Mary Leakey

February 6th is the birthday of British paleoanthropologist Mary Douglas Leakey, born Mary Douglas Nicol in London (1913). Her father was an artist, and she spent her childhood traveling with her parents as he searched for new landscapes to paint. Nicol also took on his daughter’s education — reading, math, and natural science — and encouraged her interest in archaeology. Mary demonstrated a precocious gift for drawing, even at a very young age. Rather than following her father’s career path, however, she used her talent to break into the field of archaeology — literally. She was hired as an illustrator on a dig site in England when she was 17.

Her drawing skills eventually led to a job illustrating a book called Adam’s Ancestors (1934). The book’s author was an archaeologist and anthropologist named Louis Leakey. The two married in 1937, forming a personal — as well as professional — partnership. Soon after their marriage, they moved to Tanzania, where Louis was scheduled to begin work on the Olduvai Gorge. Mary Leakey worked in East Africa for most of the rest of her life. She was particularly interested in primitive art and artifacts, but she had a real knack for finding fossils. She led the digs that resulted in two of the most important hominid discoveries in Africa: Australopithecus boisei and homo habilis.

Louis Leakey died in 1972, but Mary continued their work without him for over two more decades: excavating and cataloging, but also lecturing and fundraising. She published two books after her husband’s death: Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man (1979); and her autobiography, Disclosing the Past (1984). She retired to Nairobi in 1983, and died in 1996.

Women journalists to Human Rights for the World

 

World's History on FaceBook, Feb. 1, 2026

In March 1933, the Red Room of the White House overflowed with women—reporters sitting cross‑legged on the carpet, leaning against walls, balancing notebooks on their knees. The manager of the Associated Press scoffed at the sight, predicting the whole experiment wouldn’t last six months. He was wrong by about twelve years. Eleanor Roosevelt’s strategy was deceptively simple: if news organizations wanted access to the First Lady—if they wanted to know what was happening inside the White House—they would have to hire women. No exceptions. No men allowed.

At first, she played along with the expectations of the male establishment, discussing White House social events, household decisions, and the entertaining of foreign dignitaries—topics deemed appropriate for the “women’s pages.” But everything changed when Prohibition ended. When reporters asked President Franklin Roosevelt whether beer would be served at the White House, he simply smiled and said, “Ask Eleanor.” She delivered the answer at her next women‑only press conference, forcing male reporters to beg their female colleagues for details. And she didn’t stop with beer. Week after week, she made real news—defending equal pay for equal work, advocating for low‑cost housing, speaking boldly about civil rights, and championing the idea of a minimum wage before it existed.

The press conferences quickly became essential. The Associated Press hired Bess Furman. United Press brought on Ruby Black. The New York Herald Tribune sent Emma Bugbee for “a few days,” and she stayed for months, her stories landing on the front page. Newsrooms across the country suddenly discovered that women could do the job—and that if they didn’t hire them, they couldn’t cover the First Lady. Over twelve years, Eleanor Roosevelt held 348 women‑only press conferences. Ruby Black called it “a New Deal for newswomen.”

But Eleanor Roosevelt’s influence didn’t end there. After FDR’s death in 1945, President Harry Truman appointed her as a delegate to the newly formed United Nations. Her male colleagues, assuming she posed little threat, assigned her to Committee III, which handled humanitarian and cultural issues—“soft” topics they believed would keep her out of the way. They were disastrously mistaken. She was unanimously elected chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

For three years, she navigated the treacherous landscape of early Cold War politics, uniting eighteen nations with clashing ideologies, competing interests, and deep mistrust. Communist states faced off against Western democracies. Colonial powers negotiated alongside newly independent nations. Delegates brought different religions, cultures, and definitions of “human rights.” Through it all, she listened, negotiated, compromised when possible, and stood firm when necessary.

On December 10, 1948, she presented the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the UN General Assembly. The vote was overwhelming: forty‑eight nations in favor, none opposed. As the results were announced, every delegate rose in a standing ovation. Eleanor Roosevelt called the document “an international Magna Carta for all mankind.” Seventy‑six years later, it remains the foundation of international human rights law, translated into more than 500 languages and defining the fundamental rights belonging to every person on Earth.

Eleanor Roosevelt considered it (The Declaration of Human Rights) her greatest achievement—and she was right. Her journey is astonishing: from a woman holding press conferences in a crowded White House parlor because there weren’t enough chairs, to the architect of the document that defines human dignity for the world. From male reporters smirking in doorways, to male diplomats rising to applaud. From being dismissed as a housewife dabbling in politics, to drafting the moral framework of the modern era.

Eleanor Roosevelt didn’t just break glass ceilings. She built ladders so others could climb after her. And when those ladders reached high enough, she used them to lift the entire world.

See the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on separate link.