| Sunday, October 18, 2009 |
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| Equal Partners Under the Law |
Answer of the DayAre women persons too? If you were female and living in Canada before 1930, you wouldn't think that was such a silly question. It all started when a group of women was turned away from an Alberta court trial because the subject matter was deemed inappropriate for mixed company. One of the women, Emily Murphy, discovered that a law in the British North America Act declared that Canadian women were "not persons in matters of rights and privileges" and thus could not be judges or run for political office. Murphy and four others, later to be known as the Famous Five, put forth a petition that called the law into question. On this date in 1929, in the historic Persons Case, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council decided that women could be defined as persons for political purposes.
Quote"My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it's very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do."
Word of the dayquisquilious
of the nature of rubbish or refuse; trashy, worthless
And now, for your descriptive needs, two weeks of useful adjectives.
Today's History
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| Alaska |
- Great Basel Earthquake: Swiss city was destroyed, along with parts of France and Germany (1356)
- Edict of Nantes: law that had granted religious liberties to Protestants was revoked by Louis XIV and replaced with the Edict of Fontainebleau; many Protestants left France as a result (1685)
- Mason-Dixon Line: the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, which, before the US Civil War, separated the slave states from the free states, was established (1767)
- Moby-Dick: Herman Melville's novel about Captain Ahab's quest was published; it was originally entitled The Whale (1851)
- Alaska: territory known as "Seward's Folly" was purchased by the US from Russia for approximately $7 million in gold bullion (1867)
Today's Birthdays
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| Ne-Yo |
- Pierre Trudeau (1919-2000): former Canadian PM
- Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963): accused assassin of JFK
- Mike Ditka (70): football legend; Wimbledon champ Martina Navratilova (53) shares this birth date
- Terry McMillan (58): author of Waiting to Exhale; plus, writer Ntozake Shange (61)
- Ne-Yo (30): R&B singer/songwriter; also, musicians Chuck Berry (83) and Wynton Marsalis (48)
- Zac Efron (22): teenybopper hero of High School Musical; also, actors Melina Mercouri (1920?-1994), George C. Scott (1927-1999), Pam Dawber (58), Erin Moran and Jean-Claude Van Damme (both 49), Vincent Spano (47) and Joy Lauren (20)
