Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon was born in Savannah, Georgia back in 1860 to William and Elanor.  When she was six months old her father joined the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War.  When she was four the family moved to thunderbolt, Georgia.  In 1865, the family moved again to Chicago.  As a young child she was accident-prone suffering numerous injuries and illnesses.   She suffered from frequents earaches and recurring bouts of malaria.  She spent her time pursuing art and poetry, she also performed plays and started a newspaper called The Malbone Bouquet.  At the tender age of 12 she started a boarding school.  She met William in 1880, they married in 1886.  William was unable to father children which caused a strain on the marriage.  In 1901, the couple while still m... 09/13/2021

Beatrice Mary MacDonald was born in North Bedeque community of Prince Edward Island, Canada back in 1881.  After graduation from high school he relocated to New York City to further her education.  She graduated from the New York City Hospital Nursing School.She was living in New York City during the outbreak of World War I.  in 1915, she volunteered for the American Ambulance Service.  She was sent to the American Hospital of Paris.  She returned to the United States working for the New York surgeon George Brewer as an office manager.  She enlisted in the United States Army Nursing Corp in 1917.  She served in France at the British Casualty Clearing Station No. 61.  She was injured during a German air raid on the front line during the Third Battle of Ypres.  She died in 1969, she was 8... 08/20/2021

Richard Lower was born in St. Tudy, England back in 1631.  He studied at Westminster School.  He moved to London where he carried out research with Robert Hooke.  He formed an informal research team, performing laboratory experiments at the University of Oxford.  He earned his M.D. degree in 1665.  He was a medical student under Professor Willis collaborating with him to investigate the nervous system.  Later he traced the circulation of blood as it passes through the lungs and learned that it changes when exposed to air. He was the first to observe the difference in arterial and venous blood.  Willis died in 1675, making Richard very busy with the demands of his medical practice.  He died in London from a fever in 1691, he was 60.What you may not know about Dr. Lower is that he is most... 07/29/2021

José Mendoza López was born Santiago Ihuitlán Plumas, Oaxaca, Mexico back in 1910.  As a young boy he and his mother moved to Orizaba where he helped his mother sell clothes that she had made.  When he was eight his mother died so he moved to Brownsville, Texas to live with his uncle’s family.While in Brownsville, he began working various jobs and never returned to school.  He later traveled the country with a boxing promoter with 55 fights under his belt in the lightweight division using the nickname of Kid Mendoza.  In 1934, during a boxing match in Melbourne, Australia he met a group of Merchant Marines and signed a contract with them.  He was accepted in the union spending the next five years traveling the world.  He was en-route to California from Hawaii when he learned about the J... 07/20/2021

Henrietta Emma Litchfield was born in Downe, Kent, England back in 1843 to Charles and Emma.  Her brother and Henrietta helped their father with his work and edit some of his writings.  She married Richard in 1871, the couple had no children.  Richard died in 1903 in Cannes, France.Henrietta edited her father biography, she also edited her mother’s private papers.  She died in 1927, she was 84,What you may not know about Henrietta is that Charles her father was nonother than Charles Darwin, she helped edit The Descent of Man.  Like many of you I was told that on his deathbed he had undergone a deathbed conversion.  According to her in an article written by her in 1922, that never happened.  Your day is worthwhile when you make someone smile, so give the free gift of a smile today. 06/26/2021

Hymen L. Lipman was born in Kingston, Jamaica back in 1817.  In 1829, the family moved to the United States arriving in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he resided for the rest of his life.  He worked as a stationer in Philadelphia where in 1840 he was the leading stationer. In 1843, he started the first envelope company in the United States.In 1848, he married Mary A. Lehman daughter of Peter Lehman, who was one of the founders of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.  He died in 1893, he was 76.What you may not know about Hymen is that in 1858, he registered the first patent for a pencil with an attached eraser (U.S. Patent 19,783).  He sold his patent for $100,000.00 to Joseph Reckendorfer.  Reckendorger wanted to sure the pencil manufacture Faber for infringement.  The United State... 06/23/2021

Auguste-Savinien Leblond was born in France back in 1760.  He came from a family of mathematicians.  I don’t have any information on where he went to school or much of anything about his formal education.  What I can tell you about him of course is the rest of the story.  This one is going to be short so let’s get to it.He was a teacher of mathematics but he also published works that earned him the esteem of his peers. He is remembered as the inventor of a fixed and universal measurement of length.  He also designed mechanical devices called “logarithmic dials”, for converting traditional and metric measures which was abandoned in favor of slide rules. He was employed the Prints Department of the Royal Library, he was particularly interested in what was known as “education through the e... 05/10/2021

John King was born in Ballinrobe, Ireland back in 1865.  He was involved in an incident and was wanted by the local police, he made his way to the United States arriving in Vermont around 1893, he enlisted in the Navy serving on board the USS Massachusetts during the Spanish-American War.  In 1900, he was transferred to the USS Vicksburg during the Philippine-American War.In 1916, he was discharged from the Navy.  However, at the beginning of World War I he reenlisted as a Chief serving in New York until 1919.  After his retirement, I couldn’t find anything about him until his death in 1938, he is buried in the Calvary Cemetery in Hot Springs, Arkansas.What you may not know about Chief John King is that he is only one of nineteen to receive the Medal of Honor twice.  Your day is worthwh... 02/11/2021

Marion Keisker was born in Memphis, Tennessee back in 1917.  She graduated from Southwestern College with a degree in English and Medieval French.  She married Angus and had a son who she named after the father.  She was a radio show host for WREC becoming a station manager and later Sam Phillips assistant.  She also worked at the Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records.  She left Sun Records and joined the U.S. Air Force, commissioned as a captain and served as information office in charge of the Armed Forces television station at the Ramstein base in Germany.  She left the Air Force in 1969, moving back to Memphis where she became active in the Memphis chapter of the National Organization for Women.  Her correspondence is archived at the Memphis Public Library.  She died in 1989, sh... 01/19/2021

Claudia Alta Taylor was born in Karnack, Texas back in 1912.  She was a shy and quit girl that spent much of her time outdoors.  She attended school in Jefferson, Texas graduating from Marshall Senior High School at the tender age of 15.  After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Alabama for just one summer session.She moved back to Texas enrolling at St. Mary’s Episcopal College for Women.  She graduated in 1930, however she continued her education at the University of Texas.  She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in history with honors in 1933, and a second bachelor’s degree in journalism cum laude in 1934.   Later on, that same year she married her husband at the St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, Texas.  Her husband decided to enter politics, she to... 01/01/2021

Aletta Henriëtte Jacobs was born in Sappemeer, the Netherlands back in 1854 to Abraham and Anna.  In 1870, she took an exam and passed as a pharmacist, where she earned a diploma.  For the next two years she prepared for the entry exam to enter a college.  She attended college and passed the exam in 1878.She opened an independent practice on the Herengracht canal where she specialized in the treatment of women and children.  It was the custom that males were not permitted to treat women and children in the Netherlands in those days.  She died in 1929, she was 75.What you may not know about Aletta is that she was the first woman officially to attend a Dutch university, one of the first female physicians in the Netherlands and she founded the world’s first birth control clinic. Your day i... 11/14/2020

David J. Icove was born in Akron, Ohio back in 1949.  He graduated from Shaker Heights High School in 1967.  He continued his education at the University of Tennessee and the University of Maryland.  He was hired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in 1984.Apparently, he was good at the FBI for he testified at the U.S. Congressional Committee who was seeking guidance on key legislative initiatives.  He left the FBI transferring to the U.S. Tennessee Valley Authority Police rising to the rank of Assistant Chief of Police for the Criminal Investigations.  After the September 11 attacks, he represented the TVA full-time as a Task Force Agent on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.  He retired in 2005.  In 2015, he joined a Board of Dir... 10/22/2020

William Jefferson Hunsaker was born in Contra Costa County, California back in 1855 to Nicholas and Lois.  The family moved to San Diego in 1869, where his father served as the 10th sheriff of San Diego County.  When he was 16 he began to learn the printers trade for the San Diego Bulletin.Later he trained as a lawyer, in 1876 he was admitted to the bat.  He ran and was elected as the San Diego District Attorney.  In 1887, he ran for mayor, he served in that capacity, however he ran into opposition from the city council which was dominated by members of the opposite party.  He resigned a year later.  In1901, he was elected to the “junior vice-president of the Los Angeles Bar Association.  He was elected as vice-president of the American Bar Association in 1904.  In 1911, he was elected ... 10/13/2020

Theodora Kimball was born in West Newton, Massachusetts back in 1887. She graduated from the Girls’ Latin School in Boston before entering Simmons College.  She graduated in 1908 with a master’s degree in Library Science and a minor in English landscaping and gardening.After graduation, she headed the library of the U.S. Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation in Washington, D.C.  in the 1920’s she was teaching at both Cambridge School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and at Harvard Graduate School of Design where she taught English.  She left Harvard in 1924 the same year she married Henry.  She died in 1935, she was 48.What you may not know about Theodora Kimball Hubbard is that she was the first woman accepted as a member to the American City Planning Institute, she... 10/03/2020

Charles A. Hufnagel was born in Louisville, Kentucky back in 1916.  He graduated from the University of Notre Dame earing a medical degree from Harvard Medical School. After graduation, he worked at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, his specialty was organ transplants.  In 1950, he was the director of the Georgetown University Medical Center’s surgical research laboratory.He was the author of more than 200 articles in medical and other scientific journals.In 1974, he headed a three-member medical panel that evaluated then President Richard M. Nixon. The panel determined he was too weak physically to testify, thus he never testified in the Watergate break-in.  While the panel refused to say why, thus protecting the confidentiality of the former president.  He died in Washington, D.C. in 1989,... 09/28/2020

Henry Hughes Hough was born in Saint-Pierre, Newfoundland.  He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1891.  After graduation, he served on the Morris a torpedo boat during the Spanish-American War.  After the war, he was assigned to Naval Intelligence.  He was made the Navy attaché to France in 1911 and later to Russia. In 1914, he was given his first command of the gunboat Wilmington assigned to the Naval Academy.  In 1923, he was appointed Director of Naval Intelligence being promoted to Rear Admiral in 1924.  He retired from the Navy in 1935 after serving for 44 years.  He died in 1943, he was 72.What you may not know about Henry is that in 1922, he was appointed as the Governor of the United States Virgin Islands, being the first non-acting military governor to govern as... 09/20/2020

Patricia Horoho was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina back in 1960. She attended St. Ann Catholic School graduating from E.E. Smith High School in 1978.  She continued her education earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1982.After graduation, she enlisted in the United States Army.  She continued her education with a Master of Science Degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1992.  During the September 11th attacks she was recognized as a Nurse Hero by the American Red Cross.  She retired from the Army in 2016 as a Lieutenant General.What you may not know about Patricia is that she was the 43rd U.S. Army Surgeon General and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Medical Command, the first woman and the first Nurse Corps Officer... 09/13/2020

August Horch was born in Winningen, Rhenish Prussia back in 1868.  Initially he trained as a blacksmith before graduating from Mittweida Technical College, where he earned a degree in engineering.  After graduation, he worked for a short time in the shipbuilding area. In 1896, he worked for Karl Benz for three years before going out on his own.In 1899, he founded the A. Horch & Co in Ehrenfeld, Cologne, Germany. The first Horch automobile was built in 1901. August left the company after a dispute and moved to Zwickau.  He tried to incorporate the Horch in the company, but the former company took him to civil court where the court ruled against him.  So, he changed the company name (more on that in a moment).He left that company in 1920 serving on the board of the Auto Union.  Later he w... 09/06/2020

Horatio J. Homer was born in Farmington, Connecticut back in 1848, to Charles and Sarah. He left school when he was twelve and worked as a bellhop in Waterbury, Connecticut.  Before moving to Boston, Massachusetts he held several jobs, a steward on a steamboat and a porter on a Pullman car just to name a few.He moved to Boston in 1873, finding work as a waiter at the Commonwealth Hotel.  In 1873, he was working as a janitor at the Globe Theatre.  In 1878, he started working for the Boston Police where he served for 40 years.  He met every president from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson.  He also served as an escort for foreign ambassadors.  He retired from the police force in 1919 as a sergeant he was 70, sadly he died four years later at the age of 74.What you may not know about H... 09/02/2020

Jeanne Marjorie Holm was born in Portland, Oregon back in 1921.  Shortly after the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was established she enlisted in the Army in 1942.  Attending Officer Candidate School at Ft. Des Moines, Iowa, she received a commission as a Second Lieutenant in 1943.Before leaving the Army in 1946, she was in charge of the 106th WAC Hospital Company in West Virginia. she was recalled to duty in 1948, during the Berlin Blockade.  In 1949, she was sent to Erding Air Depot where she served as assistant director of plans and operations.  She retired from the Air Force in 1975.What you may not know about Major General Holm is that in 1952, she was the first woman to attend the Air Command & Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base.  She was the first female one-star general of th... 08/25/2020