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1961年，受到美国第一位太空人艾伦·谢泼德的激励，一位来自芝加哥郊区的14岁女孩给美国航空航天局写信询问自己怎样才能成为一名宇航员。
可惜，她只得到了一个简单的回答：美国航空计划概不招募女性。
写这封信的小女孩如今就是人们所熟知的美国参议员希拉里·克林顿。她回忆说：“那是我第一次意识到，因为我是一个女孩，有些机会可能就会与我无缘。”上周六，她和其他9位杰出女性一起入选美国国家女性名人堂。
“能够在此体现女性在我们伟大国家历史上所做出的巨大贡献，我感到非常自豪。不仅仅是那些在我们之前开辟道路的女英雄们，还包括那些至今默默奉献却不为人所知的女性。她们是家庭的支柱，她们支撑起整个社会，每天，在美国的每一寸土地上，她们都在创造着英雄的事迹。”希拉里说。
2000年，希拉里·克林顿当选为纽约州参议员，她还将参加下一届的竞选，争取在明年继任纽约州的代表。她是美国民主党中最受欢迎的一位政治家。
在2008年总统大选的民意调查中，有42%的民众支持以希拉里为首的民主党，并表示愿意投票支持希拉里，但她还没有表示将参加总统竞选。
和希拉里一起入选美国女性名人堂的还有华盛顿特区越南战争纪念碑设计者林璎、1998年成为美国国家科学基金会首位女主席的丽塔·罗西·科尔韦尔博士和推动儿童免疫运动的贝蒂·邦珀斯，她曾是希拉里·克林顿的前任，也是阿肯色州州长夫人。
“我想没有比在21世纪的美国做一名女性更好的了，”希拉里·克林顿在访谈中说。
美国女性名人堂始建于1969年，坐落在纽约州塞尼卡福尔斯市，这里是美国女性投票权战争的发源地。1920年，美国妇女成功获得投票权。
迄今为止已有200多名美国女性入选女性名人堂，其中包括北卡罗来那州参议员伊丽莎白·多尔、前国务卿奥尔布莱特和《汤姆叔叔家的小屋》的作者比彻·斯托夫人。
（中国日报网站薛晓文译）
Inspired by Alan Shepard, the first American to journey into space, a 14-year-old from suburban Chicago wrote a letter to NASA in 1961 asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut.
She got a curt reply: Girls are not being recruited by the nation's space program.
"It had never crossed my mind up until that point that there might be doors closed to me simply because I was a girl," recalled the letter writer, better known today as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, as she was enshrined Saturday in the National Women's Hall of Fame, along with nine other inductees.
"I am extremely proud to help highlight the contributions of women to our great nation throughout our history -- not just the heroines who blazed the trail before us, but also the women whose stories have yet to be told, who are holding families together, lifting up communities and performing heroic acts everyday across America," Clinton said.
Clinton, who was elected in 2000 and is up for re-election to continue representing New York next year, is one of the most popular Democratic politicians.
She leads her party in opinion polls for the 2008 presidential election, with 42 percent saying they would vote for her. But she has not said she would run for president.
Honored with her were Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.; Dr. Rita Rossi Colwell, who became the first female director of the National Science Foundation in 1998; and Betty Bumpers, a crusader for childhood immunizations who was Clinton's predecessor as Arkansas' first lady.
"I don't think there has ever been a better time to be a woman than in the United States of America in the 21st century," Clinton said in an interview.
The women's hall of fame was created in 1969 in Seneca Falls, New York, the birthplace of the battle for women's voting rights, which were granted in 1920.
More than 200 women are part of the hall of fame, including Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole, ex-secretary of state Madeleine Albright and writer Harriet Beech Stowe, the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Vocabulary:
curt: using few words; terse（简明的；简洁的）
cross sb's mind : （掠过某人的脑际，被某人突然想到）
crusader : a disputant who advocates reform（改革者） |
