Thanks for turning a post about women fighting for justice into a rant about a bloke. Did you actually engage with the subject at all or do you have a search set up for Woodrow and just charge in with a copy/paste rant?
Every day women have, and are, making history. Follow us to get daily posts on what women have done #OnThisDay. 🗃️ We check replies on weekdays, but not always at weekends. https://carvehername.org.uk/ and https://linktr.ee/CarveHerName
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Thanks for turning a post about women fighting for justice into a rant about a bloke. Did you actually engage with the subject at all or do you have a search set up for Woodrow and just charge in with a copy/paste rant?
#OnThisDay, 29 Aug 1930, the last 36 St Kildan islanders left for the Scottish mainland. Williamina Barclay, the island's nurse, had raised their request to leave. She then oversaw the evacuation as the government's representative on the island. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #ScottishHistory 🗃️
Others never agreed with racist views within the suffrage movement, and moved on to support other civil rights causes after they had the vote e.g. fighting to remove state laws that prevented Black people from voting. 3/3
Some suffragists who had been jailed were then assaulted in the workhouse, by order of the governor. As ever when looking at suffrage in a country that also had racist laws, some of the white suffragists held racist views and only sought the vote for women like themselves. 2/3
#OnThisDay, 28 Aug 1917, ten of the Silent Sentinels are arrested outside the US White House. The sentinels were campaigning for women's suffrage, and picketed the White House for two and a half years. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #VotesForWomen 🗃️ 1/3
#OnThisDay, 26 Aug 1970, the Women's Strike for Equality marches through New York City, USA. Estimates vary on numbers, with between10 and 20 thousand people taking part in a call for peace and equality. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
Earhart records a series of first flights by a woman, before disappearing during an attempt to fly around the world in 1937. 2/2
#OnThisDay, 25 Aug 1932, Amelia Earhart successfully lands in Newark, New Jersey, to become the first woman to fly solo across the USA. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #WomenPilots 🗃️ 1/2
#OnThisDay, 25 Aug 1804, Alicia Meynell (aka Alicia Thornton) races at York races in England. Side-saddle. She is now recognised as the first woman racing jockey. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #SportsHistory 🗃️
And she probably kept a bike spanner in one of them.
The "natty bicycling costume" suggests she may even have been wearing a bifurcated skirt!
#OnThisDay, 24 Aug 1950, Edith Sampson becomes the first Black American delegate to the United Nations. Sampson had been a social worker before becoming a lawyer. She went on to be the first Black woman to be elected as a judge in Illinois. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AmericanHistory 🗃️
#OnThisDay, 24 Aug 1896, an unknown woman cyclist has a beer at the bar in New Jersey - making headlines in the New York Times. Chapeau! #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Cycling #AmericanHistory 🗃️
Steve Shirley escaped the Holocaust as a child & went on to found one of the earliest software startups. The really impressive part? She employed women programmers who had been pushed out of the workforce after having kids, & allowed them flexible, family friendly, work from home jobs—in the 1960s!
To explain this photo a bit more: back then, most programming was done on paper (sometimes on special coding sheets), then punched onto cards/tape, then fed into a mainframe to be tested (& if necessary debugged). Counterintuitively, needing LESS computer time was the mark of a better programmer!
After the war, Hall received a Distinguished Service Cross (US), an MBE (UK), and a Croix de Guerre (France). She joined the CIA in 1947, one of the first women to do so, but was side-lined as her extensive experience threatened her less experienced male colleagues. She retired in 1966. 10/10
Back in London, Hall requested the SOE send her back to France. They refused as she was compromised as an agent. So she took a wireless course and convinced the American Office of Strategic Services to send her back in March 1944. She operated as an agent until April 1945. 9/10
Hall got a train from Lyon to Perpignan, close to the closed border between France and Spain. Then she set out on foot. With a local guide from the escape line, she walked fifty miles in two days, over the Pyrenees mountains. The pass they used was 7,500 feet high. 8/10
In November 1942, Germany began to occupy Vichy France. Hall decided it was time to run. She signalled London, saying she hoped Cuthbert - her false leg - would not be a problem on the escape. London, unaware of Cuthbert's identity, replied: "If Cuthbert troublesome, eliminate him." 7/10
Based in Lyon in Vichy France, as well as the usual SOE agent tasks of gathering information and distributing equipment, Hall also ran an escape line for downed Allied airmen, getting them across the Pyrenees and into neutral Spain. 6/10
Hall, with her knowledge of languages and of Europe, was recruited. She returned to France by boat, with a cover story that she was working for the New York Post. She was only the second woman they sent into the field. The SOE would eventually send 41 women to France, of whom 26 survived. 5/10
When Germany invaded France, Hall became an ambulance driver for the French army. When France fell, she fled to Spain where a chance meeting sent her to the newly formed Special Operations Executive in London. The British SOE supported the work of the French resistance. 4/10
She was fitted with a wooden prosthetic, which she nicknamed Cuthbert. Cuthbert meant she limped. She continued her career as a consulate clerk. Her multiple requests to become a diplomat were turned down due to a rule against hiring people with disabilities. 3/10
In 1933, Hall was a European language graduate working as a clerk at the American Embassy in Smyrna, Türkiye. She went on a hunting expedition, tripped on a fence and shot herself in her left foot. The injury turned gangrenous,: to save her life her leg was amputated below the knee. 2/10
🧵 #OnThisDay, 23 Aug 1941, American Virginia Hall arrives in France to work for the British Special Operations Executive. Hall ended up on the German's “most wanted” list as 'the limping lady'. #WomenInHistory #WorldWar2 #AmericanHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️ 1/10
Thanks! Always good to find we can push a 'first' date back a bit.
Thanks! Always good to find we can push a 'first' date back a bit.
She worked for 13 months and was never captured. You can hear her story on the Imperial War Museum site: www.iwm.org.uk/colle... 2/2
#OnThisDay, 22 Aug 1943, Yvonne Cormeau parachutes into France to be a radio operator for the British Special Operations Executive. The SOE supported the French Resistance to Nazi occupation. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #EuropeanHistory 🗃️ 1/2
#OnThisDay, 22 Aug 1762, Ann Smith Franklin becomes the sole editor of the weekly Rhode Island Mercury: the first woman to be a US newspaper editor. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
#OtD 18 Aug 1812 women-led food riots broke out in Leeds and Sheffield, UK. A Leeds newspaper described the women seizing corn and wheat as being "dignified with the title of Lady Ludd". In Sheffield, flour dealers were forced to reduce their prices stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8955...
#OnThisDay, 17 Aug 2012, Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich of Pussy Riot are sentenced to two years in a prison colony for an anti-Putin protest.
Very exciting: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography published a cluster of new entries on women stationers. See the intro by Valerie Wayne: www.oxforddnb.com/newsitem/906... ODNB entries are so helpful in identifying women from traces on printed material. So happy to see this work ❤️
#OtD 16 Aug 1935 the mostly women workers at the Strutwear Knitting Co. in Minneapolis walked out on strike for pay increases, union recognition and the reinstatement of eight sacked union activists. They held out for eight months until they won stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8761...
#OtD 16 Aug 1972 women cleaners at the Ministry of Defence in London won a five-month struggle for a payrise and union recognition. The "Night Cleaners Campaign" was supported by the women's movement as well as other workers stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8764...
#OnThisDay, 16 Aug 2002, the Women's Peace Train left Kampala on a 10 day journey to Johannesburg.
#OnThisDay, 15 Aug 1970, Pat Palinkas became the first woman to play American football professionally. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory
New podcast! Both parts of our double episode on women in the UK miners' strike of 1984-5 is out now for everyone. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, like Spotify or Apple podcasts, or go to our website: open.spotify.com/show/3dqQUrB... or workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e108...
#OtD 14 Aug 1886 50 women and girls working in the L Candee Rubber Boot Company factory in New Haven, Connecticut, walked out on strike over excessive working temperatures. Management had refused to open the windows "for fear of damage to the stock" stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/7748...
The British SOE supported the French resistance. A courier would move messages and equipment between people. Captured after 7 months, she was executed in Dachau in Sept 1944. 2/2
Very early #OnThisDay, 14 Aug 1943, Eliane Plewman parachutes into Nazi-occupied France to become a courier for the Special Operations Executive. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 🗃️ 1/2
#OnThisDay, 14 Aug 1922, Lizzie 'Spike' Murphy became the first woman to play major league baseball in the US. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
#OnThisDay, 13 Aug 2014, Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani won the Fields Medal for her work on complex geometry. She was the first woman to win it since it began in 1936. She died in 2017, aged just 40. Multiple awards and initiatives are named after her. #WomenInSTEM
#OnThisDay, 13 Aug 1918, Opha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the US Marines. She went on to be promoted to sergeant, and was the highest ranking woman in the Marines in WW1. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️
Theodora Rasche aerobatic pilot. Pilot's license 1925, became 1st #German woman to pass aerobatic exam, 1932 1st woman in Germany awarded seaplane license. Flew in international competitions. 1933 editor of Flug-Illustrierten magazine & journalist b. #OTD 12 Aug 1899 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thea_Ra...
#OnThisDay, 12 Aug 1990, American Sue Hendrickson finds the remains of a T Rex, the largest specimen found to date, in South Dakota. The fossil remains are now known as Sue and are on display in Chicago. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️
I’m mostly flagging that it was not, as at least one person - not the Wing Commander said “just some women”. That downplays the scale and tactics. (Don’t put “just” next to “women” in our timeline. ;) )
I'm flagging that the Greenham women were: a) organised b) did at least one action identical to that of Palestine Action. So there is some equivalence when you look at the historical record of what the women did. The political climate may differ, but the actions are identical.
That was only if they attempted to get into the bunkers. They did get as far as the bunkers once, and danced on top of them. No-one was shot.
They also had a mobilsation network (a phone tree in those pre-internet times) and used codewords when wanting to buy equipment like bolt-cutters. You can read more about them here: greenhamwomeneverywhere.co.uk
There was nothing "just" about the Greenham women. On one occasion they painted peace symbols on the 'Blackbird' US spyplane stationed there. Seven were charged with criminal damage for it: the MOD dropped the charges when it reached court.
Image on quoted post is the former commander of RAF Greenham Common, writing into the Times to compare the peace camp to Palestine Action. He says there were thousands of protestors "threatening" (his quote marks) the base but he never heard anyone suggest they should be classed as terrorists.
The women of Greenham Common even chucked paint over 'Blackbird', a US spyplane. The MOD withdrew the charges when the criminal damage case got to trial.
#OnThisDay, 11 Aug 1942 Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil receive a patent for their radio guidance system – the tech that now underpins wifi. Learn more about Hedy's remarkable life here: www.youmustremembert... #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #HollywoodHistory
The faculty have been waiting decades to get this quote into the Times.
It's a relay race: riders change horses along the route.
#OnThisDay, 10 Aug 2013, British rider Lara Prior-Palmer wins the modern Mongol Derby four years after it is first run. She's the first woman to win the race. The 1,000 km course recreates Genghis Khan’s postal system of 25 horse stations across the Mongolian steppe.
#OnThisDay, 10 Aug 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as an Associate Justice on the US Supreme Court. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
Since 1994, a public holiday on 9 Aug marks National Women's Day in South Africa. Read more about the women who led the movement here: issuu.com/topcomedia... 2/2
#OnThisDay, 9 Aug 1956, more than 20,000 women of all races march through Pretoria, South Africa, to petition against the law forcing women to carry passes in order to move about. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AfricanHistory 1/2
The Shakti organisation started providing services a few weeks later. Read more: nzhistory.govt.nz/me... 2/2
#OnThisDay, 8 Aug 1995, Farida Sultana and seven other women agree to establish a culturally specialist support service for Asian, Middle Eastern and African women in violent and abusive situations in Aotearoa New Zealand. #NZHistory 🗃️ 1/2
Later in life, she established the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation to help support younger athletes and provide assistance to retired Olympic veterans. 2/2
#OnThisDay, 7 Aug 1948, American high jumper Alice Coachman wins Olympic gold, the first Black woman to win a gold medal. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #OlympicWomen 🗃️ 1/2
Fanny had been regarded by critics as 'too old' at 30, and nicknamed 'the Flying Housewife”. Yes, really. 🙄 Footage: www.youtube.com/watc... 2/2
#OnThisDay, 7 Aug1948, Fanny Blankers-Koen wins her fourth gold Olympic medal at a single games: the first woman to do so. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #OlympicWomen 🗃️ 1/2
#OnThisDay, 7 Aug 1909, Alice Huyler Ramsey and companions arrive in San Francisco, becoming the first women to cross America by car. (We posted about them setting off back on 9 June.) #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
#OnThisDay, 6 Aug 1926, American Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel. She was an Olympic swimmer, and had held five world records in swimming. Watch a silent newsreel: www.youtube.com/watc... #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️
#OnThisDay, 5 Aug 1984, Joan Benoit won the Olympic marathon, the first year a women's marathon was included at the Games. #OlympicWomen #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️
She'd got tired of her husband tinkering with his prototype so took it on the road with her sons. And without him. Along the way, she made running repairs to the engine and realised there would need to be refueling stations. 2/2
#OnThisDay, 5 Aug 1888, Bertha Benz drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim: the first journey of 100+km in a car by *anyone*. #WomenInSTEM #EuropeanHistory #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️ 1/2
A great article focusing on a 17th C woman diarist @susannahwalker.bsky.social @womenknowhistory.bsky.social @carvehername.bsky.social @jwomenshistory.bsky.social @womenwritersnet.bsky.social @womenwarriors.com www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...
Watch a TED talk by Bridgeford about the movement: www.ted.com/talks/er... 2/2
#OnThisDay, 4 Aug 2017, Erricka Bridgeford organised, with others, the first Ceasefire weekend in Baltimore, Maryland, US. Now called the Baltimore Peace Movement, it asks people to refrain from violence and promote peace for three day periods. Mediator Bridgeford acted as the spokesperson. 1/2
#OnThisDay, 4 Aug 1948, the women’s shot put and long jump events were held for the first time at the Olympics in London. Micheline Ostermeyer won gold in the shot put and Olga Gyarmati won gold in the long jump. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #OlympicWomen 🗃️
Thanks! I was afraid of that for the paper but I’m not well versed enough in scientific journals to have been sure.
Yes, we read it a few years ago as well.
Book review is coming this week on the blog, btw. 3/3
The years but not the dates are in the book, and both are strong hooks for telling Lehman's story. If you've access to a scientific research gateway that will let you look up the date of her paper (called P'), or can speak Danish and find the info easily in a way we can't, please leave a reply? 2/3
Research request! We've just finished If I Am Right And I Know That I Am, Hanne Strager's new biography of Inge Lehman. We'd love to track down one of two dates: the date Lehman was appointed State Geodesist for Denmark in 1928; the date her paper, P', was published in 1936. 1/3
Nice summary of Sophia Duleep Singh via the Historic England newsletter. We're been steadily looking for a date involving her activism to hook a post to, but most are part of the wider movement where we credit groups of women. heritagecalling.com/2025/07/25/t...
So as well as depending on someone having done the research to connect the records (thank you Royal Museums Greenwich), we have to decide what name to use on the post. We went with Nancy Ann Perriam as that is the name most commonly used across writing about her.
This provides an illustration of one of the challenges of researching women in history. She was born Ann Letton but was commonly called Nancy Ann. She married Edward Hopping so was Nancy Ann Hopping while aboard the Orion. After he died, she married again, becoming Nancy Ann Perriam. 1/2
A pub in Perriam's hometown is named the Powder Monkey after her. More detail here: www.rmg.co.uk/collec... 2/2
#OnThisDay, 3 Aug 1798, British woman Nancy Ann Perriam serves in the naval Battle of the Nile against the French aboard HMS Orion. She prepared the cartridges for the guns, normally a job for young boys known as powder monkeys. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory 🗃️ 1/2
#OnThisDay, 2 Aug 1947, Dorothy Shay (the "Park Avenue Hillbilly") becomes the first woman to reach no 1 on the Billboard album charts with Dorothy Shay Sings. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory
#OnThisDay, 2 Aug 1855, Elizabeth Ann Holman goes on trial in Plymouth, UK, for being a suspicious person because she was discovered to be a woman disguised as a man. The case is dismissed. As is a second charge against her in 1858. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory 🗃️
Current mood: desperately reading a book on net galley before access expires tomorrow.
If you're about to go on your hols, and want to buy a book for to take with you, our summer reading list has some popular titles by women. uk.bookshop.org/list... (Disclaimers: UK only. Buying via our bookshop means we may get an affiliate %, but so will the bricks and mortar indies on the site.)
And hey, just sayin', if reading about Maria Mitchell and Helen Sawyer Hogg today got you curious about Other stories of great women astronomers, we've got just the book for you, with over 130 figures to learn all about! #WomenInSTEM #AstroSky #BookSky #HistSci 🧪🔭
#OnThisDay, 1 Aug 1980, Vigdis Finnbogadóttir is the first woman to be sworn in as the President of Iceland. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInPolitics
#OnThisDay, 1 Aug 1911, Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman licensed as a pilot in the US. She goes on to be the first woman to fly across the English Channel the following year. carvehername.org.uk/... #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenPilots 🗃️
Hershel's brother William was appointed court astronomer to King George III. When Caroline took a government salary for helping him she became the first woman to be paid for her astronomical work. This week, 2025, Prof Michele Dougherty became the first woman to be Astronomer Royal. 2/2
#OnThisDay, 1 Aug 1786, Caroline Herschel discovers comet C/1786 P1, becoming one of the first women to find one (and have it named after her). #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM 🗃️ 1/2
Right, where were we? Oh yes, 1 August. Hershel and Quimby. Here we go! (The recent break in service was due to capitalism.)
All historians know the sinking feeling of tracking an "authoritative" reference back through several generations of writers to an unsourced assertion by someone nobody's ever heard of. Now AI can make up new ones in no time at all.
Big day for the matriarchy! 🥳 Huge congrats to the awesome Prof. Doughtery, lead on the Jupiter-bound ESA JUICE mission & STFC Exec Chair. If anyone's confused on the astro royal hierarchy: Michele and I are the astro equivalents of 🇬🇧Westminster and 🏴Holyrood 🤗 ℹ️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 👩🔬🔭🧪
This unplanned gap in posting is because Mags is doing a paying gig for a bit. Another week and the necessary adjustments to routines should have settled down enough to get back to your scheduled service.
If we use "known to" it means that it's the first time a woman has been recorded as doing something. It's entirely possible that a woman had done the thing before, but it wasn't recorded. 2/2
#OnThisDay, 26 July 1969, Sharon Sites Adams becomes the first woman known to have sailed the Pacific single-handed. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 1/2
