On this day: Ethel Rosenberg is born  September 27 1998:
Communist, wife, mother: the first woman executed for spying in
peacetime America  From a New York Jewish family, Ethel
Greenglass was one of only two people in American history to be
executed for spying during peacetime. The other was her husband,
Julius.  After a lengthy trial, the Rosenbergs were found guilty
of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. It was the height
of the Red Scare and Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt. Americans were
consumed with rooting out those people who were not true
“patriots”.  As a young woman, Ethel had hoped to pursue her
dream of being an actress, but when the Depression hit she found
a secretarial job. Around that time, she joined the Young
Communist League, where she met a young Jewish engineer named
Julius.  The couple married in 1939. Four years later, Julius’
brother, also a committed communist, took a job with America’s
atomic bomb programme; the Manhattan Project. Julius persuaded
him to pass information to the Ru