This Week In National Press Club History: Iranian president speaks at luncheon via video link, 2007

September 22, 2011: John Grisham, author of world-famous novels (37 and counting as of 2015) is presented the 2011 Harper Lee Award for Legal Fiction at the National Press Club. His best-known books include "A Time To Kill,," "The Pelican Brief" and "The Firm."

September 23, 1919: Cora Rigby of the Christian Science Monitor’ s Washington Bureau, proposes a Women’s National Press Club. After World War I, Washington had become an important center for news, and Congress had just approved the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. But they were barred from membership in the National Press Club. Twenty-eight women writers became the first members of the WNPC, with Cora Rigby as president from 1920 to 1928. The WNPC remained active until 1985, when it merged with the National Press Club, which had admitted women to membership in 1971.

September 24, 2007: In a technological first for the National Press Club, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks and takes questions at a Club luncheon by video link from New York, where he was scheduled to appear at the United Nations. He was not permitted to visit Washington.

This Week In National Press Club History is sponsored by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-plus history through lobby displays, panel discussions, events and oral histories.

For more information about the Committee’s activities or to join it, contact Chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected].