159 years ago, Marguerite Durand was born. The journalist and women’s rights advocate wrote for numerous publications during the suffrage movement in France, and ran for public office during which she made repeated use of her pet lion as a sort of mascot. Her activism raised the profile of feminism in France and Europe to an unprecedented level of respectability, and she was considered a woman of excellent style and elegance, who was known to promenade with a pet lion confusingly named “Tiger.” She was once quoted prickly as replying to a journalist once that “Feminism owes a great deal to my blonde hair.” READ a bit more… (1864)

In her late twenties, Durand launched a career in journalism by taking writing jobs at Le Figaro one of the largest publications at the time. On December 9th, 1897, she founded a feminist daily newspaper, La Fronde run exclusively by women, and that advocated for women’s rights, including admission to the Bar association and the École des Beaux-Arts.

Its editorials demanded women be allowed to be named to the Legion of Honor and to participate in parliamentary debates. She helped organize the campaigns of several women in 1900 for elections. The Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand in Paris was named in her honor.

MORE Good News on this Date:

• The University of Calcutta was founded, the first full-fledged university in south Asia (1857)
• Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts (1908)
• The first Apple Macintosh computer with mouse went on sale (1984)
• NASA landed Opportunity, a robotic rover, on Mars three weeks after its identical twin, Spirit (2004)
• Lady Gaga played a concert in New York City and donated all the money from ticket sales and merchandise sold—a half million dollars—to earthquake relief in Haiti. Gaga also launched a nonprofit with her mother, the Born This Way Foundation, to help youth rise above bullying and build community. (2010)

61 years ago today, Jackie Robinson became the first black baseball player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Robinson was accorded the honor on the very first year of his eligibility, even though it came following his rise as a pseudo-leader in the Civil Right’s Movement; particularly after an incident at the Greenville Airport in South Carolina. In October of 1959 one the finest players in MLB history entered the whites only section, and was asked to leave. He refused, and his later presence at a NAACP event in Greenville, manifested a non-violent demonstration in front of the airport which desegregated soon after.

In 1962, Robinson cautioned against voting for his record as a cultural figure, saying only that his on-field credentials should determine whether or not he enters the Cooperstown museum. He was elected on the first ballot

Beginning his major league career at the relatively advanced age of 28, which would be the first ever for a black man, he played only ten seasons from 1947 to 1956, all of them for the Brooklyn Dodgers. ^{During his career, the Dodgers played in six World Series, and Robinson himself played in six All-Star Games.}

In these ten seasons he racked up 741 runs scored, and he would receive both the MVP award and the inaugural Rookie of the Year in 1949. The year after, and also coincidentally on January 24th, he would put pen to paper on the most expensive contract in Dodgers history at that time, ($35,000). (1962)

On this day in 1848, a gold nugget was found at Sutter’s Mill in northern California by James Marshall, sparking the gold rush of ’49.

The news of gold brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of immigration and gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy.

Happy 55th Birthday to Mary Lou Retton, the pioneering gymnast who became the first American woman to win the sport’s individual all-around gold medal at the Olympics—the only one to do so for 20 years.

At the ’84 Los Angeles games, she won the gold, after scoring a perfect 10 on the vault. Her performances, which also won her 2 silver medals and two bronze, made her one of the most popular athletes in America—and an inspiration to the four gymnasts who have since equaled her feat on the U.S. team. WATCH the plucky powerhouse at the Olympics and hear her thoughts. The author of Mary Lou Retton’s Gateways to Happiness: 7 Ways to a More Peaceful, More Prosperous, More Satisfying Life, she was also the first female athlete to be pictured on the front of a Wheaties cereal box. (1968)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFKCFvZDs3A

And, on this day in 1949, John Belushi was born in Chicago to Albanian-American parents. An original cast member on Saturday Night Live, the comedian-actor was beloved for his colorful characters which included the Samurai hotel clerk, the diner cook (“cheeseburger, cheeseburger”) and Jake in The Blues Brothers, alongside fellow SNL star Dan Aykroyd.

After his breakout film role as John “Bluto” Blutarsky in National Lampoon’s Animal House, Belushi and Aykroyd recorded a chart-topping album and starred together in The Blues Brothers film. Belushi passed away of a drug overdose when he was 33. WATCH the cheeseburger sketch to honor the day…

Happy 72th Birthday to Yakov Smirnoff, a Russian-American stand-up comedian who immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine, and went on to further success as an actor, writer, and painter—and becoming a U.S. citizen.

He reached his biggest success in the mid-to-late 1980s, appearing in several films and a TV sitcom What a Country! His on-stage persona was that of a naive immigrant from the Soviet Union who was perpetually confused and delighted by life in America. He takes humorous jabs at life under communism, as well as American consumerism—and is often mixing-up the meanings of U.S. phrases in funny ways, and using his catchphrase, “What a country!”

In 1993, he left Los Angeles and moved to Branson, Missouri, to open a theater where he would perform year-round until 2015—and still occasionally appears.

Smirnoff earned a master’s degree in psychology and went on to earn a doctorate in psychology and global leadership in 2019 from Pepperdine University—and he has written his own advice column, answering letters in the AARP Magazine column called Happily Ever Laughter.  WATCH his classic comedy routine, ‘Just Off the Boat,’ about being a Russian immigrant in New York City… (1951)

SHARE the Milestones, Memories, and Music…