Living well is the best revenge -
Forgotten in the annals of history is Nicole-Barbe
Clicquot.
The history books record (with a flourish and a pop)
that on 08-04-1693, Dom Perignon invented champagne (actually the champagne
process).
VOILA! Let the party begin. But wait!
Someone forgot to mention that the Dom Perignon's
sparkly wasn't drinkable because it was gritty and cloudy ... ugh. Not
even callow youths thought it worthy enough to contribute to their hangovers.
Fast forward a hundred years of so to Mme. Nicole-
Barbe Clicquot who developed the sur pointe process that clarified the
sediment out of the sparkling wines - and THEN the party began.
She also invented pink champagne.
But the history books list Dom Perignon as the man
who did it . . . and Mme. Clicquot is forgotten.
Luckily her process made her a *very* wealthy woman,
thus her revenge against future history's neglect of her was living her
life very nicely, thank you.
Event 02-22-1974: The management was convinced
that the first women's exhibition/professional basketball game to take
place in Madison Square Garden couldn't draw a crowd so it scheduled a
men's game afterwards.
Following the women's game, the crowd of nearly 12,000
left. The men played to almost empty stands.
Lynn Alexander Margulis, American microbiologist
who developed the symbiogenetic theory of cell evolution (rather than the
survival of the fittest) was born 03-05-1938.
Her cell findings according to noted researcher W.
Ford Doolittle, were "the signal event in cell biology."
However, her paper on it was rejected 15 times before
it was accepted for publication in 1967. And then it was ignored.
She persisted and tweaked and did more research. Finally
in 1981 she published *Symbiosis in Cell Evolution,* which is now considered
a classic in biology.
In 1983 she was invited to join the prestigious National
Academ of Science - a mark that she was not only famous but considered
a noted scientist by other noted scientists.
At 18 she had been Carl Sagan's first wife. As such
and in spite of her Ph.D., she was expected to stay home, keep house, care
for their two children, and help him pursue HIS career.
She divorced him saying "As
a 16-year-old, I learned a great deal from him. In marriage, I had nothing
but hindrance from him."
Donna Shalala (b. 02-14-1941) has been
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services since 1992.
She is the former chancellor of the University of
Wisconsin, the fourth largest institute of higher education in the U.S.
Her mother was a ranking tennis player holding down
two teaching jobs while attending law school at night and raising her twin
daughters.
DS is quite short and rounded which belies the adage
that successful women MUST be tall, willowy, and blonde.
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