Japanese artist and printmaker Hokusai was born #OTD in 1760.

He is best known for the woodblock print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes the iconic print The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokusai

#art #painting #woodblockprinting

Italian physicist and academic, first woman to have doctorate in science Laura Bassi was born #OTD in 1711. Bassi became the most important populariser of Newtonian mechanics in Italy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Bassi

#science #physics #WomenInSTEM

Italian physicist (1711-1778)

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

#OnThisDay, 28 Oct 1908, Muriel Matters, Violet Tillard and Helen Fox unfurl a banner and then chain themselves to the grille in the Ladies Gallery in the House of Commons, London, demanding votes for women.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #Histodons
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#OnThisDay, 27 Oct 1967, the Abortion Act gains royal assent. It allows women in the UK – except for Northern Ireland - to legally have an abortion on a range of medical grounds but stops short of making abortion legal.

It came into effect in April 1968 everywhere except Northern Ireland: NI passed their own act in 2020.

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

American astronomer Henrietta Hill Swope was born #OTD in 1902.

Working with H. Shapley, she helped establish the famous period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars, thereby permitting determination of the Sun's position in our galaxy and of distances to other galaxies. In 1962, using plates taken with the 200" Hale reflector by W. Baade, she determined the distance to the Andromeda galaxy to be 2.2 million light years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Hill_Swope

#astronomy #womeninSTEM

#OTD in 1892.

Ida B. Wells began publishing her research on lynching in the United States, for which she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize special citation, in 2020.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14975

#books #literature

#OnThisDay, 24 Oct 1901, American Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first *person* to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

The cat did *not* do the stunt with her.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Histodons

Love is like an itchin' in my heart...

#OnThisDay, 22 Oct 1966, The Supremes become the first all-woman group to get to no 1 in the US Billboard album charts with The Supremes A' Go-Go.

Listen to their version of Get Ready: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD_7_MhgHhc

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AmericanHistory #PopHistory #Histodons

“Had she been a man she would have become Prime Minister.“

#OnThisDay, 21 Oct 1958, Stella Isaacs (Baroness Swanborough) becomes the first woman to take a seat in the UK House of Lords.

She campaigned tirelessly for the rights of refugee children.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory #histodons

#OTD 10 years ago, The Conversation launched in the United States: an Australian export to America, destined to flourish.

Since then, we've published 21,357 articles from 15,137 academic authors. Those stories have been read nearly 1.3 billion times.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us reach this milestone - especially you, our readers! 🍰 🔟 🎉

(If you'd like to give us present, let your friends know about a nonprofit, fact-based #news source with a commitment to the #fediverse)

#OnThisDay, 20 Oct 1933, women picket the London Motor Show, calling for a boycott of Austin cars. The manufacturer’s owner had called for married women to be sacked so men could have their jobs.

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

#OnThisDay, 19 Oct 1944, President Roosevelt announces Black women can join WAVES – the US Navy's women's service.

Lt Harriet Pickens and Ensign Frances Wills, pictured, become the first Black women officers a couple of months later.

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

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Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar was born #OTD in 1910. He established an upper limit on the mass of stable white dwarf stars, and made numerous contributions to astrophysics and relativity.

Above the Chandrasekhar Limit – about 1.44 solar masses – electron degeneracy pressure cannot prevent a stellar remnant’s gravitational collapse into a neutron star or black hole.

Photo: Stephen Lewellyn / AIP

British geneticist and plant anatomist Edith Rebecca Saunders was born #OTD in 1865.

She is best as known as the "Mother of British Plant Genetics": she played an active role in the re-discovery of Mendel's laws of heredity, the understanding of trait inheritance in plants. She also developed extensive work on flower anatomy, particularly focusing on the gynoecia, the female reproductive organs of flowers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Rebecca_Saunders

#botanics #genetics #womeninSTEM

#TIL about the British suffragette Margaret Travers Symons who, #OnThisDay in 1908 became the first woman to speak at the UK parliament.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Travers_Symons

#OTD #history #women #WomensHistory #WomensRights #suffragette #feminism

British Suffragette

^{Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

#OnThisDay, 11 Oct 1922, Alaska P Davidson becomes the first woman to be an FBI Special Agent. She was employed to focus on the trafficking of women across state lines.

J Edgar Hoover requests her resignation, along with her colleagues Jessie Duckstein and Lenore Houston, in 1924. The FBI does not appoint another woman as a Special Agent until 1972.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons
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The World Wide Web Consortium @w3c was founded 30 years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TfUBuIZkmQ

https://www.w3.org/about/history/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web_Consortium

video via @caribou

#W3C #OnThisDay #OTD #history #technology #internet #InternetHistory #TheWeb

History

Read about the history of the World Wide Web Consortium, founded in 1994 by Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the urging of companies investing increasingly in the Web, to foster a consistent architecture and robust web standards.

^W3C