Wikipedia:Main Page history/2018 March 8

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From today's featured article

Louise Bryant (1885–1936) was an American feminist, political activist, and journalist. After growing up in rural Nevada and graduating with a degree in history from the University of Oregon, she wrote for two newspapers, the Spectator and The Oregonian. After leaving her first husband in 1915, she married John Reed and moved to Greenwich Village, where she formed friendships with leading feminists of the day. Like Reed, she took lovers, including the playwright Eugene O'Neill and painter Andrew Dasburg. Her news stories were distributed by Hearst during and after her trips to Petrograd and Moscow, and appeared in newspapers across the United States and Canada. Generally in sympathy with the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution, her articles featured Catherine Breshkovsky, Maria Spiridonova, Alexander Kerensky, Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky. A collection of articles from her first trip was published as a book in 1918, Six Red Months in Russia. After Reed's death in 1920, Bryant wrote for Hearst about Turkey, Hungary, Greece, Italy, Russia, and other countries. The Bryant–Reed story is told in the 1981 film Reds. Her neglected grave in Versailles was restored in 1998. (Full article...)

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Did you know...

Women sellers on Fleet Street, 1908

... that British suffragettes (pictured) had to stand in the gutter to sell their newspaper Votes for Women, or risk being arrested for obstructing the pavement?
... that Krishna Kolhi is the first Hindu Dalit woman to be elected to the Senate of Pakistan?
... that Heroin(e), an Academy Award-nominated short film, follows three women fighting the opioid epidemic in Huntington, West Virginia, where the overdose rate is ten times the US average?
... that Catherine Rückwardt, who was Generalmusikdirektorin at the Staatstheater Mainz for a decade and one of only four women in such a position in Germany, conducted a recording of the First Symphony by Hans Rott?
... that Emma Jane Gay, known for her photographs of the Nez Perce people in the late 19th century, is identified as the first American lesbian photographer?
... that an illiterate Thai nun became a highly revered spiritual leader in her community, and more than 250,000 people attended her funeral?
... that Annalisa Crannell brings chopsticks to art galleries as a tool for finding vanishing points?
... that Mary Ann Kerwin, co-founder of La Leche League, said that when breastfeeding in the US in the 1950s, "we would practically smother our babies with blankets to avoid showing any breast"?

In the news

USS Lexington (CV-2) in 1941

The wreck of USS Lexington (pictured) is discovered in the Coral Sea.
Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter are poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury, England.
The Shape of Water wins four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Guillermo del Toro, at the Academy Awards.
At least 25 people die in a fire at a drug rehabilitation clinic in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Attacks at multiple locations in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, leave at least 28 people dead and 50 others injured.

On this day...

March 8: International Women's Day

Raymonde de Laroche

1618 – German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler discovered the third law of planetary motion.
1658 – After a devastating defeat in the Second Northern War, King Frederick III of Denmark–Norway was forced to give up nearly half his Danish territory to Sweden to save the rest.
1910 – French aviator Raymonde de Laroche (pictured) became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence.
1924 – Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah, U.S., killed all 171 miners working there.
1978 – BBC Radio 4 began transmitting Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other media formats.

Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge (d. 1819) · Gladys Bustamante (b. 1912) · Juvénal Habyarimana (b. 1937)

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Today's featured picture

Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring is a 1943 painting by the British painter Laura Knight depicting a young woman, Ruby Loftus (1921–2004), working at an industrial lathe as part of the British war effort in World War II. The painting was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee, and is now part of the Imperial War Museum's art collection. The painting brought instant fame to Loftus, and has been likened to the American figure of "Rosie the Riveter".

Painting: Laura Knight

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