío hill in Madrid, troops loyal to an appointee of France's Napoleon, who'd entered Spain and deposed the king the year before, summarily executed Spaniards who'd staged an uprising the day before. The painter Francisco Goya depicted the moment in the painting at right, entitled Los Fusilamientos del 3 de Mayo, or The Shootings of May 3rd. It was commissioned in 1814, to encourage Spaniards to resist "the forces of Napoleon."

On July 8, ...

... 1958, Tzipi Livni was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. After military service she practiced law before being elected to the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in 1999. Her government posts have included Minister of Justice. Now Israel's Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Livni is pictured at right with her U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

... 1867 (140 years ago), Käthe Kollwitz was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, now known as Kaliningrad, Russia. Having begun art lessons as a girl, Kollwitz' studies of the suffering of ordinary women and men, like the woodcut of a widow at left, would make her among the leading artists of the German Expressionist period. Having lost a soldier grandson in World War II and having been herself threatened with transport to a Nazi concentration camp, Kollwitz died just before war's end in 1945.