November 30, 1899: The first women to serve, in uniform, in the armed forces of any nation began service as part of the Canadian Militia Expeditionary Force to Cape Town to serve in the Boer War. Georgina Pope and three other women are enlisted as army nurses.
As Patrick Robertson notes, "There was nothing new about female nurses serving in the military; they had done so in numerous campaigns since the Revolutionary War, but in every instance as civilian auxiliaries." And, in many examples throughout recorded history, women have fought in armies, navies, and even on pirate ships, disguised as men.
Cecily Jane Georgina Fane Pope was born on January 1, 1862, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and trained as a nurse at New York's famed Bellevue Hospital. Placed in command of the first group of nurses to go overseas, she served for more than a year in South Africa.
For the 1st 5 months, she and 4 other volunteer nurses served at British hospitals north of Cape Town. After this, Pope and another sister proceeded north to Kroonstad where, despite shortages in food and medical supplies, they took charge of a military hospital and successfully cared for 230 sufferers of enteric fever.
On September 21, 1901, Pope, along with two other nurses, Deborah Hurcomb and Sarah Forbes, received medals for their war service from the Duke of York, later King George V, during his tour to the Outposts of the British Empire. The following year, she became the 1st Canadian, of either gender, to receive the Royal Red Cross.
In 1908, Pope was appointed first matron of the Canadian Army Medical Corps. In 1917, at the age of 55, despite being in poor health herself, she went to work near Ypres, Belgium, and served for the remainder World War I. After her death on June 6, 1938, she was granted a full military funeral.
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November 30, 1899 was a Thursday. Until 1938, America celebrated Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday in November, regardless of whether it was the 4th or 5th Thursday. Since 1939, it's been on the 4th Thursday, regardless of whether it was the last. (Canada celebrated Thanksgiving on the 3rd Monday in October.)
Since this was a Thanksgiving Day, there were college football games played. Among them:
* The Carlisle Indian School beat Columbia, 45-0 at Manhattan Field, next-door to the Polo Grounds. Jim Thorpe was 12 years old, and thus ineligible to play in this game. But the Carlisle squad was already no joke: In their 1st season under head coach Glenn "Pop" Warner, they went 9-2, their victories also including wins over the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the University of California in San Francisco. They lost only to Harvard away and to Princeton at Manhattan Field. Columbia went 9-3 that season, their other losses being to Princeton and Cornell, in each case also at Manhattan Field.
* In what became a traditional rivalry, Boston College beat Holy Cross, 17-0 at the South End Grounds in Boston, then the home of the team that would become the Boston, then Milwaukee, then Atlanta Braves.
* In what was considered a major rivalry then, and would be for the 1st half of the 20th Century, if not thereafter, Penn beat Cornell, 29-0 at the original Franklin Field in Philadelphia. It was replaced by the current structure in 1922.
* Indiana beat Purdue, 17-5 at Stuart Field in West Lafayette, Indiana. The Old Oaken Bucket, the traditional trophy given to the winner of this game, was introduced in 1925.
* The University of Chicago beat Brown, 17-6 at Marshall Field in Chicago, named for Marshall Field, the department store magnate who was a generous donor to UC.
* Wisconsin beat Michigan, 17-5 on neutral ground at West Side Park in Chicago, then the home of the team that became the Chicago Cubs.
* And Iowa beat Illinois, 58-0 on neutral ground at Douglas Park in Rock Island, Illinois, across the Mississippi River from Davenport, Iowa. This would later be the home of the Rock Island Independents, and thus, on October 3, 1920, the site of the 1st game in what became the NFL.
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