#OTD in 1852.

Roget's Thesaurus, created by retired British physician Peter Mark Roget, is first published as Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition in London.

Roget's Thesaurus at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10681

#books #dictionary

Happy Terry Pratchett Day to all who celebrate! 🥳 🥂

#Bookstodon #Discworld #OTD

"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience."
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (ed. 1793)

British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights Mary Wollstonecraft was born #OTD in 1759. In "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), Wollstonecraft argued that women are not naturally inferior to men but appear so only because of a lack of education.

Books by Mary Wollstonecraft at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/84

#books #literature

Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes died #OTD in 1616.

Much of his life was spent in relative poverty and obscurity, which led to many of his early works being lost. His literary career is noted for several works, although "Don Quijote" remains his most celebrated:
La Galatea (1585), Don Quijote, Part I (1605), Novelas Ejemplares (1613), Don Quijote, Part II (1615),
Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (1617).

Books by Miguel de Cervantes at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/505

#books #literature

#OnThisDay, 22 April 1969, Bernadette Devlin makes her maiden speech in the House of Parliament in London. An Irish Republican, she had rejected their tradition of abstention in order to take her seat. She remained an MP until 1974.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #BritishHistory #Histordons

65th birthday today

Happy Birthday Robert Smith, lead guitarist of Siouxsie and the Banshees from 1982 to 1984 and continuous member of post-punk band The Cure since 1978, born on this day in 1959 in Black Pool, UK

📸 Tom Sheehan

#robertsmith #postpunk #history #otd

77 years young 🔥🍾💥

Happy Birthday to James Newell Osterberg aka Iggy Pop, designated the "Godfather of Punk, born on this day in 1947, Muskegon, Michigan

Photo by Rob Baker Ashton

#punk #punks #punkrock #iggypop #history #punkrockhistory #otd

#OTD in 1910.

Halley's comet reappears after 76 years, and Mark Twain dies at his home, Stormfield, the day after the comet's perihelion. In his autobiography, Twain wrote, "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It's coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. The Almighty has said no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

#books #astronomy

#OnThisDay, 20 Apr 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie refine radium chloride. The discovery leads to Marie being the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903.

The Academy originally planned to award only Pierre and Henri Becquerel. Pierre insisted that Marie should also be included.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomenInSTEM #NobelWomen

“I expect this will be the making of me.”

#OnThisDay, 19 Apr 1927, Mae West is convicted on obscenity charges for her play 'sex', and starts a ten day jail sentence.

She's released two days early for good behaviour.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #LiteraryWomen #AmericanHistory

#OnThisDay, 19 Apr 1967, Katherine Switzer becomes the first woman to complete the Boston Marathon as a registered runner, despite the organiser physically trying to stop her.

She ran it again in 2017, 50 years later.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AmericanHistory

#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.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #EuropeanHistory #NobelWomen

English electrical engineer and physicist John Ambrose Fleming died #OTD in 1945.

He is best known for his invention of the vacuum tube diode, which he patented in 1904. The vacuum tube diode, also known as the Fleming valve, was the first practical vacuum tube and allowed for the detection & amplification of electrical signals. It was a crucial component in early radio receivers and telecommunications systems, laying the foundation for the development of modern electronics.

#science #physics

Danish author Karen Blixen was born #OTD in 1885. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.

Blixen is best known for Out of Africa (1937), an account of her life while in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast (1950). She is also noted for her Seven Gothic Tales (1934), Winter's Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) and Ehrengard (1963).

#books #literature

Robert R. Wilson, first director of Fermilab, famously testified in front of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy #OTD in 1969.

In making the case for building Fermilab, Wilson delivered a lovely justification for a national commitment to basic science.

An important argument to revisit, in light of recent bad news about funding for basic science.

Image: Fermilab

#OnThisDay, 17 Apr 1964, Jerrie Mock touches down in Ohio to become the first woman to fly solo around the world. Press coverage of the time made much of her being a “housewife”. 🙄

Watch a newsreel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55Pz2zGZ3To

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AviationHistory #AmericanHistory

Biochemist Marie Maynard Daly, who studied correlations between heart attacks and cholesterol, and between smoking and lung disease, was born #OTD in 1921.

She was the first Black woman to receive a chemistry PhD in the US.

Image: National Institutes of Health

"My comrades, who did far more and suffered more profoundly than I, are not here to speak. Because of this, I speak for them."

#OnThisDay, 16 April 1943, Special Operations Executive agent Odette Samsom is arrested by the Gestapo in France. The British SOE worked with the French resistance.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #BritishHistory #WorldWar2

1/2

#OnThisDay, 16 Apr 1912, Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly a plane across the English Channel.

Quimby was the first American woman to receive a pilot’s licence and made her living doing exhibition flights in the US. She also made money as the advertising face of a grape juice. She died in July 1912 when her plane pitched forward at 1,000 feet and she was thrown out.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AviationHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

British scientist Rosalind Franklin died #OTD in 1958.

Her most famous contribution to science came from her X-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51, which provided crucial evidence for the double helix structure of DNA. Her photo was shared without her knowledge with J. Watson & F. Crick, who used it as a basis for their model of DNA's structure. Their work overshadowed her contribution, & she was not fully recognized for her role until after her death.

#science #chemistry

#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 #AmericanHistory #Histodons

American marine biologist, conservationist, and writer Rachel Carson died #OTD in 1964.

She is best known for her groundbreaking book "Silent Spring," published in 1962, which brought attention to the environmental impact of pesticides, particularly DDT, and sparked a global environmental movement. The book is often credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement and the establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

#books #marinebiology #womeninscience

American astronomer Annie Jump Cannon died #OTD in 1941.

Cannon developed a system of stellar classification based on spectral characteristics, which became known as the Harvard Classification Scheme (she was one of the "Harvard Computers"). She classified hundreds of thousands of stars, organizing them by temperature and spectral characteristics. Her work laid the foundation for our understanding of stellar evolution and the composition of stars.

#astronomy #womeninscience

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 #WorldWar2

"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 #AmericanHistory #Histodons

English photographer Eadweard Muybridge was born #OTD in 1830.

Muybridge is known for his pioneering chronophotography of animal locomotion between 1878 and 1886, which used multiple cameras to capture the different positions in a stride; and for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting painted motion pictures from glass discs that predated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.

#art #chronophotography #cinematography

#OTD in 1959.

A team of computer manufacturers, users, & university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.

Throughout her career, Hopper made significant contributions to computer science, including the development of the concept of machine-independent programming languages, which greatly facilitated software development. Her compiler converted English terms into machine code understood by computers.

#computerscience

French philosopher, an influential early socialist thinker, and one of the founders of utopian socialism Charles Fourier was born #OTD in 1772.

He developed a comprehensive system of societal organization known as Fourierism which influenced many writers and thinkers such as Dostoevsky, André Breton, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and many others. He is is credited with having originated the word feminism in 1837.

About Fourier at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=charles+fourier&submit_search=Go%21

#books #literature #philosophy

April 7th 216 CE—Pakysis kept a pantry on the second floor of his daughter-in-law's house, and it was discovered that the tenants below him had been stealing grain through a hole in the floor. He petitions a centurion #OTD #OnThisDay to make them pay it back.

https://papyri.info/ddbdp/bgu;1;322

#OnThisDay, 7 Apr 1141, Matilda is legally recognised as ruler of England in her own right. Her coronation never happens.

She was appointed heir by her father Henry I, then usurped by her cousin Stephen after Henry’s death. The civil war between the cousins is known as the Anarchy and lasted from 1138 to 1153.

#WomenInHistory #History #OTD
#EnglishHistory #AnarchyInTheUK #Histodons