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This Day In History

Activism

1915 In The Hague, Netherlands, the International Congress of Women adopts its resolutions on peace and women’s suffrage. The congress, also referred to as the Women’s Peace Conference, was the result of an invitation by a Dutch women’s suffrage organization to women’s rights activists around the world to gather in peaceful assemblage during one of the most divisive and intense international conflicts in history: World War I. It included more than 1,200 delegates from 12 countries, including Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United States.

Inventor

1893 The World's Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago. Among other events, Josephine Cochrane presented her dishwasher at the World’s Fair and won an award for its design and durability.

Journalism

1963 After enduring a brief but grueling stint as a Bunny in Manhattan's Playboy Club, feminist writer Gloria Steinem published the first half of her landmark account, "A Bunny's Tale," in SHOW magazine on this day in 1963. Steinem's undercover reporting increased her profile and stripped back the glamorous facade of Hugh Hefner's empire to reveal a world of misogyny and exploitation.

Writing

1950 Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African-American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, named Library of Congress’s Consultant in Poetry (later called Poet Laureate) in 1985

2009 Carol Ann Duffy, whose accessible verse engages such topics as gender and oppression, becomes the first woman to be appointed poet laureate of Great Britain.