#OnThisDay, 24 Feb 1968, Jocelyn Bell Burnell - along with her male supervisor and three other men - published a paper confirming the discovery of pulsars. She had built the array, picked up the signal and argued it was not an anomaly. Hewish received the Nobel prize for it in 1974: Bell Burnell did not.
In 2018 Bell Burnell received a £3m prize for her work. She's using it to set up a foundation to improve the diversity in STEM.
#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.
#OnThisDay, 22 Feb 1943, Sophie Scholl is sentenced to death and immediately executed, alongside her brother and a friend, for distributing anti-Nazi literature at her university in Munich, Germany.
Her cellmate said her last words to her were “how can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause... It is such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go.”
#OnThisDay, 31 Jan 2013, women in Paris are officially allowed to wear trousers.
The 1799 law had required women to ask police for permission to "dress as men", or risk being taken into custody. Amendments in 1892 and 1909 were made to allow women to wear trousers if they were holding horse reins or a bicycle handle. The law was widely ignored.
Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights, lifted the ban as “incompatible with the principles of equality between women and men”.
#OnThisDay, 4 Oct 1936, women join the Battle of Cable Street, in London's East End, protesting against a fascist march through the area. Of the 79 people arrested, eight are women, including Blanche Edwards (pictured).
#OnThisDay, 7 Jan 1939, French physicist Marguerite Perey discovers element 87, which she later names francium. It was the last element to be discovered naturally.
Perey was a student of Marie Curie, and was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize but never received it.
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.
“I didn’t make up the problems. All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.“
— Octavia E. Butler, who would've been 76 today, on not being a prophet
#OnThisDay, 3 Feb 1995, Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle on a mission when she took the helm of #Discovery. She would go on to become the first woman to command a Shuttle.
"I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad."
Happy birthday to antifascist bisexual icon, entertainer, and truth teller, Josephine Baker, born June 3, 1906.
On this day, in 1983, The Colour of Magic was published and the Discworld was unleashed on the Roundworld! What is your favourite thing about the Discworld and/or the best thing being a fan of the Discworld has done for you?
#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.
#OnThisDay, 21 Mar 1945, Hannie Schaft, an active member of the Dutch resistance known as "the girl with the red hair", is arrested at a German checkpoint in Haarlem.
She is later executed, allegedly saying "I shoot better" after the first attempt to shoot her missed.
#OnThisDay, 25 Jan 1943, Jacqueline Nearne parachutes into occupied France. She operates as as a courier for the Special Operations Executive for fifteen months before being withdrawn from the field. The SOE worked with the French Resistance to sabotage the occupying Nazi forces.
#OnThisDay, 1 May 1944, South African Phyllis Latour parachutes into occupied France to be a radio operator for the British Special Operations Executive.
#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.
"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.
"The importance of the ZX Spectrum and its role in the early history of personal computing and video gaming has left many to regard it as the most important and influential computer of the 1980s."
It's ALIVE! #OnThisDay, 1 Jan 1818, Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' is published anonymously. Her gothic novel is also one of the first science-fiction novels.
On this day in history. The Declaration of Arbroath, probably the most important and influential document in Scottish history and considered by UNESCO to be of world significance, was dated 6 April 1320: making it 704 years old today. More pics and info: https://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/arbroath/arbroathabbey/index.html
42 lautet die Antwort auf alle Fragen des Universums. Geliefert hat sie der britische Schriftsteller Douglas Adams in seiner Geschichte "Per Anhalter durch die Galaxis". Am 11. März wäre Adams 72 Jahre alt geworden.