The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia:
Fatima Jinnah (July 30, 1893 — July 8, 1967) was the sister of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan and an active political figure in movement for independence from the British Raj. She is commonly known in Pakistan as Khatoon-e-Pakistan (Urdu: — "Lady of Pakistan") and Madar-e-Millat ("Mother of the Nation.") She was born in Karachi, Pakistan, then a part of British India. She was admitted to the Dr. R. Ahmed Dental College in the University of Calcutta in 1919 and went on to open her dental clinic in Bombay in 1923. She was an instrumental figure in the Pakistan movement and the primary organiser of All India Muslim Women Students Federation. After the formation of Pakistan and the death of her brother, she remained a part of politics. In 1965, Miss Fatima Jinnah ran for President as a candidate of the Combined Opposition Party (COP) however she did not win. She continued to work for the welfare of the Pakistani people until she died in Karachi on July 8, 1967.

Read Fatima Jinnah's book, My Brother, free from the government of Pakistan.

From wikipedia:
(Helen) Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943) was an English author and illustrator, botanist, and conservationist, best known for her children's books, which featured animal characters such as Peter Rabbit.

Beatrix Potter was born in Kensington, London on July 28, 1866. Educated at home by a succession of governesses, she had little opportunity to mix with other children. Even Potter's younger brother, Bertram, was rarely at home; he was sent to boarding school, leaving Beatrix alone with her pet animals. She had frogs and newts, and even a pet bat. Among her pets were two rabbits. Her first rabbit was Benjamin, whom she described as "an impudent, cheeky little thing", while her second was Peter, whom she took everywhere with her, even on trains, on a little lead. Potter would watch these animals for hours on end, sketching them. Gradually the sketches became better and better, developing her talents from an early age.

Read The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle by Beatrix Potter, one of 19 of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:

Charlotte Corday (July 27, 1768 – July 17, 1793), more fully Marie Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, was the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat.

Biography
Born in Saint-Saturnin-des-Ligneries, part of today's commune of Écorches in the Orne département, Normandy, France, Corday was a member of an aristocratic but poor family. She was a descendant of the French dramatist Pierre Corneille on her mother's side.

She was educated at the Abbaye aux Dames, a convent in Caen, Normandy. She remained there until 1791 when the convent was closed. She approved of the French Revolution in its early stages, and remained an enthusiastic supporter of the Girondists.

From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1901-1925, Editor Frederick W. Haberman, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972:

Auguste Marie François Beernaert (July 26, 1829-October 6, 1912) was born in Ostend, Belgium, in a middle-class Catholic family of Flemish origin. His father was a government functionary whose changing appointments took the family from Ostend to Dinant and then to Namur, where Auguste and his sister spent their childhood. Their early education was undertaken by their mother, a woman of outstanding intelligence and moral character. Admitted to the University of Louvain in 1846, Beernaert took his doctorate in law in 1851 with the highest distinction. Awarded a traveling fellowship, he spent two years at the Universities of Paris, Heidelberg, and Berlin, studying the status of legal education in France and Germany and upon his return to Belgium submitting a report of his findings - later published - to the minister of the Interior.

Read the Presentation Speech by Jørgen Gunnarsson Løvland, Chairman of the Nobel Committee, on December 10, 1909.

From wikipedia:
Elias Canetti (Rousse,Bulgaria, 25 July 1905 – 14 August 1994, Zurich) was a Bulgaria-born novelist of Sephardi Jewish ancestry who wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981.

Life
Elias Canetti was the eldest son in a Jewish merchant family in Rustchuk (present-day Rousse). His ancestors were Sephardi Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492. The original family name was Cañete, named after a village in Spain. Elias spent his childhood years, from 1905 to 1911, in Rustchuk until the family moved to England. In 1912 his father died suddenly, and his mother moved with their children to Vienna in the same year.

Read Elias Canetti's speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1981, free from Nobelprize.org.

From wikipedia:
Sir William Ramsay (October 2, 1852 – July 23, 1916) was a Scottish chemist who discovered the noble gases and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 (along with Lord Rayleigh who received the Nobel Prize in Physics that same year for the discovery of argon).

Ramsay was born in Glasgow, the son of William Ramsay, C.E. and Catherine, née Robertson. He was a nephew of the geologist Sir Andrew Ramsay.

He studied at the University of Glasgow under Thomas Anderson and then went to study in Germany at the University of Tübingen with Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig where his doctoral thesis was entitled "Investigations in the Toluic and Nitrotoluic Acids". He returned to Glasgow as Anderson's assistant at the Anderson College. He was appointed Professor of Chemistry at the University College of Bristol in 1879 and married Margaret Buchanan in 1881. In the same year he became the Principal of the Bristol and somehow managed to combine that with active research both in organic chemistry and on gases.


Read Sir William Ramsay's 1904 Nobel Prize lecture, free from NobelPrize.org.

From wikipedia:
Alan Bartlett Shepard, Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) (Rear Admiral, USN, Ret.) was the second person and the first American astronaut in space. He later commanded the Apollo 14 mission, and was the fifth man to walk on the moon.

Education
Born in Derry, New Hampshire, Shepard graduated from Admiral Farragut Academy in 1941, received a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1944, an Honorary Master of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1962, an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) in 1971, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Franklin Pierce College in 1972. He graduated from the United States Naval Test Pilot School in 1951 and the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island in 1957.

Watch Alan Shepard and Apollo 14 his crew land on the moon, one of many video clips of the Apollo 14 mission available free from NASA.

From wikipedia:
Mangal Pandey (c. July 19, 1827–8 April 1857), also known as Shaheed Mangal Pandey (Shaheed means martyr in Hindustani), was a sepoy (soldier) in the 34th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) of the English East India Company.

Life
Pandey was born in the village of Nagwa in district Ballia Uttar Pradesh. Families in Nagwa village claim Mangal Pandey to be their first ancestor and trace their family lineage to him. There is some dispute over his exact place of birth. One account (Misra, 2005) claims that Mangal Pandey was born in a Bhumihar Brahmin family to Divakar Pandey of Surhupur village of Faizabad district’s Akbarpur Tehsil. He joined the British East India Company forces in 1849 at the age of 22, as per this account. Pandey was part of the 5th Company of the 34th BNI regiment. He is primarily known for attacking his British officers in an incident that sparked what is known to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 and to Indians as the First War of Indian Independence. Mangal Pandey was a devout Brahmin and he practiced his religion diligently.

Learn more about Mangal Pandey and the Sepoy Mutiny, free from The Hindu, the online edition of India's national newspaper.

From wikipedia:Margaret Tobin Brown (July 18, 1867 – October 26, 1932), more widely known as Maggie Brown or Molly Brown was an American socialite, philanthropist, and activist who became famous as one of the survivors of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. She became known after her death as The Unsinkable Molly Brown, although she was never called Molly during her life.

Early life and family
Margaret Tobin was born in Hannibal, Missouri, one of six children of Irish immigrants. At 19, she moved to Leadville, Colorado, with her sister, obtaining a job in a department store. It was here she met and married James Joseph Brown (J.J.), an enterprising, self-educated man, in 1886. Brown had always planned on marrying a rich man but she married J.J. for love. She said, "I wanted a rich man, but I loved Jim Brown. I thought about how I wanted comfort for my father and how I had determined to stay single until himself who could give to the tired old man the things I longed for him. Jim was as poor as we were, and had no better chance in life. I struggled hard with myself in those days. I loved Jim, but he was poor. Finally, I decided that I'd be better off with a poor man whom I loved than with a wealthy one whose money had attracted me. So I married Jim Brown."

Learn more about Margaret Brown, free from encyclopedia-titanica.org.

Christina Stead (17 July 1902—31 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer noted for her satirical wit and psychological penetration. She was a committed Marxist although never a member of the Communist Party. She lived many years in England and the United States but returned to Australia after she was denied the Britannica-Australia prize on the grounds that she had "ceased to be an Australian".

Read an excerpt from “A real inferno”: the life of Christina Stead by Brooke Allen, free from New Criterion Online.

From wikipedia:

Dame Marie Tempest, DBE (15 July 1864–15 October 1942), was an English singer and actress known as the "queen of her profession". She was also, on occasions, her own manager during a career spanning 55 years.

Life and career
Tempest was born Mary Susan Etherington in London and was educated in Belgium. Later, she studied music in Paris and at the Royal Academy of Music in London, as a singing pupil (a soprano) of Manuel García, the tutor of Jenny Lind. At nineteen years of age, she married to Alfred Edward Izard. That marriage subsequently ended in divorce.


Read an amusing anecdote from the long acting career of Dame Marie Tempest, free from anecdotage.com.

From wikipedia:
Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899, Mount Vernon, New York – October 1, 1985, North Brooklin, Maine) was a leading American essayist, author, humorist, poet and literary stylist.

"No one can write a sentence like White," James Thurber once said of his crisp and graceful writing style. A liberal free-thinker, White often wrote as an ironic onlooker, championing freedom of the individual. His writing ranged from satire to textbooks and children's fiction. His writers' style guide, The Elements of Style, remains a well-regarded text; his three children's books, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan, are regarded as classics of the field.


Read the letter that E.B. White wrote before his death about his three books for children, free from Teachervision.

From wikipedia:
Mary Jane McLeod Bethune (July 10, 1875 - May 18, 1955) was born in Mayesville, South Carolina and died in Daytona Beach, Florida. A U.S. educator born to former slaves, she made her way through college and in 1904 founded a school that later became part of Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Fla. She was president of the college from 1923–42 and 1946–47. Prominent in African-American organizations, particularly women's groups, she directed the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration (1936–44). Bethune worked for the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, and attempted to get him to support a proposed law against lynching. Although the Costigan-Wagner bill was not passed, they did raise more public awareness of the lynching issue. She was also a member of Roosevelt's Black Cabinet. Her house is preserved by the National Park Service as Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site, and a significant sculpture of her is located in Lincoln Park in Washington, DC.

Hear Mary McLeod Bethune speak about "The Power of Education," free from the New York Public Library.

Myra Maybelle Shirley Reed Starr better known as Belle Starr (February 5, 1848 – February 3, 1889) was famous as an American female outlaw. Her legend developed soon after her death and she quickly became more famous for the impossibly fantastic legend than for anything she could have ever genuinely done. Depending on which parts of the legend(s) one reads and/or believes, she married no fewer than three of the Younger brothers, she had control (even carnal control) over every cutthroat brigand, horse thief, and bank robber in Missouri, Kansas, Indian Territory, Arkansas, and Texas. Every person she had any dealings with was on the wrong side of the law, even including her father. She kept a diary. She ran criminal gangs like a 19th century Ma Barker and even began her exploits during the Civil War where she was described as being anything from a spy, to a courier of military intelligence information, to being the only female Confederate General (even though, at that time, she was 13 to 17 years old).

Read more about Belle Starr at outlawwomen.com.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz (July 8, 1867 – April 22, 1945) was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century. Her empathy for the less fortunate, expressed most famously through the graphic means of drawing, etching, lithography, and woodcut, embraced the victims of poverty, hunger, and war. Initially her work was grounded in Naturalism, and later took on Expressionistic qualities.

Youth
Kollwitz was born in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), the fifth child in her family. Her father, Karl Schmidt, was a radical Social democrat who became a mason and house builder. Her mother, Katherina Schmidt, was the daughter of Julius Rupp, a Lutheran pastor who was expelled from the official State Church and founded an independent congregation. Her education was greatly influenced by her grandfather's lessons in religion and socialism. The early death of her younger brother Benjamin also left an impression; in childhood Kollwitz was afflicted with anxiety.

View 61 of Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz' artworks, free from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Mary Elizabeth Eugenia Jenkins Surratt (May/June 1823 in Waterloo, Maryland, USA – July 7, 1865 in Washington, D.C), was a member of the Abraham Lincoln assassination conspiracy and the first woman executed by the United States federal government, for her role in the conspiracy. She was executed by hanging. She was the mother of John Surratt, also alleged to be involved in the conspiracy.

Early life
Mary was born to Archibald Jenkins and Elizabeth Anne in southern Maryland. She had two brothers. Her father died when she was two years old. Mary enrolled at a private girl's boarding school, Academy for Young Ladies, in Alexandria, Virginia. She married John Harrison Surratt in 1839, when she was sixteen and he was twenty-seven. They had three children, Isaac (1841), Elizabeth Susanna Surratt (1843-1904), and John, Jr. (1844). Together they farmed tobacco and opened a general store, gristmill, and tavern.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Frida Kahlo (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter who depicted the indigenous culture of her country in a style combining Realism, Symbolism and Surrealism. An active communist supporter, she was the wife of Mexican muralist and cubist painter Diego Rivera. She is widely known for her self-portraits often expressing her physical pain and suffering through symbolism. In the last three decades she has gained admiration in Europe and the US resulting in the 2002 movie about her life starring Salma Hayek, which sparked even further interest in the life and arts of Frida Kahlo. Her house in Coyoacán, Mexico is a museum and visited by a large number of tourists every year.

See many of Frida Kahlo's paintings, free from Olga's Gallery.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mary Walcott (July 5, 1675 – after 1719) was one of the witnesses at the Salem Witch Trials of Salem, Massachusetts in the years 1692 and 1693.

She was the daughter of Captain Jonathan Walcott (1639-1699), and his wife Mary Sibley (1644-1683), both of Salem, and was about seventeen years old when the allegations started in 1692. Her aunt, Mary Woodrow, the wife of Samuel Sibley (1657-1708), was the person who first showed Tituba and her husband John Indian how to bake a witch cake to feed to a dog in order that she and her friends might ascertain exactly who it was that was afflicting them. Joseph B. Felt quotes in the The Annals of Salem (1849 edition) vol. 2, p. 476 [from the town records]:

March 11, 1692 – "Mary, the wife of Samuel Sibley, having been suspended from communion with the church there, for the advices she gave John [husband of Tituba] to make the above experiment, is restored on confession that her purpose was innocent."

See Mary Walcott's deposition in the Salem Witch Trials, free from the University of Virginia.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

André-Gustave Citroën (February 5, 1878-July 3, 1935) was a French Jewish entrepreneur of Dutch and Polish descent. He is remembered chiefly for the make of car named after him, but also for his invention of double helical gears.

André-Gustave was the 5th and last child of the Dutch Jewish diamond merchant Levie Citroen and Mazra Kleinmann (of Warsaw, Poland). He was related to the famous British philosopher A.J. Ayer. The Citroen family moved to Paris from Amsterdam in 1873. Upon arrival, the diaeresis was added to the name, changing Citroen to Citroën. His father committed suicide when André was only six years old.


Read more about André-Gustave Citroën and his cars, free from The Citroën Connection

From wikipdia:
Amy Vanderbilt (July 22, 1908 - December 27, 1974) was a U.S. authority on etiquette. In 1952 she published the best selling book Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. The book, later retitled Amy Vanderbilt's Etiquette, has been updated and is still in circulation today. The most recent edition (ISBN 0-385-41342-4) was edited by Nancy Tuckerman and Nancy Dunnan. Its longtime popularity has lead to it being considered a standard of etiquette writing.

Read an excerpt from The Complete Book of Etiquette, free from USA Today.

From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (July 23, 1856 - August 1, 1920), was an Indian nationalist, social reformer and freedom fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement and is known as "Father of the Indian unrest." Tilak sparked the fire for complete independence in Indian consciousness, and is considered the father of Hindu nationalism as well.

Reverently addressed as Lokmanya (meaning "Beloved of the people" or "Revered by the world"), Tilak was a scholar of Indian history, Sanskrit, Hinduism, mathematics and astronomy.

Learn more about Bal Gangadhar Tilak, free from indialife.com.