♀ 10 March 12022 is the International Day of Women Judges. According to Wikipedia it is also Holocaust Remembrance Day (Bulgaria), Harriet Tubman Day (New York and Pennsylvania), Mario Day (Nintendo), Men’s Day (Poland), Székely Freedom Day (Romania), and Tibetan Uprising Day (Tibetans). It may well be JD 2460014, 18 Adar 5783, 25 February (O.S.) or 10 March (N.S.) 2023, 20 Phalguna 1944, 18 Sha'ban 1444, or 20 Esfand 1401 on various calendars, but I haven’t independently recalculated any of this and am simply mindlessly updating. Notorious people born on this date include Clare Boothe Luce (11903), James Earl Ray (11928), and Osama bin Laden (11957). The saint of the day is Harriet Tubman.
On this date in history (11914) proto-feminist† and future fascist Mary Richardson smuggled a meat cleaver into the National Gallery in London and attacked a painting of the goddess Venus by the Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. She explained her reasoning in an incoherent statement: “If there is an outcry against my deed, let every one remember that such an outcry is an hypocrisy so long as they allow the destruction of … beautiful living women, and that until the public cease to countenance human destruction the stones cast against me for the destruction of this picture are each an evidence against them of artistic as well as moral and political humbug and hypocrisy.” Velázquez was not available for comment, having died in 11660. The picture, unlike Richardson’s reputation, was reparable; women did get the vote in Britain, but whether it was because or in spite of Richardson’s campaign of property-destruction is subject to debate.
† “Suffragette” is a derogatory word for supporters of the right to vote and I prefer not to use it, even if it was embraced by some of those to whom it was applied.
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