1728) Margaret Looney

Margaret Ethel Looney (1904 - 1929). Radium dial painter, one of the first victims of radiation poisoning from working at the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois. She began dial-painting aged 17, in part to help earn money for her family. She never left Radium Dial but worked there until just a week before her death, which came on 14 August 1929.

The so-called Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in the United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.

After being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium, zinc sulfide (a phosphor), gum arabic, and water.

The Radium Girls had lasting effects on the labor laws in the United States and Europe following numerous lawsuits following deaths and illness from ingestion of radium.

- "She had red hair, was slender, had a voice ever soft, gentle and low, and was prone to giggling fits."   https://www.theradiumgirls.com/the-girls

1727) Arabella Huntington

Arabella Duval Huntington (née Yarrington; c. 1850/1851 – 1924). American philanthropist and once known as the richest woman in the country, as a result of inheritances she received upon the deaths of her husbands. She was the force behind the art collection that is housed at the Huntington Library in California.

She was the second wife of Collis P. Huntington, an American railway tycoon and industrialist. After his death, she married his nephew, Henry E. Huntington, also a railway magnate, and founder of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, in San Marino, California.

- "Her thick, wavy auburn hair cascaded down her back when it wasn’t pinned up."   https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a61730267/alva-vanderbilt-arabella-huntington-gilded-age-feud/

- "Arabella had red hair." https://insidethehuntingtonsstory.com/2021/08/31/arabella-huntingtons-portraits-tiaras-and-jewels/

Portrait by Giovanni Boldini

1726) Alva Belmont

Alva Erskine Belmont (née Smith; 1853 – 1933), known as Alva Vanderbilt from 1875 to 1896. American multi-millionaire socialite and women's suffrage activist. 

She was married twice, to socially prominent New York City millionaires William Kissam Vanderbilt, with whom she had three children, and Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont. Alva was known for her many building projects, including the Petit Chateau in New York; the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island; the Belmont House in New York; Brookholt in Long Island; and Beacon Towers in Sands Point, New York.

- "By the 1870s, Alva was a vivacious young woman educated in Paris, fluent in French culture and admired for her dark red hair and poise." https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/gilded-age-new-york-alva-vanderbilt-secrets-to-success/

- "Her vibrant red hair is crowned with a tiara and she wears a thick rope of pearls rumored to have once belonged to Catherine the Great."  https://www.bookmovement.com/bookDetailView/73906/The-Social-Graces-Ren%C3%A9e-Rosen/1

 

1725) John Humphrey Noyes

John Humphrey Noyes (1811 – 1886). American preacher, radical religious philosopher, and utopian socialist. He founded utopian communities at Putney, Vermont, Oneida, New York, and Wallingford, Connecticut, and is credited with coining the term "complex marriage".

- "Endowed with a ruddy, freckled complexion and a bright red shock of hair, John Humphrey Noyes early gave signs of a passionate nature to match... He was further hampered by the conviction that his red hair and freckles rendered him physically repulsive." https://www.thehistoryreader.com/historical-figures/polly-hayes-noyes/ 

- "Born September 3, 1811, in Brattleboro, Vermont, Noyes was the fourth of nine children, a boy with bright red hair and freckles." https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/charles-guiteau-oneida-community

1724) Ann Gotlib

Ann Gotlib (1971 – disappeared in 1983). Soviet Jewish immigrant to the United States who disappeared at the age of 12 from the premises of a Louisville, Kentucky mall. The case to find her abductor was covered heavily by the Louisville news media and stretched for the next twenty-five years until a person of interest was eventually identified.

Ann was last seen on June 1, 1983, between 5:30 and 6:00 PM. She was visiting Bashford Manor Mall, across the street from the apartment complex where she lived with her family. Her bike was later found outside the Bacon's Department Store at the mall.

Due to the startling way in which Gotlib had vanished in broad daylight without any trace, it was a key case that led the United States Congress to create the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in 1984 to coordinate departments involved in missing-persons cases. The center credits the Gotlib case with increasing national awareness of missing and abducted children and revolutionizing how missing-child cases are handled. One new technique that came out of the investigation was the use of billboards and other tactics to generate widespread awareness of a missing person, which was considered futile according to conventional wisdom at the time.

- "At the time that Ann disappeared, she was 12 years old and was described as having red hair and gray eyes." https://www.lmpd.gov/305/Ann-Gotlib

1723) Austin "Red" Robbins

Austin "Red" Robbins (1944 –  2009). American basketball player.

Robbins, a 6'8" power forward/center from Leesburg, Florida, starred at the University of Tennessee in the 1960s and then played professionally for the American Basketball Association's New Orleans Buccaneers (1967–1970), Utah Stars (1970–1972), San Diego Conquistadors (1972–1973; 1973–1974), Kentucky Colonels (1973; 1974–1975), and Virginia Squires (1975–1976).

- "Robbins was nicknamed for his red hair and perceived fiery personality, and grabbed over 6,000 rebounds in his career." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Robbins

1722) Helen Brach

Helen Marie Brach (née Voorhees; 1911 – disappeared 1977). American multimillionaire widow whose wealth had come from marrying into the E. J. Brach & Sons Candy Company fortune; she endowed the Helen V. Brach Foundation to promote animal welfare in 1974. Brach disappeared on February 17, 1977, and in May 1984 she was declared legally dead, as of the date of her disappearance. An investigation into the case uncovered serious criminal activity associated with Chicago horse stable owners, including Silas Jayne and Richard Bailey. More than a decade later Bailey was charged with, but not convicted of, conspiring to murder Brach; he eventually received a sentence of 30 years after being convicted of defrauding her.

- "Frank took his fortune and retired with his third wife, Helen Brach, a red-haired Appalachian hat-check girl he'd met at a Miami Beach country club." https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2022/11/disappearance-of-candy-lady-helen-brach-unwrapped.html

- "The red-haired beauty was already divorced by age twenty-one, blaming herself for the failure of her marriage to a philandering playboy." https://troytaylorbooks.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-disappearance-of-helen-brach.html