August 6

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Women peacemakers born today

  • 1854 Anna Braithwaite Thomas born Banbury, Oxfordshire (d. 1947). Anglo-American Quaker peace leader; minister and author; recorded wartime relief Germany, Austria and Hungary in First World War.

  • 1858 Ethel J. Rosenberg born Bath, England (d. 1930). English artist. Pioneering speaker and writer of Bahá’i causes of peace, universal brotherhood, and gender equality.

  • 1886 Inez Milholland born Brooklyn, NY (d. 1916). Socialist pacifist suffragist orator; labor lawyer and journalist who sailed on Ford's Peace ship to stop World War I; expelled from Italy for antiwar articles; suffrage icon riding white horse in 1913 parade DC.

  • 1892 Ruth Suckow born Hawarden, IA (d. 1960). Quaker novelist and poet who supported conscientious objection in World War II.

  • 1934 Diane di Prima born Brooklyn, NY. American anarchist and Beat Poet. Refused taxes for Vietnam War, 1966. Edited War Poems, 1968. Signed Pledge of Resistance to Bush wars, 2002.

  • 1952 Wang Xuan born Yiwu, Zhejiang, China. Chinese activist. Campaigned against Japanese army's usage of germ warfare during World War II.

  • 1972 Geri Halliwell born Watford, Hertfordshire, England. English pop star; member of the Spice Girls. UN Population Fund Goodwill Ambassador, 1999; mission to Zambia, 2006.

  • 1983 Annevig Schelde Ebbe born Århus, Denmark. Danish actress; peace activist; sang in mass protest against Iraq War 2001; second-generation peacemaker, daughter of WILPF president.

  • 1985 Debi Nova born San José, Costa Rica. UN Youth Champion against violence to women; singer, songwriter, instrumentalist.

Women's peacemaking on this day

  • 1918 Forty-eight suffragists arrested, Washington DC.

  • 1965 Mariquita Platov protested Vietnam War at White House.

  • 1982 Greenham women protested nuclear arms.

  • 1994 Six women arrested at Burghfield England atomic weapons depot.

  • 1999 Candlelight pledge of peace by South Asian women at Gandhi memorial, Delhi.

  • 2005 Cindy Sheehan turned away from Crawford TX White House. "I want to ask George Bush: Why did my son die?"

  • 2008 Sylvia Boyes arrested for cutting into Flyingdales England missile base.

  • 2008 Patricia O’Brien appointed first woman Legal Counsel and Under-Secretary for Legal Affairs, UN.