FYI February 20, 2018

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On This Day

1865 – End of the Uruguayan War, with a peace agreement between President Tomás Villalba and rebel leader Venancio Flores, setting the scene for the destructive War of the Triple Alliance.

The Paraguayan War,[A] also known as the War of the Triple Alliance[B] and the Great War[4][C] in Paraguay, was a South American war fought from 1864 to 1870 between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, the Empire of Brazil, and Uruguay. With an estimated 400,000 deaths, the war was the deadliest and bloodiest in Latin America’s history.[7] It particularly devastated Paraguay, which suffered catastrophic losses in population – almost 70% of its adult male population died, according to some counts – and was forced to cede territory to Argentina and Brazil. According to some estimates, Paraguay’s pre-war population of 525,000 was reduced to 221,000, of which only 28,000 were men.[8]

The war began in late 1864, as a result of a conflict between Paraguay and Brazil caused by the Uruguayan War. Argentina and Uruguay entered the war against Paraguay in 1865, and it then became known as the “War of the Triple Alliance”.

The war ended with the total defeat of Paraguay. After it lost in conventional warfare, Paraguay conducted a drawn-out guerrilla resistance, a disastrous strategy that resulted in the further destruction of the Paraguayan military and much of the civilian population through battle casualties, hunger and diseases. The guerrilla war lasted 14 months until President Francisco Solano López was killed in action by Brazilian forces in the Battle of Cerro Corá on March 1, 1870. Argentine and Brazilian troops occupied Paraguay until 1876. Estimates of total Paraguayan losses range from 21,000 to 200,000 people. It took decades for Paraguay to recover from the chaos and demographic losses.

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Born On This Day

1893 – Elizabeth Holloway Marston, American psychologist and author (d. 1993)
Elizabeth Holloway Marston (February 20, 1893 – March 27, 1993) was an American attorney and psychologist. She is credited, with her husband William Moulton Marston, for the development of the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception.[1][2] She is also credited as the inspiration for her husband’s comic book creation Wonder Woman, a character also fashioned on their live-in mistress, Olive Byrne.[3][1][4][5][6][7]

Early life
Marston was born Sadie Holloway in the Isle of Man and raised in Boston, Massachusetts.[5] She was the daughter of an English mother, Daisy, and William George Washington Holloway, an American bank clerk.[8] She received her BA in psychology from Mount Holyoke College in 1915 and[1] her LLB from the Boston University School of Law in 1918,[9][10][5] where she was “one of three women to graduate from the School of Law that year.”[1]
Systolic blood-pressure test

Both William and Elizabeth joined the psychology department at Harvard, with William in the doctoral program and Elizabeth the master’s program at Radcliffe College. Elizabeth worked with William on his thesis, which concerned the correlation between blood pressure levels and deception.[1] He later developed this into the systolic blood-pressure test used to detect deception that was the predecessor to the polygraph test.[1]

In 1921, William received his PhD from Harvard and Elizabeth her MA from Radcliffe. Although Elizabeth is not listed as William’s collaborator in his early work, a number of writers refer directly and indirectly to Elizabeth’s work on her husband’s deception research. She also appears in a picture taken in his polygraph laboratory in the 1920s, reproduced in a 1938 publication by William.[1][11][12]

Career and family
Marston’s career included indexing “the documents of the first fourteen Congresses, lectured on law, ethics, and psychology at American and New York Universities, [and] served as an editor for Encyclopædia Britannica and McCall’s.[1] In 1933, she became the assistant to the chief executive at Metropolitan Life Insurance.[1]

William had children with both Elizabeth and his live-in mistress, Olive (Elizabeth eventually legally adopted Olive’s children).[1][3] While Olive stayed home to raise the children, Elizabeth supported the family when William was out of work, as well as after his death in 1947.[1][3] Both Olive and Elizabeth “embodied the feminism of the day.”[13]

Wonder Woman
In 1992, The New York Times discussed Elizabeth’s involvement in the creation of Wonder Woman:

Our Towns reveals the true identity of Wonder Woman’s real Mom. She is Elizabeth Holloway Marston. She’s not 1,000; she’s 99 come Thursday […] One dark night as the clouds of war hovered over Europe again, Mr. Marston consulted his wife and collaborator, also a psychologist. He was inventing somebody like that new Superman fellow, only his character would promote a global psychic revolution by forsaking Biff! Bam! and Ka-Runch! for The Power of Love. Well, said Mrs. Marston, who was born liberated, this super-hero had better be a woman […] Wonder Woman was created and written in the Marstons’ suburban study as a crusading Boston career woman disguised as Diana Prince […] Meanwhile, in a small Connecticut town, Wonder Woman’s Mom has disguised herself as a retired editor who lives in postwar housing.[5]

Her 1993 obituary also stated that she contributed to the development of Wonder Woman,[14][1] while Lillian S. Robinson argued that both Olive Byrne and Elizabeth were models for the character.[15][16]

Marston died on March 27, 1993, just a month after her 100th birthday.

In film
Marston’s life is depicted in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, a fictional biographical drama also portraying her husband William Moulton Marston, Olive Byrne, and the creation of Wonder Woman.[17] Marston is portrayed in the film by British actress Rebecca Hall.[18]

Works
Integrative Psychology: A Study of Unit Response by William Moulton Marston, C. Daly King, and Elizabeth Holloway Marston, 1931.
“Chalk Marks on the Gate”, by Elizabeth Holloway; illus. Adolf Treidler; Woman’s Home Companion, 1924, January; pp 14–15, 96.
“Gift-Horse”, by Elizabeth Holloway; illus. George Wright; Woman’s Home Companion, 1922, July; pp 22–23, 92–93.

 
 
 
 

FYI

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In 1940, Drew became the first African American to receive a doctorate in medical science from Columbia University in New York City. He then went on to revolutionize the way blood was sampled, stored and distributed. His efforts saved countless lives in WWII and for years to come.
 
 
 
 
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The question of metal detectors is particularly salient after a rash of copycat threats made to schools in the aftermath of the recent shootings, in Kentucky and other states such as Indiana, Wisconsin, Florida, and New York.
 
 
 
 
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