The wonderful Kurt Vonnegut died #OnThisDay in 2007. He's up in heaven now.
onthisday
#OnThisDay, 21 Jan 1648, Margaret Brent demands the right to sit on the Maryland council in her dual roles as a land-owner and Lord Baltimore's attorney. She was denied her place, and left saying she "protested against all proceedings in this present assembly unless she may be present and have vote."
#WomenInPolitics #WomenInHistory #Histodons #AmericanHistory
#OnThisDay, 19 Feb 1963, American writer Betty Friedan's book 'The Feminine Mystique' is published in the USA.
It is widely credited as kick-starting second wave feminism, and identified social expectations of femininity as a driver of women's unhappiness.
#OnThisDay, 11 Mar 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, is the first play by a Black woman to debut on Broadway.
Hansberry was a rising star when she died young of cancer. Her posthumous play, Young Gifted and Black, inspired her friend Nina Simone to write the song of the same name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hdVFiANBTk
#WomensHistoryMonth
#LiteraryWomen #AmericanHistory #WomenInHistory #History #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 11 Feb 2014, women ski jump for the first time at the winter Olympics. Carina Vogt (pictured) wins gold.
Previous objections to the event included a man saying, in 2005, that it was “not appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view”. *In 2005*.
#OnThisDay, 19 Feb 1951, Egyptian activist Doria Shafik leads a crowd of 1,500 women onto the floor of the Egyptian parliament demanding equal rights for women.
As a result of her - and others' - activism, women were granted limited rights to vote in 1956. She spoke against the Nasser regime in 1957 and was placed under house arrest.
#OnThisDay, 12 Feb 1983, around 200-300 women protested the Law of Evidence in Lahore. The law effectively made women’s testimonies worth half that of men’s.
The police used tear-gas and batons before arresting 50 of the protestors. The day is now Pakistan's Women's Day. #WomenInHistory
#OnThisDay, 20 Feb 1935, Danish-Norwegian Caroline Mikkelsen sets foot on Antarctica. She was the first woman documented to have landed on the continent when she stepped onto the Tryne Islands. Mount Caroline Mikkelsen is named after her.
Ingrid Christensen stepped foot on the Antarctic mainland in 1937.
#OnThisDay, 25 Feb 1986, Corazon Aquino is sworn in as President of the Philippines. She is the first women to become President of the country, and to lead a country in Asia.
Aquino had won the election earlier in February but dictator Marcos refused to surrender power. The People Power Revolution demanded the restoration of democracy and the military supported her.
#OnThisDay, 24 Feb 1968, Jocelyn Bell Burnell - along with her male supervisor and three other men - published a paper confirming the discovery of pulsars. She had built the array, picked up the signal and argued it was not an anomaly. Hewish received the Nobel prize for it in 1974: Bell Burnell did not.
In 2018 Bell Burnell received a £3m prize for her work. She's using it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
#OnThisDay, 28 Feb 1909, the first national Woman's Day is held in the USA. Suggested by Theresa Malkiel of the Socialist Party of America's Woman's National Committee, the idea is taken up in Europe and evolves into International Women's Day (normally 8 March).
#WomenInHistory #History #IWDHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 1 Mar 1864, Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the first woman of colour to become a doctor of medicine in the USA.
This photo is identified as both Rebecca Crumpler and Mary Eliza Mahoney.
#WomenInHistory #History #AmericanHistory #WHM #WomensHistoryMonth #FlashbackFriday #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 22 Feb 1943, Sophie Scholl is sentenced to death and immediately executed, alongside her brother and a friend, for distributing anti-Nazi literature at her university in Munich, Germany.
Her cellmate said her last words to her were “how can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause... It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go.”
#WomenInHistory #History #WorldWar2 #EuropeanHistory #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 29 Feb 1940, Hattie McDaniel wins the best supporting actress Oscar for her role in 'Gone With the Wind'.
She is the first person of colour to win an Oscar.
You can read more about McDaniel’s Oscar on our blog: https://carvehername.org.uk/hattie-mcdaniels-oscar/
#WomenInHistory #WomenInHollywood #HollywoodHistory #Histodons
Very early #OnThisDay, 29 Feb 1944, Madeleine Damerment parachuted into occupied France to be an agent for the British Special Operations Executive.
She was French, and had previously run escape lines for downed airmen. She escaped France in 1942, and then chose to return.
She was immediately arrested when she landed as the network had been betrayed. She was executed at Dachau in Sept 1944.
#OnThisDay, 4 Mar 1933, Frances Perkins is sworn in as Secretary of Labor: the first woman to hold a cabinet post in the USA.
She was a workers-rights activist and key builder of the New Deal. She was in FDR's cabinet for all four terms of his Presidency.
#WomenInHistory #History #AmericanHistory #WomenInPolitics #Histodons #WomensHistoryMonth
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#OnThisDay, 3 Mar 1913, thousands of women march through Washington DC in the Suffrage Parade. They are led by Inez Milholland, a lawyer, on a white horse.
#WomenInHistory #History #AmericanHistory #WHM #WomensHistoryMonth #VotesForWomen #Histodons
#OnThisDay, 13 Mar 1990, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot becomes the provisional president of Haiti, the first woman to hold the role.
She stabilised the country for long enough for it to hold a free and fair election.
“I accepted the position in the name of Haitian women. I did it as a service to my country. I did it with love and determination.”
#WomenInHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #CaribbeanHistory #Histodons #History
#OnThisDay, 8 Mar 1914, International Women's Day starts to settle on the date.
The idea emerged at the International Socialist Women’s Conference in 1910, inspired by an American national women's day in February 1909. The conference took up the idea and events began to be held each year, demanding equal rights for women. The first IWD held on 8 March was in 1914 in Germany. The day and date was formally adopted by the UN in 1977.
#OnThisDay, 10 Mar 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson attacks, with a meat cleaver, Velázquez's painting of Venus in the National Gallery in London in protest at the treatment of Emmeline Pankhurst.
#VotesForWomen #WomenInHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #BritishHistory
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Today in 1987, 37 years ago: in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II condemns in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and surrogacy ("if the god Jehovah does not want you to have children..., then do not have them!").
A German guard once asked Maureen O'Sullivan what was in her suitcase. She laughed. “A wireless, of course!”.
Very early #OnThisDay, 23 Mar 1944 , Maureen 'Paddy' O'Sullivan parachutes into occupied France to be a radio operator for the British Special Operations Executive.
The SOE supported the French Resistance. Radio operators were at the greatest risk of capture as their position could be triangulated. O’Sullivan was never captured.
#OnThisDay, 18 Apr 1905, Baroness Bertha von Suttner becomes the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism.
As well as writing an influential novel, Lay Down Your Arms (1889), she founded the German Peace Society in 1892. In 1907 she was the only woman to attend the Second Hague Peace Convention, and warned that Europe was heading for war once again.
#OnThisDay, 25 Mar 1941, the first WRNS arrive at Bletchley Park in the UK. They operate the Bombe machines used for decoding German Enigma machine messages. Their work helps shorten World War 2.
#OnThisDay, 3 Apr 1913, suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst is sentenced to three years' penal servitude, and announces she will go on hunger strike.
#WomenInHistory #History #OTD #BritishHistory #VotesForWomen #Histodons