#OnThisDay, 21 Mar 1945, Hannie Schaft, an active member of the Dutch resistance known as "the girl with the red hair", is arrested at a German checkpoint in Haarlem.
She is later executed, allegedly saying "I shoot better" after the first attempt to shoot her missed.
#OnThisDay, 19 March 1944, Yvonne Baseden parachutes into Nazi-occupied France as a Special Operations Executive radio operator. The British SOE supported the French resistance. Radio operators ran the greatest risk of discovery as their position could be triangulated when they were transmitting.
Baseden was captured and sent to Ravensbrück.
She was the subject of the first regular UK edition of This Is Your Life in 1955.
“Once, with hand-grenades in my shopping bag, I travelled in a train so full that I had to stand against a German NCO.”
#OnThisDay, 18 Mar 1943, Francine Agazarian arrives in Nazi-occupied France to be a courier in the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French Resistance.
#OnThisDay, 17 Mar 1964, Joan Merriam Smith set off from Oakland airport in California in an attempt to fly solo around the world. She followed Amelia Earhart’s easterly route from 1937 as far as New Guinea where Earhart had vanished.
Merriam Smith arrived back in Oakland on 12 May 1964, the first pilot to successfully make a solo circumnavigation by the equatorial route.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenPilots #AmericanHistory #WomensHistoryMonth
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#OnThisDay, 13 Mar 1990, Ertha Pascal-Trouillot became the provisional president of Haiti. She was 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.”
#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
#OnThisDay, 11 Mar 1942, the current Waterloo Bridge in London partially opens. The construction force included many women, giving it the nickname “the Ladies Bridge”.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #LondonHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons
https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/news/england-built-by-women/
#OnThisDay, 11 Mar 1928, hundreds of women march through London to a Communist Party rally, demanding better working conditions.
#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.
Suffragette attacks on art were common enough for Punch to do a cartoon of it.
#VotesForWomen #WomenInHistory #WomensHistoryMonth #BritishHistory #Histodons
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#OnThisDay, 8 Mar 1914, #InternationalWomensDay started to settle on a 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.
New season, new stories — this time, we’re diving into the herstory of Southeast Asia in WWII. Celebrate #InternationalWomensDay by centering their stories and pushing to #AccelerateAction for gender equality.
Listen to the full episode:
https://linktr.ee/herstoryseapod
Listen to Babae: https://herstoryseapod.short.gy/zdn3Jg
#OnTheDay, 6 Mar 1906, Nora Stanton Blatch was admitted to the American Association of Civil Engineers. The first woman, she was allowed junior status but still denied full membership.
#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 #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #WomenInPolitics #Histodons
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Short thread!
#OnThisDay, 3 Mar 1913, thousands of women marched through Washington DC in the Suffrage Parade. They are led by Inez Milholland, a lawyer on a white horse, with delegations from each state following.
The day before Ida B Wells and other Black suffragists were told they would be segregated, and had to march at the back. Wells said that she would march with Illinois or not at all.
#WomenInHistory #History #AmericanHistory #WHM #WomensHistoryMonth #VotesForWomen #Histodons
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#OnTheDay, 2 Mar 1977, Bette Davis receives the American Film Institute's lifetime achievement award. She is the first woman to win it.
Of the 50 recipients to date, 11 have been women.
#OnThisDay, 1 Mar 1912, Isabella Godwin is promoted, becoming the first woman police detective in the US after an undercover operation to catch a gang of bank robbers.
Africa: Africa's Newest Book Prize Is Named After Andreé Blouin - Who Was She?: [The Conversation Africa] Andrée Blouin was a political activist and writer from the Central African Republic. Until recently, her name hardly ever appeared in the grand narratives of Africa's liberation. http://newsfeed.facilit8.network/TJFMd9 #AndreeBlouin #AfricanLiterature #BookPrize #WomenInHistory #PoliticalActivism
Very late #OnThisDay, 28 Feb 1944, Madeleine Damerment parachuted into occupied France to be an agent for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE worked with the French Resistance.
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 as the network had been betrayed. She was executed at Dachau in Sept 1944.
#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).
#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 southeast Asia.
Aquino had won an election earlier that month but dictator Marcos - who had held power since 1965 - had refused to step down.
The People Power Revolution demanded the restoration of democracy and the military supported her in removing him.
