when she joined the Marine Corps Reserve during World War I. Johnson was the first of 305 women to join up with the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve that day.
Click photos for links to more information. August 11, 1942: Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a patent for a Frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system that later became the basis for modern technologies in wireless telephones and Wi-Fi. The early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. However, the idea was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired. Consequently, the patent was little known until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr a belated award for her contributions. August 12, 30 BCE: Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last ruler of the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty, committed suicide. Formerly involved with Julius Caesar, after Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, she aligned with Mark Antony in opposition to Caesar's legal heir, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (later known as Augustus). With Antony, she bore the twins Cleopatra Selene II and Alexander Helios, and another son, Ptolemy Philadelphus. After losing the Battle of Actium to Octavian's forces, Antony committed suicide. Cleopatra followed suit, according to tradition killing herself by means of an asp bite. August 13, 1918: Opha May Johnson (2 Feb 1900 – Jan 1976) was the first woman to enlist officially in the United States Marine Corps, when she joined the Marine Corps Reserve during World War I. Johnson was the first of 305 women to join up with the United States Marine Corps Women's Reserve that day. August 14, 1952: Three-time Olympic champion, and a former world record-holder at three distances, Deborah Meyer was born in Annapolis, Maryland. Meyer won the 200-, 400-, and 800-meter freestyle swimming races in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. While she was still a 16-year old student at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento, California, she became the first swimmer to win three individual gold medals in one Olympics. Meyer is still the only woman Olympian to win three individual freestyle swimming gold medals in one Olympics, namely the 200-, 400- and 800-meter freestyle events. No swimmer has ever done this in any other combination of distances August 15, 1970: Patricia Palinkas became the first woman to play professionally in an American football game. She was a placekick holder for her husband Steven Palinkas for the minor league Orlando Panthers in the Atlantic Coast Football League. On her first play, against the Bridgeport Jets, Palinkas was attacked by Jets defenseman Wally Florence, who admittedly attempted to "break her neck" as punishment for what he perceived to be "making folly with a man's game." Palinkas went on to appear four more times: three consecutive successful extra point kicks, and a field goal attempt that was blocked. August 16, 1902: Georgette Heyer was born in Wimbledon, London. She was named after her father, George Heyer. Her mother, Sylvia Watkins, studied both cello and piano and was one of the top three students in her class at the Royal College of Music. Heyer became a prolific and commercially successful historical romance and detective fiction novelist. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story for her younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. Heyer essentially invented the historical romance and created the sub-genre of the Regency romance. At the time of her death, in 1974, forty-eight of her books were still in print, including her first novel. August 17, 1953: Herta Müller, a German-Romanian novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. was born in Nițchidorf, Romania. Müller is noted for her works depicting the effects of violence, cruelty and terror, usually in the setting of Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceaușescu regime which she has experienced herself. Many of her works are told from the viewpoint of the German minority in Romania and are also a depiction of the modern history of the Germans in the Banat, and Transylvania. Her much acclaimed 2009 novel The Hunger Angel (Atemschaukel) portrays the deportation of Romania's German minority to Stalinist Soviet Gulags during the Soviet occupation of Romania for use as German forced labor. In 2009, the Swedish Academy awarded Müller the Nobel Prize in Literature, describing her as a woman "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."
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Folks need to find some time to get over to the History Museum on the Square. A delightful new exhibit dedicated to the famed Route 66 will be premiering this Sunday, April 28th and will run throughout the summer. Titled "Woodruff's Dream: The Mother Road through Springfield," this look back at the iconic road focuses on the central role Springfield played in the planning. Admission is just $5 for adults and $3 for children, and museum members enter for free! The museum is located at 155 Park Central Square ~ Springfield, MO 65806. Call 417.832.1200 or visit their web site at http://historymuseumonthesquare.org/ for more information. There are some exciting things in the works down at the museum, including a major renovation project that should greatly impact the square as a cultural hub for the region. Show your support by becoming a member of this fine organization! As organizers set out to put together the 2012 Southwest Missouri Homeschool History Fair, one of the goals of the event was to stoke greater interest in the National History Day in Missouri competition among area homeschoolers. Open to students in grades six through twelve, this event will be held on Friday, February 22nd, beginning at 9 AM in Plaster Student Union on the campus of Missouri State University. Students who participated in the Senior Division of the SWMO Homeschool History Fair are invited to build on their experience and enter this state-wide program. However, you must move quickly. Registration closes at 12:01 AM February 1, 2013. To assist entrants with the registration process, the NHD has provided an online registration video tutorial at http://nhdsupport.acuweb.com/public/. More information about the contest can be found at http://mo.nhd.org/. Website and Paper judging is scheduled to begin on February 8, 2013. This means students will be automatically locked out of their websites and papers will need to be submitted to Gail Emrie on this date. Papers must be delivered to the Missouri State University History Office by February 7th. The top three entries in these categories are selected and compete through interviews on February 22nd. Should you have any question or concerns, you may contact the Region 7 Coordinator, Gail Emrie at 417 836 5915 or by email at [email protected]. If you are looking for additional resources, please check out these useful links provided by Maggie Mayhan, Coordinator, National History Day in MO. Chronicling America: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ The podcasts on using Chronicling America are below. Excellent resource for teachers and students! Missouri Digital Newspaper Project: http://shs.umsystem.edu/newspaper/mdnp/index.shtml In addition to the MO papers available on Chronicling America, the MDNP also features Civil War-era newspapers that have been digitized through state grants. This is an expanding collection. More papers will be going up in 2013. Primary Sources Webinars (offered via National History Day in Ohio): https://connect.ohiohistory.org/historydayweb These webinars are FREE and open to anyone who wishes to register. Meet the Common Core Standards through NHD: see below. Best of luck to those testing their historical scholarship in this challenging competition! |
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