Tags: Fashion Designer.
Ruth Elizabeth Harkness (21 September 1900 – 20 July 1947) was an American fashion designer and socialite who traveled to China in 1936 and brought back the first live giant panda to the United States – not in a cage or on a leash but wrapped in her arms.Harkness was born in Titusville Pennsylvania. In 1934 her husband Bill Harkness had traveled to China in search of a panda but died of throat cancer in Shanghai early in 1936.