#OnThisDay, 15 Apr 1960, Ella Baker convenes a conference of 126 independent student protest groups. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) forms as a result. SNCC coordinated and assisted direct-action challenges to segregation in the USA.

Baker was a civil rights activist for five decades, and advocated grassroots activism. She also criticised the misogyny she encountered within the movement.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

#OnThisDay, 13 Apr 1985, Danuta Danielsson hits a neo-Nazi with her handbag in Växjö, Sweden. Yes, that photo by Hans Runesson.

Danuta had been born in Poland in 1947, after her Jewish mother had survived a concentration camp.

#EuropeanHistory #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons

Very early #OnThisDay, 12 Apr 1944, Odette Wilen parachutes into France to work as a wireless operator for the British Special Operations Executive. The SOE supports the French resistance.

Wireless operators were at the greatest risk of discovery, as their position could be triangulated whenever they were transmitting messages back to London.

Wilen evades capture by minutes and escapes over the Pyrenees. She lives until 2015.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #Histodons

“Above all, I wanted to be appreciated as a prima ballerina who happened to be a Native American, never as someone who was an American Indian ballerina.”

Died #OTD, 11 Apr 2013, Maria Tallchief - the first prima ballerina of Native American descent (Osage).

We'd love a date for her stage debut.

"I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own."

#OnThisDay, 10 Apr 1864, army surgeon Dr Mary Edwards Walker is captured by the Confederates during the US Civil War. She later receives the Medal of Honor.

As well as serving in the Civil War, and being a dress reformer who preferred to wear trousers, she was also a suffragist who declined to take her husband’s name when they married.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

#OnThisDay, 8 Apr 1959, Mary K Hawes initiates a project to create the first universal programming language for computers used by businesses and government. Grace Hopper led the team that then created COBOL. Some mainframes are still using it.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInSTEM #Histodons

Why is a bridge in Sarajevo named after two women?

#OnThisDay, 5 Apr 1992, Suada Dilberović, a Muslim, and Olga Sučić, a Catholic, were killed whilst on a peace protest in Sarajevo during the outbreak of the Bosnian war. They are the first civilian casualties in what became the Siege of Sarajevo. The siege lasted 1,425 days, and over 5,000 civilians were killed during it.

The bridge they died on has been renamed in their memory.

#WomenInHistory #EuropeanHistory #OTD #History #Histodons

#OnThisDay, 2 Apr 1917, Jeanette Rankin is sworn in, becoming the first woman to sit in the US Congress.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

It's the 26th anniversary of The Matrix, written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski, released on March 31st, 1999, making cinematic history and forever leaving its mark on the Sci-Fi genre.

#TheMatrix #CineMastodon #OTD #FilmMastodon #Movies #Matrix

#OnThisDay, 1 April 1983, around 200 women dressed as teddy bears or Easter bunnies break into the Greenham Common airbase in the UK to stage a protest picnic against nuclear warfare. Greenham was due to house US nuclear missiles

A further 40,000 protestors, men and women, form a human chain linking #Greenham to #Aldermaston and Burghfield.

Women had established the peace camps at Greenham in 1981.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #PeaceProtests #Histodons

“Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation."

#OnThisDay, 31 Mar 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, who was drafting the Declaration of Independence. He declined her suggestions.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

#OTD in 1862.

The first two volumes of Victor Hugo's epic historical novel Les Misérables appear in Brussels, followed on April 3 by Paris publication, with the remaining volumes on May 15. The first English-language translations, by Charles Edwin Wilbour, are published in New York on June 7, and by Frederic Charles Lascelles Wraxall, in London in October.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%…

Les Misérables at PG:
gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?q…

#books #literature

French civil engineer Charles Joseph Minard was born #OTD in 1781. He was known for his contributions to information graphics, including his famous map of the losses suffered by Napoleon during the 1812 Russian campaign.

Writing about Minard's map, Edward Tufte said “It may well be the best statistical graphic ever drawn.”

Image: Charles Minard / Public domain

On this day in 1967, more than 10,000 people showed up for a "be-in" in NYC's Central Park.

"It represents a cultural moment in our history. Central Park became an epicenter of the counterculture in New York, where different people from all walks of life could gather."

nytimes.com/2019/03/25/style/c…

#OnThisDay #OTD #history #protests #protest #BeIn #counterculture #NYC #CentralPark #The60s

When a ‘Be In’ in Central Park Was Front-Page News

Fifty-two years ago, thousands came to Central Park for a counterculture happening that influenced decades of political gatherings there.

^{Laura M. Holson (The New York Times)}

#OnThisDay, 24 Mar 1944, Éliane Plewman is arrested by the Gestapo in Nazi-occupied France after six months operating as a courier for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French resistance. A courier carried messages and equipment around their network.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2 #EuropeanHistory #SOE

1/2

On this day in 1915, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the "original soul sister" and "Godmother of rock and roll" was born.

"Rock 'n' roll was bred between the church and the nightclubs in the soul of a queer black woman in the 1940s named Sister Rosetta Tharpe."

youtube.com/watch?v=Y9a49oFalZ…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_R…

npr.org/2017/08/24/544226085/f…

#music #history #MusicHistory #WomenInMusic #BlackWomen #BlackHistory #RockNRoll #RockMusic #OnThisDay #OTD #SisterRosettaTharpe

Remembering Terry Hall, English musician and lead singer of The Specials 🖤

March 19, 1959 - December 18, 2022

The Specials - Too Much Too Young

#punkrock #ska #skalegends #skabands #skamusic #terryhall #thespecials #2tone #history #punkrockhistory #otd