On August 22

On this day in ...

... 1978 (30 years ago today) , led by Edén Pastora Gómez aka Comandante Cero, members of the Third Way faction of Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional held nearly thousands of officials hostage at the National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua. The seizure would last for 2 days and compel the government of President Anastasio Somoza to accede to many of "the rebels' demands, including the release of sixty FSLN guerrillas from prison, media dissemination of an FSLN declaration, a US$500,000 ransom, and safe passage for the hostage takers to Panama and Venezuela."

... 1991, a judgment issued in 2 consolidated cases, R. v. Seaboyer; R. v. Gayme, invalidated Canada's rape-shield protections. Grounding its holding in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled "that the sexual history of rape victims may be offered as evidence in court at the trial judge's discretion." Writing on behalf of the 7-member majority was Justice Beverley McLachlin; the only other woman on the Court, Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, dissented on behalf of herself and a colleague. Years later, in R. v. Darrach (2000), the Court unanimously approved a revised rape shield law; among those voting were L’Heureux-Dubé and McLachlin, the latter by then Canada's Chief Justice. (credit for Canada Supreme Court photo)

On September 7, ...

... 1965, Patricia Roberts Harris (depicted on postage stamp at left) presented her credentials to become U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, President Lyndon B. Johnson having appointed her to the post on June 4. The 1st African-American woman to serve as an Ambassador, she held the post for 2 years. This was but 1 of many "1sts" among the achievements of Harris, a Chicago area native and law graduate of George Washington University. Others included 1st woman Dean of Howard University’s School of Law (1969); 1st African-American woman in the U.S. Cabinet (serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 1977-79 and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare 1979-81); and 1st 1971 African-American woman to director of a major U.S. corporation (IBM, 1971). She died from breast cancer in 1985.
... 1927 (80 years ago today), Madam Justice Claire L’Heureux-Dubé (left), who served from 1987 to 2002 as the 2d woman member of Canada’s Supreme Court, was born in Québec. On the same day in 1943, another member of that Court was born in Pincher Creek, Alberta: the Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, P.C. (above right), today the Chief Justice of Canada.