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July 31

07-31 TABLE of CONTENTS: Caresse Crosby got first bra patent DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS QUOTES by Dale Spender and H. P. Blavatsky. Although Men Claimed to Invent the Bra, It was Actually Women Such as Olga Erteszek Who Held 18 Patents The so-called inventor of the bra Otto Titzling never took out a patent and most disclaim his claims. The is true same for Philippe de Brassiere.       Olga Erteszek, however, held 28 bra patents.       The first patent was held by Polly Jacob (Mary Phelps Jacob aka Caresse Crosby) who undoubtedly did invent the bra (patent granted in 1914).       Ida (Maidenform) Rosenthal later added such refinements as sized cups. Prior to the bra, women were squeezed into corsets which, when tightened to stylish thinness, constricted their organs, and caused serious illnesses, or if large breasted, women strapped their breasts down using bindings.       The uplift bra was invented by aircraft engineers under orders of their boss Howard Hughes. Hughes was taken by the large breasts of movie star Jane Russell whom he was directing in a movie and was distressed at the way her clothes photographed.       A few authorities believe the uplift bra is responsible for the increase in breast cancer but most experts discount the theory but have no explanation for the increase. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | 07-31 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS B. 07-31-1811, Jane Currie Blaikie Hoge, after raising a large family, became active with caring for orphans. After seeing some of the deplorable conditions suffered by soldiers in the Civil War, she became one of the leaders in sanitary reform (collecting and distributing clothing, providing nursing care, medical and hospital supplies, food, just about everything else for sanitary and health care that the army never supplied to its men). The women of the sanitary reform movement did unbelievably hard and effective work.       The women of the commission received adulation immediately after the war and then their names and work were forgotten while the names of battles and how they were fought (usually forgetting the gruesome results) were glorified. B. 07-31-1816, Lydia Moss Bradley - U.S. financier and philanthropist. LMB, although left a wealthy widow, increased the estate astronomically through wise investments and real estate transactions that rank her as a major financial genius.       Her philanthropic gifts included a home for older women. In 1876 she endowed Bradley University with $2 million and 28 acres in honor of her six children who all died young. B. 07-31-1831, Helena Petrovna Hahn Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophy religion/belief/philosophy that combines various religions and spiritualism and the occult.       She wrote a number of books the most important being The Secret Doctrine, The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy (1888) and Key to Theosophy (1889) that are the basic texts of the movement.       She died at the home of Annie Besant who carried on the movement that still has millions of followers today. B. 07-31-1860, Mary Morris Vaux Walcott - U.S. artist. Four hundred of her watercolors of wild flowers and descriptions were published by the Smithsonian Institution as the five-volume North American Wild Flowers. Her paintings are magnificent and accurate. B. 07-31-1944, Sherry Lansing - U.S. movie executive. SL is the first woman to be placed in charge of production at a major film studio, and 01-02-1980, she became president of production at Twentieth Century Fox.       She had been a story editor and vice-president of creative affairs to MGM and then vice-president of production at Columbia Pictures.       Her mother fled Nazi Germany and raised SL and her sister by working in real estate. B. 07-31-1951, Evonne Goolagong - outstanding First People (Aborigine) Australian tennis player who won the French Open, three Australian Opens, two Wimbledons (1971 and 1980), and was chosen Associated Press Female Athlete of 1971. B. 07-31-1952, Faye Marder Kellerman - U.S. novelist specializing in mysteries that feature authentic Orthodox Jewish life | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE | QUOTES DU JOUR SPENDER, DALE:       "[Women] CAN produce knowledge... (but) we have little or no influence over where it goes... We are not influential members in those institutions which legitimate and distribute knowledge. We are women producing knowledge which is often different from that produced by men, in a society controlled by men. If they like what we produce they will appropriate it, if they can use what we produce (even against us) they will take it, if they do not want to know, they will lose it. But rarely, if ever, will they treat it as they treat their own. Men control what is believable knowledge."             -- Spender, Dale. Women of Ideas and what men have done to them. London: Pandora, 1988. This book is still in print and should be given to every girl at her birth. Spender is our selection as the second-most important feminist writer of the last quarter of the 20th century.       Pandora publishing is just one of many feminist publishing houses that were started in the last part of the 20th century by women determined to influence, legitimatize, and distribute correct knowledge essential to women so that women can determine for themselves what is believable knowledge - not brainwashing. BLAVATSKY, H.P.:       "Knowledge increases in proportion to its use - that is, the more we teach, the more we learn."             -- H. P. Blavatsky. | PRIOR DATE |        | HOME |       | WOA INDEX |       | NEXT DATE |   | RETURN TO TOP OF PAGE |