On March 31

On this day in ...
... 1992, following the explosions of 2 passenger jets in which hundreds of persons perished -- that of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988 (right) (photo credit) and of Union de transports aériens Flight 772 in September 1989 -- U.N. Security Council Resolution 748 was adopted by a vote of 10 ayes, 0 nays, and 5 abstentions. The resolution banned flights and arms sales to Libya, and called upon the North African state to renounce support for terrorism.

(Prior March 31 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On February 15

On this day in ...
... 1973, in Havana, Cuba and Canada signed an Agreement on Hijacking of Aircraft and Vessels and other Offenses. The pact, which took effect upon signature, provided that each state would would prosecute hijackers or return them to the country where the hijacking took place. It followed a series of hijackings, after which Canada "had had enough"-- no longer could hijackers expect asylum if they arrived there.

(Prior February 15 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On November 5

On this day in ...

... 1917, a daughter, Jacqueline Marie-Thérèse Suzanne Douet, was born into a weathy family in Challans, a town southwest of Nantes, France. After completing university and art studies, she married the son of a Socialist Party leader, became known as Jacqueline Auriol, and gave birth to 2 sons. During World War II she aided the French Resistance. Becoming a pilot at war's end, Auriol is known as "France's most distinguished aviatrix." Among her achievements, for which she was admitted to the Legion d'Honneur: "the world's first woman test pilot"; setting of "a new women's speed record"; and "second woman to break the sound barrier"; and "one of the first pilots to fly the supersonic Concorde." She did humanitarian work, too:

Madame Auriol worked with the Ministere de la Cooperation, using remote sensing techniques to gather information for agricultural development. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization presented her with the Ceres Medal for her significant contributions.

Auriol, who published her autobiography (above right) in 1968, died in 2000 at age 82.

(Prior November 5 posts are here, here, and here.)

On October 9

On this day in ...
... 1930 (80 years ago today), 25-year-old Laura Ingalls (left) claimed the women's world record for a solo east-to-west trans-United States flight when she touched down at an airport in Glendale, California, 30 hours 27 minutes after her takeoff in New York. (She stopped to refuel and did at least one overnight stay during the sojourn). Ingalls had been winning air derby and aerobatics records in the 2 years since she'd begun flying, and she'd go on to claim many more records throughout North and South America (also see here.) The career of Ingalls (no relation to the novelist of similar name) would end in disgrace: during World War II, despite her protestations of innocence, Ingalls served nearly 2 years at Alderson, the federal women's prison, for failing to register as an agent of the Nazi German government.

(Prior October 9 posts are here, here, and here.)

Write On! Regulating disasters

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.)

"Emergency Regulation under the Threat of a Catastrophe" is the subject of a call for papers from École des Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris, or HEC Paris, since 1881 an international business school based in the French capital.

Prompting the call -- and the HEC Paris workshop at which papers will be presented, on November 10 and 11, 2010: the ash plumes (below right) from an Icelandic volcano that grounded airlines, and thus stranded thousands of spring 2010 travelers in, to, and from Europe. (photo credit)

An informative account of the regional and international regulatory mess this entailed was just published as an ASIL Insight by Alberto Alemanno, an associate professor in business law and taxation at HEC Paris, and a co-organizer of this event.

Here's an excerpt from the full call for papers:

The ash crisis is not the first or the only such problem to have occurred. It is one of a series of recent real or potential catastrophes -- natural disasters, terrorism, pandemics -- that have taken by surprise globalized firms and partly regulators. As such it represents a rich case study in the problem of emergency regulation ....
[W]e propose a workshop with selected speakers and discussants that will retrospectively look at what happened during the worst aviation crisis in European history, and proactively suggest how the lessons learned can affect other regulatory systems which might be faced with similar crises.

Questions that papers might address:

► Roles of science and technology in supporting both risk assessment and decision;

► Institutional design and capability of the regulatory system; and

► Various stakeholders' roles.
Selected papers may be published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation, for which Alemanno serves as Editor-in-Chief, and published in a book to follow.

Submit 300-word abstracts no later than September 15, 2010, to Alemanno at alemanno@hec.fr, or to his co-organizer, Maryland Engineering Professor Emeritus Vincent Brannigan, at firelaw@firelaw.edu.

Further details here.

On June 9

On this day in ...
... 1989, in Cold Lake, Alberta, Capt. Deanna Brasseur (left) and Capt. Jane Foster (below right) completed a course to become the 1st two women fighter pilots available for combat roles in Canada and, possibly, the world. (photo credits here and here) Brasseur, who'd also been 1 of the 1st 3 Canadian military women to earn her pilot's "wings," would retire in 1994, with the rank of major and having logged more than 2,500 in fighter-jet flying. Foster eventually became a flying instructor, a position from which she retired in 2008.

(Prior June posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 16

On this day in ...

... 1912, Harriet Quimby became the 1st woman to fly solo across the English Channel. Just a year earlier, she'd become the 1st woman to take flying lessons and obtain a pilot's license, having taken a fancy to aviation while a New York-based reporter for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. Clad in the signature plum-colored costume at right, she took to the exhibition circuit, and continued to write of her airborne adventures. On this morning, inclement weather led Quimby to land on a beach rather than in a field as planned. She wrote of the children, women, and men who gathered 'round her on this day:

'They were chattering in French, of which I comprehended sufficient to discover that they knew I had crossed the channel. These humble fisherfolk knew what had happened. They were congratulating themselves that the first woman to cross in an aeroplane bad landed on their fishing beach.'

Quimby would die in a crash landing in Boston Harbor on July 1 of this same year.

(Prior April 16 posts are here, here, and here)

On December 7

On this day in ...
... 1944 (65 years ago today), the International Air Services Agreement was signed at Chicago by 52 countries, which also established the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (logo at left). The so-called Chicago Convention established the rights of nation-states with respect to territorial airspace and civil aircraft. The treaty, which now has 129 states parties, entered into force on January 30, 1945; the United States joined on February 8th of the same year.

(Prior December 7 posts are here and here.)

On August 11

On this day in ...
… 1948, Ferdous Ara Begum (left), member of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and a specialist on gender issues, was born in Bangladesh. (photo credit) Begum has worked for many years in areas related to women and children’s rights. She worked for the government of Bangladesh as Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, providing social and legal protection for women and children. As a Board Member of Grameen Bank, she helped offer microcredit to rural poor women in Bangladesh. She has also published on trafficking and dowries, and given talks on HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness.
… 1934 (75 years ago today), French pilot Hélène Boucher (right) became the fastest woman in the world. (photo credit) She beat the record by flying an average of 485 kilometers per hour (301 mph) over 100 kilometers (62 miles). She also held the altitude (5,200 meters, or 3.23 miles) and 8 other world records. Boucher, a stunt pilot, was the 1st woman buried at Les Invalides. She was posthumously dubbed Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.

(Prior August 11 posts are here and here.)

On July 31

On this day in ...
… 1936, the International Olympic Committee announced that the 1940 Summer Olympics were to be held in Tokyo. Two years later, however, the Japanese would renounce renounce the games due to the outbreak of the 2d Sino-Japanese War; they expressed hope that the 1944 Olympics might be held in Tokyo. The IOC conseuqently would award the 1940 games to Helsinki, Finland, the runner-up in the original bidding process. The Olympic Games would be suspended indefinitely following the onset of World War II, and would not resume until the London Games of 1948.
… 1913, Alys McKey Bryant (left) became the first woman to fly a plane in Canada. (photo credit) She flew in Minoru Park, Vancouver, as part of the entertainment for the Prince of Wales and his younger brother, the Duke of York, who would become King George VI. Bryant, an American, learned to fly after winning a job to perform in flight demonstrations. She is recognized as an Early Bird of Aviation, given that she piloted a plane before December 17, 1916. View a video clip of her here in front of her plane in 1913.

(Prior July 31 posts are here and here.)

In passing: Susan B. Jordan

A leader of California's criminal defense bar, Susan B. Jordan, died Friday in a plane crash in Utah. The 67-year-old attorney and another pilot were flying in a single-engine aircraft.

A Chicago native who received her J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law in 1970 after she'd aided the '60s civil rights movement by registering voters in Mississippi, Susan (left) opened a practice in San Francisco. Among her early landmark cases was the murder trial of Inez Garcia, whom jurors found had acted in self-defense when she killed a man who'd raped her. Other clients included 2 Symbionese Liberation Army members: Emily Harris, charged in 1978 with kidnapping newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst; and Kathleen Soliah aka Sara Jane Olson, accused of conspiring to kill Los Angeles police officers.

As duly noted on her own website, Susan created the battered spouse defense.

Susan's role as a leader and role model in her profession was evident when, while still a practitioner, I served with her and other topnotch criminal defense attorneys in the Bay Area bar association Women Defenders.

On May 24

On this day in ...
... 1930, Amy Johnson (right), a 26-year-old British typist, landed in Darwin, making her the 1st woman ever to fly solo nonstop between England and Australia. The 14,000-kilometer, 19-1/2-day flight in a biplane won her a £10,000 newspaper prize and instant international celebrity, the latter evident in this video clip of her subsequent stop in Brisbane -- a clip described as "possibly one of the earliest examples of celebrity mobbing recorded on an Australian newsreel." Following this feat Johnson became a commercial pilot. When World War II broke out in 1939, Johnson, ineligible to serve in the Royal Air Force because of her sex, joined its support service, the British Air Transport Auxiliary. On January 5, 1941, during a routine flight ferrying aircraft from factory airstrips to RAF bases, Johnson's plane crashed into an estuary of the Thames River, and she was drowned.
... 1994 (15 years ago today), the 4 men convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center received terms of 240 years each, without parole, from the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. The car bomb had damaged an underground garage (left), killed 6 persons and injured a thousand more. (photo credit)

(Prior May 24 posts are here and here.)

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 April 19

On this day in ...

... 1988, Kwon Ki-ok died at age 86. Born in Pyongyang in the north of Korea in 1901, the 17-year-old Kwon saw a stunt aviation demonstration that inspired her, following imprisonment for political activities at home, to move to China. There she became the 1st Korean woman pilot and, eventually, an officer in the Chinese Air Force. After World War II she helped found the Air Force of South Korea (logo above right) and served in that country's Ministry of Defense.

... 1971, in Washington, D.C., Vietnam Veterans Against the War began a 5-day demonstration against U.S. involvement in the conflict in Indochina. This website states:

The generally peaceful protest, called Dewey Canyon III in honor of the operation of the same name conducted in Laos, ended on April 23 with about 1,000 veterans throwing their combat ribbons, helmets, and uniforms on the Capitol steps, along with toy weapons. Earlier, they had lobbied with their congressmen, laid wreaths in Arlington National Cemetery, and staged mock 'search and destroy' missions.

The event took on new significance in 2004, on account of a speech that veteran John Kerry gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at that time (left). Audio available here. Indeed, 2004 attacks on Kerry, by then a U.S. Senator and the Democratic Presidential candidate, led to a new term for the smearing of a political opponent: "swiftboating."

(Prior April 19 posts are here and here.)

On January 31

On this day in ...
... 1946, a new Constitution proclaimed the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. States in the West "recognized the new government, although it was clear that the regime was pro-Soviet." The document created a federal system comprising 6 constituent republics -- Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia -- plus 2 autonomous provinces -- Vojvodina and Kosovo. (map credit)
... 1945, the International Air Transit Services Agreement entered into force. Typically called the Chicago Convention in recognition of the city where it'd been signed a year earlier, the Agreement establishes the rights of nation-states over their territorial airspace and their civil aircraft. It has 129 states parties, the United States among them.

On January 26

On this day in ...

... 2004, "in a ceremony at the foreign ministry in Kabul in front of ministers, ambassadors and military officers," Hamid Karzai signed the new Constitution of Afghanistan, to which a loya jirga, an assembly of regional representatives, ad agreed earlier in the month. Karzai then headed the transitional government in post-Taliban Afghanistan. He would be elected President in October 2004. (credit for photo of Karzai, far right, with former king Zahir Shah)

... 1973, the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation, often called the Montreal Convention in recognition of the city where it was signed in 1971, entered into force. Today this antiterrorism convention has 187 states parties, including the United States.

On October 20

On this day in ...
... 1988 (20 years ago today), aviator Sheila Scott (left) died 61 years after she'd been born in Worcestershire, England. Scott made history when, in the course of a 34,000-mile flight in 1971, she became the 1st pilot -- woman or man -- "to fly directly over true North Pole in a light aircraft." During this flight the U. S. Navy, which tracked her via satellite, "had orders: 'Don't lose Sheila!'"
... 2003 (5 years ago today), the U.N. General Assembly (below left) passed a resolution condemning what the resolution called "Illegal Israeli actions in Occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory." The action to which the resolution referred was the building of a wall dividing territory. The resolution asked for an advisory opinion on the legality vel non of this act; consequently, the International Court of Justice ruled in mid-2004 that the building of the wall was contrary to international law. (photo credit)

On July 25

On this day in ...
... 1806, Maria Weston was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts. The eldest of 8 children, she was educated in England. She returned to the United States in 1828 to work as a high school principal. Eventually she married a Boston merchant active in the antislavery movement and, as Maria Weston Chapman, became a noted abolitionist. She served as an officer in antislavery organizations and as an abolitionist writer. Her work took her outside the United States -- she spent considerable time in Haiti an France. After U.S. emancipation, Chapman (right) "devoted herself to education for the former slaves" until her death in 1885.
... 2000, 10 miles north of Paris, a Concorde jet bound for New York crashed moments after takeoff, a tire having caught fire as it left the ground. The tragedy killed 113 persons. Immediately after the accident all the supersonic jets (left) were grounded. Flights resumed in 2001, but passengers did not return, and the last commercial flight took place in October 2003.

On July 1

On this day in ...
... 1903 (105 years ago today), Amy Johnson (right) was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England. After receiving her bachelor's degree from Sheffield University in 1923, she worked as a legal secretary in London; there she became interested in aviation. She qualified as the 1st British-trained woman ground engineer. and for a while was the only woman performing this work in the world. Among her other achievements: 1st woman to fly solo from England to Australia, in 1930, in record time; record-setting flight from england to Japan, in 1931; and record-setting solo flight from England to South Africa, in 1936. When World War II broke out Johnson served in the Air Transport Auxiliary, "a pool of experienced pilots who were ineligible" for service in the Royal Air Force. On one of these flights, in 1941, her plane crashed in the Thames; Johnson's body never was recovered.
... 1968 (40 years ago today), 61 countries signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, opened for signature simultaneously in Washington, London, and Moscow. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, entered into force in 1970 and now has 187 states parties. It is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is preparing for a treaty review conference in 2010.

On April 13

On this day in ...
... 1933 (75 years ago today), Ruth Bryan Owen (left) became the 1st woman chief of a U.S. diplomatic mission when she was appointed Minister to Denmark. Daughter of 3-time Democratic Presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, Owen presented her credentials on May 29, 1933 and served until June 27, 1936. During World War I she'd been a member of the executive committee of the American Women’s War Relief Fund in London, England, and served as a war nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment in the Middle East. In 1929 she had become the 1st woman Member of Congress from Florida. After completing her mission in Denmark she was a special assistant at the San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations and an alternate delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. She died on July 26, 1954, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
... 1946, on account of the campaigning of Marthe Richard, a onetime prostitute and spy turned politician (shown below pursuing another of her pastimes, aviation), a law that bore her name, which mandated the official closure of all brothels in France, took effect in that country. (photo credit)