Women peacemakers born today

1820 Florence Nightingale born Florence, Tuscany (d. 1910). Organized first wartime nursing in Crimean War, 1854.
1872 Eleanor Florence Rathbone born South Kensington, London (d. 1946). Suffragist; feminist. Independent Member of British Parliament, 1929-46. Published War Can Be Averted, 1938.
1924 Claribel Alegría (née Clara Isabel Alegría Vides) born Estelí, Nicaragua. Salvadoran-Nicaraguan poet and novelist. Lifelong nonviolence advocate. Nobel Literature Laureate, 2006.
1948 Akmaral Arystanbekova born Kazakhstan. Chemist and diplomat. First Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan, 1989-91. Initiated destruction of world’s fourth-largest cache of nuclear weapons; closed Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, 1991.
1957 Ertharin Cousin born Chicago, IL. “The Woman Who Feeds the World”; Director World Food Program 2012; lawyer and food executive; Nominee for UN Secretary General 2016.

Women's peacemaking on this day

1919 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom founding conference met in Zurich.
1938 Forty-eight militant feminists chained themselves at Bastille protesting “the slavery of women.”
1957 2,000 women marched in London from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square in the rain, protesting H-bomb tests in the first major anti-nuclear protest, organized by Ianthe Carswell.
1976 INSTRAW, UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women established by UN Economic and Social Council Resolution LX.
2003 British Minister of Development Clare Short quit British Cabinet over Iraq War betrayal of UN.
2014 General Kristin Lund named first woman leader of UN Peacekeeping force.