#OnThisDay, 14 May 1943, Vera Leigh returns to France to work as a courier for the British Special Operations Executive.

A fashion designer, Leigh had fled France in 1942 after running escape lines for Allied airmen.

After her return, Leigh carried documents and equipment such as guns and explosives around her network's area. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, she was executed at Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp.

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

"Women are the equals of men before the law, and are equal in all their rights."

#OnThisDay, 10 May 1872, Victoria Woodhull was nominated to run for US president by the Equal Rights Party. Her nomination was ratified on June 6, 1872, making her the first woman candidate.

Woodhall had co-founded, with her sister, both a Wall Street brokerage and a newspaper. She was also an anti-abortionist and eugenics supporter.

#WomenInHistory #Histodons #VotesForWomen #AmericanHistory #OTD

“I feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just as much as a man, I have a right to have as much as a man.”

#OnThisDay, 9 May 1867, Sojourner Truth addresses the American Equal Rights Association, arguing for equal rights for Black women.

Read a brief history of Truth’s life: https://wams.nyhistory.org/a-nation-divided/antebellum/sojourner-truth/

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #EqualRights #BlackAmericanHistory #AmericanHistory #Histodons

#OnThisDay, 8 May 1946, Estonian teens Aili Jürgenson and Ageeda Paavel blew up a Soviet war memorial in response to Soviet destruction of Estonian war memorials. They served eight years in the gulag as punishment. In 1988 they were awarded the Estonian Order of the Cross of the Eagle to recognise their fight.

We only have a photo of Aili Jürgenson.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #EuropeanHistory

Very early #OnThisDay, 6 May 1944, Marguerite 'Peggy' Knight parachutes into occupied France to be a courier for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported the French resistance.

Knight fought her way out of an attempted capture, and returned to the UK in September 1944.

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

The first large burning came on 6 May 1933. The German Student Union made an organised attack on Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (roughly: Institute of Sex Research). Its library and archives of around 20,000 books and journals were publicly hauled out and burned in the street. Its collection included unique works on intersexuality, homosexuality and transgender topics. 1/2

#BookBurning #Nazis #Fascism #AntiTrans #Germany #OnThisDay

"The mentality in the 1960s was that women weren't smart or strong enough to be jockeys. But I proved that a woman could do the job."

#OnThisDay, 2 May 1970, Diane Crump becomes the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory

#OnThisDay, 1 May 1944, South African Phyllis Latour parachutes into occupied France to be a radio operator for the British Special Operations Executive.

She's never captured.

She died in 2023, in New Zealand.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WorldWar2
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Very early #OnThisDay, 30 April 1944, New Zealander Nancy Wake parachutes into occupied France to be a courier for the Special Operations Executive. The British SOE supported French Resistance to Nazi occupation.

Nick-named 'the white mouse' by the Gestapo, she is never captured. She died in 2011.

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

#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

#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

#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

"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

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#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