05-15 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Madeleine Albright, the first woman U.S. Secretary of State
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by Madeleine
Albright.
Madeleine Albright
Born
05-15-1937, Madeleine Albright is the first U.S. Secretary of State who
is also a woman.
When President Bill Clinton first appointed MA as
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1992 he made it a full cabinet
post to show his high regard for Albright. It was also a signal that she
would be an important part of his administration since she sat in on the
major foreign affairs meetings.
When Clinton's first secretary of state resigned,
Albright was promptly moved up. Clinton and Albright go way back to when
she held weekly political discussions at her home when she was with Georgetown
University (where Clinton studied).
A noted expert in foreign affairs, she was one of
the first to advocate new relationships with the Soviet Union and Mikhail
Gorbachev which led to the fall of the Iron Curtain. /// She also argued
that economic sanctions would force Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait and she
opposed the Gulf War.
MA was on President Jimmy Carter's National Security
Council from 1978-81. She advised all the Democratic candidates from Carter
on and also advised former Czechoslovakian President Vaclev Havel.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Albright speaks Czech, French,
Polish, and Russian as well as English. She is the divorced mother of three
daughters and because of the traditional/fearful secrecy - her father was
exiled from his homeland - she did not find out she was part Jewish until
she was at the U.N.
MA headed the Georgetown University Center for National
Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan research group and was director of the
Women in Foreign Service program to train women for leadership positions
in foreign policy.
Albright is noted for her support of women in government.
Ordinarily the Secretary of State is fourth in line
for the presidency in case of disaster but it does not apply to her because
she was not born within the borders of the U.S. as required under the U.S.
constitution of all presidents.
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05-15 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
B. 05-15-1759, Maria Theresia von Paradis. Although blind from early
childhood, this Austrian pianist, organist, composer, and singer composed
organ music and light opera and toured Europe giving concerts. She founded
a music school for girls and taught singing and piano in Vienna.
B. 05-15-1857, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming, Scottish-born U.S.
astronomer who discovered white dwarf stars. She developed the Draper
Catalogue of Stellar Spectra and classified more than 10,000 stars. She
identified 222 variable stars, discovered 10 novae, and 94 Wolf-Rayet stars.
After emigrating to the U.S., her husband abandoned her when she was pregnant.
She got a job as a maid in the home of the director of the Harvard Observatory
who, angry at his men for their sloppy work, hired her to show them up
at the observatory. She was the first American woman elected to the Royal
Astronomical Society in 1906.
B. 05-15-1863, Annie Fellows Johnston, her Little Colonel series
of more than 50 novels and sold more than a million books. She didn't get
a chance to write until her husband died.
B. 05-15-1890, Katherine Anne Porter, American writer most admired
for her short fiction. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her Collected
Stories (1965).
B. 05-15-1901, Dorothy Hansine Andersen, American pathologist and
pediatrician who in 1938 identified the disease cystic fibrosis and
later developed a simplified diagnose. Graduating from Johns Hopkins Medical
School, she was unable to get a residency in surgery. After recognizing
CF in autopsied baby hearts, her prestige and responsibilities grew, but
she was continually maligned (there were always efforts afoot to get ride
of that troublesome woman) - a cigarette was usually hanging from the corner
of her mouth (she died of lung cancer) and her hair was always a mess -
and because she did "unladylike"-things like rebuilding her cabin
getaway with her own hands, as well as not being properly deferential.
DHA perfected a course on open heart surgery and conducted seminars throughout
the country. She had been orphaned at 19 without a single close relative.
B. 05-15-1919, Mary Eugenia Charles, prime minister of the Commonwealth
of Dominico (1980).
B. 05-15-1930, Grace Ogot, Kenyan author of short stories and
novels that examined the problems in transition from colonial to modern
culture. A nurse and midwife by training she became an announcer for BBC
in Kenya, a member of parliament, a United Nations delegate, and a member
of UNESCO. Her bride price in 1959 was 25 head of cattle.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
ALBRIGHT, MADELEINE:
"[I] had to learn to
speak out [for myself]. I would be in a White House meeting, and I would
think of somethihg and not saying anything because I wasn't sure that it
would add to the discussion. Then some man would say what I had been thinking,
and it would be hailed as a agreat idea."
-- Madeleine Albright
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