On August 16

On this day in ...
... 1946, Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca died in New York City, 52 years and 6 days after she'd been born in Zemel, Latvia, the youngest of 4 daughters. In 1900 the family immigrated to Baltimore, where her father worked as a tailor and she attended public schools. Her mother died, and at age 13 Dorothy went to work, hand-sewing buttonholes on men's coat for $3 a week. (As no image of Bellanca appears to exist online, we post above left a photo of New York garment workers performing such work. (credit)) By age 15 she'd "organized female immigrant buttonhole makers into Local 170 of the United Garment Workers of America"; she'd go on to become a leading labor organizer who "promoted class solidarity, but took particular interest in organizing women." During the New Deal era -- at the request of Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, an IntLawGrrls transnational foremother -- she served on the Maternal and Child Welfare Committee. Bellanca also ran to be the Member of Congress representing Brooklyn, losing to the incumbent by a margin of fewer than 16,000 votes out of more than a quarter-million cast. Bellanca recently was featured as "Immigrant of the Day" by our colleagues at Immigration Prof Blog.
... 1869 (140 years ago today), la batallas de Acosta Ñú/Campo Grande, a struggle that had raged for days, took a particularly tragic turn: the massacre of thousands of Paraguayan child soldiers by troops from the Triple Alliance comprising Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Some of the children -- who'd been impressed into service by the leader of Paraguay (flag at right) after many adults were killed or captured -- "fought with fake beards to conceal their age." To this day the event is commemorated as Children's Day in Paraguay.

(Prior August 16 posts are here and here.)

On July 15

On this day in ...
… 1927, the July Revolt in Vienna, Austria resulted the deaths of 84 protesters and 4 police officers. The political situation there at the time was fraught with tension because of antagonisms between the progressive, pro-labor Social Democrats and a powerful alliance of wealthy industrialists with fascist leanings. According a New York Times report,

The demonstration, which rapidly developed revolutionary tendencies, began after a Vienna jury, despite their plea of guilty, had acquitted three Fascists who last January shot and killed a Socialist and his child.

The announcement of the verdict led to a general strike intended to overthrow the government headed by Chancellor Ignaz Seipel. Protesters also set fire to the Justizpalast (above left), the building housing the Court of Justice that had delivered the incendiary trial verdict. (photo credit)
… 1943, Jocelyn Bell Burnell (below right), astrophysicist, was born Susan Jocelyn Bell in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (photo credit) In 1965, she began work on her Ph.D. at Cambridge University, assisting in the construction of a radio telescope that was to be used to track quasars. After several weeks of analysis, Bell noticed some marking that was too fast and regular to be a quasar. Further study identified the signals as coming from rapidly rotating neutron stars; they became known as pulsars. The paper announcing the discovery had 5 authors; Bell's name appeared 2d. Yet when 2 of the researchers were honored with the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics, Bell was not among them. She is now a Fellow of the Royal Society, a British scientific association; a Dame Commander of the British Empire; and a Visiting Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford.

(Prior July 15 posts are here and here.)

On July 11

On this day in ...
… 1919 (90 years ago today), the Dutch House of Representatives passed the Factories Act of 1919, approving the 8-hour working day and Sunday holiday in the Netherlands (flag left). According to Labour Law in the Netherlands by A. T. J. M. Jacobs,

That act had been the fruit of social turmoil in Europe by the end of the First World War and was the realization of the ambitions of the worker movement for the eight-hour working day and a 45-hour working week…. This legislation also prohibited night work and shift work by women in factories.

… 1938, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (right), a Harvard professor who's a pre-eminent historian of early America and the history of women, was born in Sugar City, Idaho. (photo credit) Her major fields of interest are early American social history, women's history, and material culture. She was previously Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. Her book, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812, received the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1991. She is credited with this catchphrase:

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Ulrich is the author of many articles and reviews and is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship as well as many other honors and awards.

(Prior July 11 posts are here and here.)

On April 20

On this day in ...
... 1914 (95 years ago today), a shot was fired at a Rockefeller-owned mine in Southern Colorado where labor activists and management had long been at odds. (One of IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers, Mother Jones, had rallied striking miners there the previous autumn; her consequent imprisonment gave rise to the demonstration at right.) (credit) "The face-off raged for fourteen hours, during which the miners' tent colony was pelted with machine gun fire and ultimately torched by the state militia," according to a PBS site. A New York Times reporter recounted the scene left after this Ludlow Massacre:

The Ludlow camp is a mass of charred debris, and buried beneath it is a story of horror imparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes which had been dug for their protection against the rifles' fire the women and children died like trapped rats when the flames swept over them. One pit, uncovered [the day after the massacre] disclosed the bodies of ten children and two women.

A list of the victims, 19 in total, who ranged from a 3-month-old girl to a 56-year-old man, is here.
... 1974 (35 years ago today), with the discovery of the body of a gas station owner "found dumped on a roadside" in County Fermanagh, the death toll in the political violence known as Northern Ireland's "Troubles" reached 1,000 persons. "The milestone has been reached," the BBC reported, "amid a spate of killings and shootings over the past two days." By the time the it ended in 1998, the conflict had claimed more than 3,000 victims.

(Prior April 20 posts are here and here.)

On December 18

On this day in ...
... 1957, the 1st U.S. nuclear power plant (right) used to generate electricity on a large scale went on line near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The New York Times reported of the plant, which would remain in operation until 1982:

As a developmental project, the Shippingport plant will produce high-cost power that will be far from competitive with conventional power. Its developers hope it will lead the way, however, to future atomic-power plants that will produce economical electricity.

... 1993 (10 years ago today), Grace Hartman died. She'd been born in 1918 in Toronto, Canada, and dropped out of school in 11th grade to help support her family. Securing clerical jobs despite discrimination against women in the profession at the time, she became active in the labor movement. In 1975 -- International Women’s Year -- she was elected President of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the 1st woman to lead a major union in North America. The CUPE website states:

As a trade unionist, feminist, and social activist she was forever committed to women’s rights and creating positive change.