1055: Bettany Hughes Award Winning Historian, Author, and Broadcaster Born: May 1967, West London, United Kingdom I’ll be completely honest with you. Bettany earned her spot on this list purely because of one of the documentaries she hosted: “Alexandria The Greatest City.” This special from 2010 taught me, the Exasperated Historian herself, Hypatia’s story for…
1054: Sutematsu Ōyama The First Japanese Woman to Earn a College Degree From a Western College Born: 16 March 1860, Present-day Aizu, Japan Died: 18 February 1919, Tokyo, Japan Also Known As: Princess Ōyama Original Name: Sakiko Yamakawa Unfortunately for Sutematsu, attending college wasn’t actually her choice. Her family forced her to go. She was…
“I feel very humble because my activities in the war effort were trivial compared with those of people who gave their lives for their country.” 1053: Florence Finch Allied Spy During World War II Born: 11 October 1915, Santiago, Philippines Died: 8 December 2016, Ithaca, New York, United States of America Florence’s mother was Filipino…
1052: Ariadna Scriabina Poet, French Resistance Fighter and co-founder of the Armée Juive Born: 26 October 1905, Bogliasco, Italy Died: 22 July 1944. Toulouse, France Original Name: Regine-Ariane Scriabina Her Preferred Name: Sarah Knut Full Disclosure: The majority of easily accessible website articles about Ariadna are kind of sketchy and have lots of grammar/spelling mistakes….
“I would jam a pencil through [a Nazi’s] brain. And he’d deserve it.” 1051: Andrée Raymonde Borrel SOE Operative During World War II Born: 19 November 1919, France Died: 6 November 1942, Natzwiller, Alsace, France Andrée was raised in a working-class family and was raised on the outskirts of Paris. When she was fourteen, she…
“How strong the reserves upon which you draw you never realize until you need them, but believe me they do not fail you.” 1050: Odette Sansom Hallowes SOE Operative During World War II Born: 28 April 1912, Amiens, Picardie, France Died: 13 March 1995, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, United Kingdom Odette worked as a radio operative…
“The will to live. Willpower. That’s the most important. You should not let yourself go. It seemed that the end would never come, but I always believed in destiny, and I had a hope.” “If you are a person who is drowning, you put all your efforts into trying to swim.” 1049: Eileen Nearne Special…
(Please note no contemporary image of Sappho survives today, this is simply an artist’s interpretation of what she may have looked like) 1048: Sappho Archaic Greek Poet Born: c.616-630 BCE, Eressos or Mytilene, Lesbos, Ancient Greece (Present-day Lesbos, Greece) Died: c.580-550 BCE, Lesbos, Ancient Greece (Present-day Lesbos, Greece) You will often hear Sappho’s name in…
1047: Alice Huyler Ramsey The First Woman to Drive Across the United States from Coast to Coast Born: 11 November 1886, Hackensack, New Jersey, United States of America Died: 10 September 1983, Covina, California, United States of America Alice’s drive was from New York to San Francisco in 1909 (the first male cross-country drive was…
1046: Elizabeth Fleischman-Aschheim X-Ray Pioneer Born: c.1859-1867, El Dorado County, California, United States of America Died: 3 August 1905, San Francisco, California, United States of America Elizabeth is the first known woman to die from the effects of x-ray exposure due to her own studying of them. Elizabeth’s parents were immigrants from of Jewish ancestry…