Welcome to Infinite Women

This Day In History

Activism

1902 Suffragist lobbying saw the Commonwealth Franchise Act enacted. It enabled all non-Indigenous women aged 21 and over to vote in federal elections and stand for the Australian Parliament.

Law

1967 Loving Day is an annual celebration held on June 12, the anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U.S. states. The suit was brought by African-American woman Mildred Loving and her Caucasian husband, Richard.

Military

1948 When the WAC was officially integrated into the Army, WAC director Col Mary Hallaren became the first woman to serve as a regular Army officer (there had been female members of the Army Medical Corps since 1947).

Writing

1942 Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, received a diary for her 13th birthday. A month later, she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in rooms behind her father’s office. For two years, the Franks and four other families hid, fed and cared for by Gentile friends. The families were discovered by the Gestapo, which had been tipped off, in 1944. The Franks were taken to Auschwitz, where Anne’s mother died. Friends in Amsterdam searched the rooms and found Anne’s diary hidden away. Anne and her sister were transferred to another camp, Bergen-Belsen, where Anne died a month before the war ended. Anne’s father survived Auschwitz and published Anne’s diary in 1947 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The book has been translated into more than 60 languages.