Famous Women in Hungarian History

From IEWY News:

When one lists the outstanding personalities of Hungarian history, one tends to think of crowned kings, valiant commanders, renowned statesmen and legendary champions of freedom –representing, almost exclusively, the stronger sex. Yet, many woman bolstered the fame of Hungary over the centuries.

Read on -> Famous Hungarian Women in History

Houdini Assistant - Dorothy Young

From Yahoo News:

Dorothy Young, the last surviving stage assistant of illusionist Harry Houdini and an accomplished dancer, has died. She was 103.

Young's death was announced Wednesday by Drew University, where she was a prominent donor and patron of the arts. Drew spokesman Dave Muha said Young died Sunday at her home in a Tinton Falls, N.J., retirement community.

Young joined Houdini's company as a teenager after attending an open casting call during a family trip to New York. During her year with Houdini's stage show in the mid-1920s, she played the role of "Radio Girl of 1950," emerging from a large mock-up of a radio and performing a dance routine.

Young went on to become a professional dancer, performing in several movies. She also published a novel inspired by her career.

Remembering The Triangle Fire

From Yahoo News:

It was a warm spring Saturday when dozens of immigrant girls and women leapt to their deaths — some with their clothes on fire, some holding hands — as horrified onlookers watched the Triangle Shirtwaist factory burn.

The March 25, 1911, fire that killed 146 workers became a touchstone for the organized labor movement, spurred laws that required fire drills and shed light on the lives of young immigrant workers near the turn of the century.

The 100th anniversary comes as public workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere protest efforts to limit collective bargaining rights in response to state budget woes. Labor leaders and others say one need only look to the Triangle fire to see why unions are crucial.

See also: Triangle Fire: Liberating Clothing Made in Confinement

Elizabeth Taylor - Legend Lost

From The Hype News:

The star of "Cleopatra" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles surrounded

by family after a long battle with congestive heart failure that sent her to the hospital six weeks ago.

In a career spanning seven decades, Taylor first gained fame in 1944's "National Velvet" at age 12 and was nominated for five Oscars. She won the best actress award for "Butterfield 8" (1960) and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) with actor Richard Burton, whom she would marry twice.

Taylor's eight marriages, health problems, prescription drug addiction and ballooning weight often overshadowed her career, but she overcame adversity and used her fame to advocate for causes such as AIDS education and research.

Her death triggered an outpouring of tributes from Hollywood luminaries like Barbra Streisand, recording stars such as Elton John and politicians including former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Egyptian Queen Has Wart

From Discovery News:

King Tut's grandmother, the powerful and beautiful Queen Tiye, might have had an unattractive flat wart on her forehead, according to a mummy expert.

Located between the eyes, the small protuberance was found on the mummy of the so-called Elder Lady (KV35EL). Boasting long reddish hair falling across her shoulders, the mummy was identified in February 2010 by DNA testing as Queen Tiye, the daughter of Yuya and Thuya, wife of Amenhotep III, and mother of Akhenaten.

The skin growth had gone unnoticed until Mercedes González, director of the Instituto de Estudios Científicos en Momias in Madrid, spotted it looking at the mummy during a visit to the Cairo Museum.

Haneen Zoab: Palestinian Voice In Israel

From Xinhuanet:

"Every woman can be a woman of frustration. I'm not optimistic. I'm not pessimistic. I'm just struggling," said Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian female legislator in the Israeli parliament, Knesset.

Zoabi has made a history in Israel as the first woman to be elected in the Knesset on an Arab Party's list. At her 41, she has been representing the Arab National Democratic Party in the parliament since 2009.

Sitting in her office in Nazareth, viewed by the Palestinian Arabs in Israel as their effective capital, Zoabi argues in an interview with Xinhua that her real task is to advance the cause of ending Israel's occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a cause for both Palestinian men and women.

Matadora: Lupita Lopez

From NPR:

Last Sunday, a 32-year-old bullfighter named Lupita Lopez appeared in Mexico City's Plaza Mexico — the largest bullring in the world — and was inducted into the tiny sorority of matadoras, or professional female bullfighters. Lopez, 32, has wanted to be a bullfighter since she was 11.

Growing up in the city of Merida, on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Lopez decided she wanted to be a bullfighter when she was 11. During her long apprenticeship, she faced the challenges of a young woman entering the quintessentially male domain of bulls.

Joan of Arc - Another Theory

I have shamelessly poached this topic from a history forum, which posed the question back in 2006 - was Joan of Arc really a man.  Now, the thinking behind this was related to a medical condition known as "testicular feminization syndrome" or "complete androgen insensitivity syndrome".

From the website: "The complete androgen insensitivity syndrome is usually detected at puberty when a girl should but does not begin to menstruate. Many of the girls with the syndrome have no pubic or axillary (armpit) hair. They have luxuriant scalp hair without temporal (male-pattern) balding. They are sterile and cannot bear children."

What do we know of Joan that might fall into the above catergory.

1. There was no obvious signs of menstration.

2. She bore no children - child bearing would have been common for a girl of her age - and engaged in no known sexual activity.

3. Despite the saintly modern day depictions, Joan was, by nature of her ancestry, considered to have been short, dark complexioned and swarthy - almost masculine in appearance.

4. Yes she did undergo an "inspection" to ascertain that she was still "virgo intacta" - but would those women who examined her have been at all familiar with a medical condition in which a male took upon, to all intents and purposes, female form.  And quite frankly, no man would have undertaken such an intimate examination of a woman.

5. The Duke of Alencon, in his later reflections on Joan, was said to have remarked "... it was if she had known how to be a man-at-armss following the wars since her youth.."  And the Burgundian Chronicler Georges Chastellain also commented on her manly skills.

So, just as there is the mystery of Pope Joan - could we have the mystery of John of Arc??

American WASPS

From Utah News:

Within months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. Army Air Force, faced with an acute shortage of male pilots, decided to use women in domestic aviation to relieve their male counterparts for combat.

This was a first for the military. They knew little about women’s adaptability, attitudes, strength or psychological bearings. So they turned to world-renowned pilot Jacqueline Cochran, who created in-country ferrying and training programs including aerial navigation, target towing, assimilated bombing missions and conveyance.

Cochran had broken international speed and altitude records. President of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, she was a member of the Wings for Britain, delivered military aircraft from America to England and became the first woman to pilot a bomber across the North Atlantic.

Actively recruited, 25,000 young women stepped forward to volunteer, and about 1,800 were accepted into the program. Learning to fly “the Army way,” 1,074 graduated into the Women Air Force Service Pilots, or WASPS.