Eleanor Roosevelt Born: Activist Who Redefined First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt was so shy as a child that her own mother called her 'Granny' as a mild cruelty. She grew into one of the most consequential Americans of the twentieth century. As First Lady she held press conferences open only to female reporters, forcing newspapers to hire women to cover them. She wrote a daily newspaper column for 27 years. After Franklin died she chaired the UN commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 30 articles that have since been incorporated into more constitutions than any other document. She died in 1962 at 78.
October 11, 1884
142 years ago
What Else Happened on October 11
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