1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
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On July 9, 1947, General Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army in a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank. A member of the Army Nurse Corps since 1917, Blanchfield secured her commission following the passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act of 1947 by Congress. Blanchfield had served as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II and was instrumental in securing passage of the Army-Navy Nurse Act, which was advocated by Rep. Frances Payne Bolton. Blanchfield’s mother and two sisters were also nurses, while her maternal grandfather and one of her uncles were physicians. In 1951, Blanchfield received the Florence Nightingale Award from the International Red Cross. In 1978, a US Army hospital in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was named in her honor. She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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