Luisa Capetillo (1882–1922) was a Puerto Rican labor organizer, writer, and cigar factory reader—a person whose job is to read aloud to cigar factory workers. She began writing for her local paper in 1904. In 1905, she became involved with a local anarcho-syndicalist union, organizing an agricultural strike in her hometown of Arecibo and eventually becoming a leader in the union. Starting in 1912, she journeyed across the Atlantic and Caribbean, organizing workers, and in 1915, she was arrested in Cuba for wearing trousers. She was deported back to Puerto Rico but continued to travel and organize until her death. Capetillo published four books in her lifetime, covering a wide variety of forms, genres, and topics. She advocated for free love, universal education, and women's liberation. Interest in her life surged in 1990 with the publication of a biography by journalist Norma Valle Ferrer. Capetillo is considered one of Puerto Rico's earliest feminists. (Full article...).
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luisa_Capetillo> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1910: French aviator Raymonde de Laroche became the first woman to receive a pilot's licence. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymonde_de_Laroche> 1963: The Ba'ath Party came to power in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council for the Revolutionary Command. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat> 1979: Images taken by Voyager 1 proved the existence of volcanoes on Io, a moon of Jupiter. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanism_on_Io> 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, with aircraft debris subsequently washing ashore a few years later in the Indian Ocean. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: executrix: 1. (archaic, rare) A female person who executes or carries out something. 2. (specifically, law) A female person appointed to execute the wishes of a deceased person as stated in their will; a female executor. 3. About Word of the Day 4. Nominate a word 5. Leave feedback <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/executrix> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: Definitions, like questions and metaphors, are instruments for thinking. Their authority rests entirely on their usefulness, not their correctness. We use definitions in order to delineate problems we wish to investigate, or to further interests we wish to promote. In other words, we invent definitions and discard them as suits our purposes. And yet, one gets the impression that... God has provided us with definitions from which we depart at the risk of losing our immortal souls. This is the belief that I have elsewhere called "definition tyranny," which may be defined … as the process of accepting without criticism someone else's definition of a word or a problem or a situation. I can think of no better method of freeing students from this obstruction of the mind than to provide them with alternative definitions of every concept and term with which they must deal in a subject. Whether it be "molecule," "fact," "law," "art," "wealth," "gene," or whatever, it is essential that students understand that definitions are hypotheses, and that embedded in them is a particular philosophical, sociological, or epistemological point of view. --Neil Postman <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Neil_Postman> _______________________________________________ Wikipedia Daily Article mailing list. To unsubscribe write to: [email protected] Questions or comments? Contact [email protected]
