Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.

supreme-leader-stoat:

andmaybegayer:

I think so much about the food people ate pre-Columbian exchange. Huge parts of cuisine extremely important on both sides of the pond just didn’t exist.

You’ve probably heard a little about what was brought over from the New World, corn, potatoes, cocoa, cassava, peanuts, chili peppers, avocadoes, cranberries, pumpkins, and the like. Imagine cooking without chili! Without potatoes! Modern Indian cuisine contains enormous amounts of potatoes and we just didn’t have those for the vast majority of history. The best of the nightshades all on one contiguous hunk of land. Hell, tomatoes! Almost forgot about those.

But we don’t often look at what the Old World had. Wheat! Barley! Rice! A profusion of incredible grains, really, the finest poaceae has to offer. Carrots! Tons of rosaceous plants like apples and cherries and pears and peaches and apricots! Grapes! Soy and Bamboo! Okra and watermelon! All these things were simply never found in the Americas. The grains one is the wildest for me, the variety of grains available across Eurasia and Africa was truly astounding.

You know what binds together the food of all cultures across the world? Onions. Onions are fucking everywhere. There’s probably onions growing near you right now. Allium Gang Unite.

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tikkunolamorgtfo:

goomymegpoid:

solitics:

letters-adressedtothefire:

Sorry but the “a woman just died and her family is mourning” speech doesn’t really apply for the woman who’s responsible for almost half the world’s colonisation and the death of millions of people everyday for like 70 years

I hate the monarchy but…. She is not “responsible for half the world’s colonisation”. Do you think colonialism happened in the last 100 years? Do you know anything?

“Do you know anything?” Really now. Did you even look into it before defending this bitch

Um, no. They’re not “defending” her by pointing out the original statement is inaccurate—that’s just correcting misinformation. I mean, I am extremely vocal on this blog about my anti-monarchy views, especially in regard to my distaste for British imperialism as somebody of South Asian descent. But the OP is misleading at best, and just flat out wrong at worst, and I honestly find it kind of offensive that people would disregard the actual, real-life violent history of British imperialism in favour of some half-cocked statement that lets so many responsible parties off the hook for their crimes.

Like, firstly, if you’re really dead set on solely laying the blame for expansion of the British Empire on one single member of the royal family, then that person, without a doubt, should be Queen Victoria. To quote this article, she was the “matriarch of the British Empire,” as well as a major propopent of its expansion. Between 1814 (just 23 years before Victoria ascended the throne) and the heyday of her reign in 1881, the population of the British Empire literally QUINTUPLED in size. By the time she died in 1901, Victoria was ruling over roughly 400 million “subjects,” in British-ruled territory that covered approximately 25% of the globe. It hit its peak in 1919 (7 years before Elizabeth II’s birth) under the reign of George V, after Britain acquired a bunch of German territories under Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI. By contrast, when Elizabeth took the throne in 1952—about five years after India & Pakistan kicked off a major wave of decolonisation efforts—Britain’s global territory had shrunk by approximately 68%. By 1970, it had decreased even further:

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Now, there’s absolutely no disputing that Queen Victoria’s imperialism is part of Queen Elizabeth’s family legacy. That’s true both from a historical and financial perspective, and something about which I am extremely salty! Victoria fucking ransacked India, and today’s royals still have the spoils. If you want to join Desi people in hating Liz & Co. for never giving us our fucking stolen diamond back, be my guest. In fact, we will make you cups of chai and feed you rotis while you bitch about it with us. But saying that Elizabeth II was directly responsible for colonising half ¼ of the globe is not only factually incorrect, but factually incorrect in a way that either outright erases the most devastating periods of British imperialism (if you’re only including events from 1952-present), or effectively absolves the people who actually engineered the violence (if you’re mentally replacing Liz for Vicky). Now, I admittedly have more beef with Queen Victoria, because my grandfather and great-aunties on the Indian side were literally born under her reign (yes, really, I’m old), but even so, it seems weird to just… rewrite the whole thing.

And speaking of absolving people, like… yes, the monarchy is a ridiculous fucking institution built on ill-gotten wealth and oppression of the working classes, no argument from me there. But they are not solely responsible for colonialism, and I don’t like the implication that it was masterminded single-handedly by one figurehead with a crown whose political role is largely ceremonial. Like, first of all, look up the fucking East India Company, an evil-from-the-depths-of-hell-level corporation built on greed and human suffering. They were acting as agents of British imperialism across swathes of Africa and Asia, eons before Queen Victoria was even born. The British government only got dominion over India after they intervened to stop the East India Company from exerting too much political and commercial control. Like, read up on Robert Clive and the Battle of Plassey sometime, and then imagine Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk buying the French army to invade the Indian subcontinent. While we’re talking about ye olden colonising CEOs, ever heard of Cecil Rhodes? Of course, he had a lot of help in fucking over South Africa from the PM, Lord Salisbury. It was actually Disraeli’s idea to confer the title of ‘Empress of India’ on Queen Victoria. It’s estimated that around 3.8 million people died during the 1943 Bengal famine, which was basically the result of a Winston Churchill policy failure. And it was not any monarch, but Secretary of State for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain, who said “I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen… It is not enough to occupy great spaces of the world’s surface unless you can make the best of them. It is the duty of a landlord to develop his estate.” Like, yeah fuck the monarchy for the role they played, but don’t act like one single hand-waving, ribbon-cutting inbred royal was the British Empire’s master architect, when this was very much one of history’s worst fucking group projects.

Finally, a smaller correction, but that above “List of sovereign states headed by Elizabeth II” is mostly comprised of former colonies/Commonwealth countries. Now, is the Commonwealth a vestige of Britain’s bygone colonialism? Absolutely, no doubt. But nonetheless, that’s still a list of independent nations with their own governments who—at some point between 1952-present—chose to have the monarch as a state figurehead (albeit not a choice I understand). Also, if you actually look at the chart, it’s presently only a total of 15 countries who still have the monarch as a ceremonial figurehead (including the UK itself, Canada, and Australia). You’ll also note that more than half of these countries have severed ties already, including Barbados, who just became a republic last year (way to go, Barbados!), and I’m hoping that Charles’s relative unpopularity will see more nations follow suit. Still, the point stands: It doesn’t really make sense to post that as “evidence” of the fact that Elizabeth herself was personally responsible for “half the world’s colonisation,” when 1) It only dates back to 1952, well after the peak of the empire 2) None of the nations listed are current British Overseas Territories 3) The linked chart actually shows a decline in independent states using the monarch as a figurehead since the late 1980s. It’s quite literally making the opposite point as intended.

Anyway, as somebody who doesn’t like the monarchy, and thinks a lot about the irrevocable damage wrought by British colonialism, I am begging you guys not to downplay or rewrite its actual history for the sake of a pithy sound-byte on Tumblr dot com. “Queen Elizabeth spent a lifetime benefiting from the spoils of her family’s imperialist endeavours, and may have recently used some of that tainted wealth to help her son pay out a settlement to the woman who publicly accused him of sex trafficking” is a perfectly accurate, and scathingly damning statement; you do not need to rewrite British history to make it sound like the woman personally conquered India with an army of bloodthirsty corgis just to make your point.

Forgotten By History

clexar:

injuries-in-dust:

aethelflaedladyofmercia:

ladylouoflothlorien:

imfemalewarrior:

injuries-in-dust:

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Female firefighters at Pearl Harbor (1941).

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Donna Tobias - the first woman to graduate from the US Navy’s Deep Sea Diving School in 1975.

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Brave women of the Red Cross hitting the beach at Normandy.

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Dottie Kamenshek was called the best player in women’s baseball and was once recruited to play for a men’s professional team.

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Kate Warne - Private Detective. Born in New York City, almost nothing is known of her prior to 1856 when, as a young widow, she answered an employment advertisement placed by Alan Pinkerton.
She was one of four new agents the Pinkerton Detective Agency hired that year and proved to be a natural, taking to undercover work easily. She had taken part in embezzlement and railroad security cases when in 1861 the Pinkertons developed the first lead about an anti-Lincoln conspiracy.

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Catherine Leroy, female photographer in Vietnam.

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The three women pictured in this incredible photograph from 1885 – Anandibai Joshi of India, Keiko Okami of Japan, and Sabat Islambouli of Syria – each became the first licensed female doctors in their respective countries.
The three were students at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania; one of the only places in the world at the time where women could study medicine.

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Female Samurai Warrior - Onno-Bugeisha - Female warrior belonging to the Japanese upper class. Many women engaged in battle, commonly alongside samurai men. They were members of the bushi (samurai) class in feudal Japan and were trained in the use of weapons to protect their household, family, and honour in times of war.

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One of the most feared of all London street gangs from the late 1880’s was a group of female toughs known as the Clockwork Oranges. They woulde later inspire Anthony burgess’ most notorious novel. Their main Rivals were the All-female “the Forty Elephants” gang.

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Maureen Dunlop de Popp, Pioneering female pilot who flew Spitfires during Second World War. She joined the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in 1942 and became one of a small group of female pilots who were trained to fly 38 types of aircraft.

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In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston marathon. After realizing that a woman was running, race organizer Jock Semple went after Switzer shouting, “Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers.” However, Switzer’s boyfriend and other male runners provided a protective shield during the entire marathon. The photographs taken of the incident made world headlines, and Kathrine later won the NYC marathon with a time of 3:07:29.

Women have always participated in fighting; whether that is in war or in breaking down barriers that have been set in front of us by society. 

Take inspiration from our foremothers and continue breaking down barriers, wherever you are. 

-FemaleWarrior, She/They 

nothing to do with my blog but how could I not reblog this???

Hey, quick point - your image for Onna Bugeisha is actually a kabuki actress. I know, because I’ve used the image for presentations on the subject. In her stead may I introduce Niijima Yae, aka Yamamoto Yaeko.

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Born in 1845.

In 1868, fought at the Battle of Aizu. Her father was the gunnery instructor, and she was trained on a Spencer carbine, which she used to defend the castle.

1871, divorced her husband and went to Kyoto to find her brother, who had been taken as a POW.

1871-1898, remarried a western-educated man, co-founded two schools (including a girls’ school), became a certified Tea Master and flower arranging instructor.

1890, following the death of her husband, became a Red Cross nurse. Served in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) leading a team of 40 nurses, and the Russo-Japanese War (1904). Decorated for her service in both.

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I’m proud of people adding their own knowledge to this.

“but adding women to [insert title] isn’t accurate!” women existed back then too, baby. history was just written by men, for men

fixyourwritinghabits:

the-queen-of-fire-and-ice:

sapphixxx:

Whenever I see someone refer to “Victorian era-” for places outside the UK I’m tempted to start saying shit like “Han Dynasty era Rome”, “Soviet era Australia” etc

This is an issue that really bothers me as a historian, so I curated this little list that, as far as I am aware, are the accurate names and dates for the different aesthetic movements/time periods in different countries

Dates: roughly 1837-1901 (The Reign of Queen Victoria)

Victorian Era (UK, Canada, Australia (British Empire))

Antebellum (America 1830-1864)/ Reconstruction (1865-1877)/ “The Guilded Age” (1877-1901)

Isabelino (Spain 1833-1868) /Alfonsino (1874-1885)

La Belle Epoque “The Golden Age” (France)

National Romatiska (Sweden 1880-1920)

Meiji Period (Japan)

Xianfang (China 1831-1861)/Tongzhi (1861-1875)/Guangxu (1875-1908)

Era Witorianska (Poland)

Tanzimat (Ottoman Empire)

Qajar (Iran)

Honestly I wish we would start doing this, at the very least in a tongue and cheek way, because it’s very easy to have a disjointed idea of history rather than remembering it all happened at the same time.

groovyseb:

thicc-vanexel:

The Mayans had mastered water pressure and had fountains and toilets as early as 750 AD.
Aztecs had running water and sewage.

The Victorians In the mid-1800s were dying of cholera because they just dumped their raw shit in the river Thames. They wouldn’t shower for months at a time because they were afraid of the polluted water.

Incans had created aquaducts in the slopes of the vast Andes mountains to reach the emperor, cities and farmers who used agricultural terraces.

Mayans, Aztecs, and Incans were far more advanced than the savage Europeans.

datvikingtho:

magelet-301:

darkbookworm13:

hogna-lenta:

prokopetz:

note-a-bear:

shrewreadings:

sunshinetrooper:

black and asian vikings 100% definitely existed (also, saami vikings)

you know how far you can get into eurasia and africa by sailing up rivers from the baltic and mediterranean seas? pretty fucking far, and that’s what vikings liked to do to trade

then, you know, people are people, so love happens, business happens, and so ppl get married and take spouses back home to the frozen hellscape that is scandinavia (upon which i’m guessing the horrorstruck new spouses went “WHAT THE FUCK??? FUCKING GIVE ME YOUR JACKET???????”)

and sometimes vikings bought thralls and brought them home as well, and i mean, when your indentured service is up after however many years and you’re a free person again, maaaaaaaaaaaaybe it’s a bit hard to get all the way home across the continent, so you make the best out of the situation and you probably get married and raise a gaggle kids

so yeah

viking kingdoms/communities were not uniformly pure white aryan fantasy paradises, so pls stop using my cultural history and ethnic background to excuse your racist discomfort with black ppl playing heimdall and valkyrie

Also we KNOW they got to Asia and Africa. 

Why?

Because Asians, Africans, and Vikings TOLD US SO. 

Also, we know there was significant mercantile trade between Scandinavia and parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Northern India, Kashmir, North and Eastern Africa because there is evidence in burial sites.

Check that out: the goods Vikings and Scandinavians were getting from their trade with the rest of the world was so important they buried themselves with it, as part of their treasure hordes.

We KNOW this.

There’s a reason you can still see many of the trade routes from the ancient world etched into the very earth.

Plus, we know that some Scandinavian cultures that participated in Viking raids had established minority communities of ethnically Mongolian folks living among them during the periods when such raids were common, and it’s difficult to credit that none of them would have signed on.

Islamic Ring in Viking Grave

Vikings in Persia

Black Vikings

Vikings in North Africa

Buddha statue in Viking hoard

Vikings brought Native American woman to Europe

Unflattering texts in Arabic about Vikings

Original text by Ahmad ibn-Fadlan

More about the Islamic World and Vikings (some Vikings converted to Islam! sort of sketchy site tho)

Viking technology came from Afghanistan

More on trade route determination via metallurgy

… is that enough? :)

I love this post, learning the history of this topic is fascinating.

@datvikingtho vikings for you

the Norse were fucking hardcore

I’ve said it before and I will say it again: the colonization of Pacific Islands is the greatest human adventure story of all time.


People using Stone Age technology built voyaging canoes capable of traveling thousands of miles, then set forth against the winds and currents to find tiny dots of land in the midst of the largest ocean on Earth. And having found them, they traveled back and forth, again and again, to settle them —all this, 500 to 1,000 years ago.


But one huge mystery, sometimes called “The Long Pause” leaves a gaping hole in this voyaging timeline.


Western Polynesia—the islands closest to Australia and New Guinea—were colonized around 3,500 years ago. But the islands of Central and Eastern Polynesia were not settled until 1,500 to 500 years ago. This means that after arriving in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, Polynesians took a break—for almost 2,000 years—before voyaging forth again.


Then when they did start again, they did so with a vengeance: archaeological evidence suggests that within a century or so after venturing forth, Polynesians discovered and settled nearly every inhabitable island in the central and eastern Pacific.


Nobody knows the reason for The Long Pause, or why the Polynesians started voyaging again.


Several theories have been proposed—from a favorable wind caused by a sustained period of El Niño, to visible supernovas luring the stargazing islanders to travel, to ciguatera poisoning caused by algae blooms.


Enter Moana, the latest Disney movie, set in what appears to be Samoa, even though most American audiences will see it as Hawaii.


Moana—pronounced “moh-AH-nah,” not “MWAH-nah” means “ocean,” and the character is chosen by the sea itself to return the stolen heart of [the island goddess] Te Fiti. An environmental catastrophe spreading across the island makes the mission urgent. And despite admonitions from her father against anyone going beyond the protective reef, Moana steals a canoe and embarks on her quest.


Moana’s struggle to learn to sail and get past the reef of her home island sets the stage for her learning of true wayfinding. It also shows traces of Armstrong Sperry’s stirring, classic book Call It Courage, and Tom Hanks’s Castaway.


But it is at the end of the film that a different and powerful angle of the story is revealed: Moana’s people had stopped voyaging long ago, and had placed a taboo—another Polynesian world—on going beyond the reef.


With the success of Moana’s mission and her having learned the art of wayfinding, her people start voyaging again.


And so the Long Pause comes to an end, Disney style, with a great fleet of canoes setting forth across the ocean to accomplish the greatest human adventure of all time. I admit to being moved by this scene.


As someone who lectures on traditional oceanic navigation and migration, I can say resoundingly that it is high time the rest of the world learned this amazing story.

— The Smithsonian | How the Story of “Moana” and Maui Holds Up Against Cultural Truths
(via leafo-flameo)

ancient-soul:

malomanum:

Today I found out that the name Alexandra is found in Linear B, and it’s kind of blowing my mind because that means that name has been in use for at least 4500 years

The name actually appears earliest in its feminine form, Alexandra, as a-re-ka-sa-da-ra before we ever see the masculine variant Alexander! 

It’s also thought that it may have meant “defender FROM men” in addition to “defender of men”. This comes to be used as an alternate name for Kassandra, who may have been worshipped as a protector of unmarried girls and young women from the unwanted attentions of men!

Women In History

snowtiefling:

cousinborris:

your-naked-magic-oh-dear-lord:

randomstabbing:

trilliath:

friendlycloud:

craftykryptonitealpaca:

craftykryptonitealpaca:

craftykryptonitealpaca:

I grew up believing that women had contributed nothing to the world until the 1960′s. So once I became a feminist I started collecting information on women in history, and here’s my collection so far, in no particular order. 

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Lepa Svetozara Radić (1925–1943) was a partisan executed at the age of 17 for shooting at German soldiers during WW2. As her captors tied the noose around her neck, they offered her a way out of the gallows by revealing her comrades and leaders identities. She responded that she was not a traitor to her people and they would reveal themselves when they avenged her death. She was the youngest winner of the Order of the People’s Hero of Yugoslavia, awarded in 1951


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23 year old Phyllis Latour Doyle was British spy who parachuted into occupied Normandy in 1944 on a reconnaissance mission in preparation for D-day. She relayed 135 secret messages before France was finally liberated. 


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Catherine Leroy, War Photographer starting with the Vietnam war. She was taken a prisoner of war. When released she continued to be a war photographer until her death in 2006.


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Lieutenant Pavlichenko was a Ukrainian sniper in WWII, with a total of 309 kills, including 36 enemy snipers. After being wounded, she toured the US to promote friendship between the two countries, and was called ‘fat’ by one of her interviewers, which she found rather amusing. 


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Johanna Hannie “Jannetje” Schaft was born in Haarlem. She studied in Amsterdam had many Jewish friends. During WWII she aided many people who were hiding from the Germans and began working in resistance movements. She helped to assassinate two nazis. She was later captured and executed. Her last words were “I shoot better than you.”. 


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Nancy wake was a resistance spy in WWII, and was so hated by the Germans that at one point she was their most wanted person with a price of 5 million francs on her head. During one of her missions, while parachuting into occupied France, her parachute became tangled in a tree. A french agent commented that he wished that all trees would bear such beautiful fruit, to which she replied “Don’t give me any of that French shit!”, and later that evening she killed a German sentry with her bare hands. 


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After her husband was killed in WWII, Violette Szabo began working for the resistance. In her work, she helped to sabotage a railroad and passed along secret information. She was captured and executed at a concentration camp at age 23. 


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Grace Hopper was a computer scientist who invented the first ever compiler. Her invention makes every single computer program you use possible. 


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Mona Louise Parsons was a member of an informal resistance group in the Netherlands during WWII. After her resistance network was infiltrated, she was captured and was the first Canadian woman to be imprisoned by the Nazis. She was originally sentenced to death by firing squad, but the sentence was lowered to hard lard labor in a prison camp. She escaped. 


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Simone Segouin was a Parisian rebel who killed an unknown number of Germans and captured 25 with the aid of her submachine gun. She was present at the liberation of Paris and was later awarded the ‘croix de guerre’. 


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Mary Edwards Walker is the only woman to have ever won an American Medal of Honor. She earned it for her work as a surgeon during the Civil War. It was revoked in 1917, but she wore it until hear death two years later. It was restored posthumously. 


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Italian neuroscientist won a Nobel Prize for her discovery of nerve growth factor. She died aged 103. 

EDIT

jinxedinks added: Her name was Rita Levi-Montalcini. She was jewish, and so from 1938 until the end of the fascist regime in Italy she was forbidden from working at university. She set up a makeshift lab in her bedroom and continued with her research throughout the war.  


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A snapshot of the women of color in the woman’s army corps on Staten Island


This is an ongoing project of mine, and I’ll update this as much as I can (It’s not all WWII stuff, I’ve got separate folders for separate achievements). 

File this under: The History I Wish I’d Been Taught As A Little Girl

Part 2

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Annie Jump Cannon was an american astronomer and, in addition to possibly having one of the best names in history, was co-creator of one of the first scientific classification systems of stars, based on temperature. 


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Melba Roy Moutan was a Harvard educated mathematician who led a team of mathematicians at NASA, nicknamed ‘Computers’ for their number processing prowess. 


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Joyce Jacobson Kaufman was a chemist who developed the concept of conformational topology, and studied at Johns Hopkins University before it officially allowed women entry in 1970. 


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Vera Rubin is an astronomer and has co-authored 114 peer reviewed papers. She specializes in the study of dark matter and galaxy rotation rates. 


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Mary Sherman Morgan was a rocket scientist who invented hydyne, a liquid fuel that powered the USA’s Jupiter C-rocket. 


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Chien-Siung Wu was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, as well as experimental radioactive studies. She was the first woman to become president of the American Physical Society. 


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Mildred Catherine Rebstock was the first person to synthesize the antibiotic chloromycetin.


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Ruby Hirose was a chemist who conducted vital research about an infant paralysis vaccine. 


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Hattie Elizabeth Alexander was a pediatrician and microbiologist who developed a remedy for Haemophilus influenzae, and conducted vital research on antibiotic resistance. 


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Marie Tharp was a scientist who mapped the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and provided proof of continental drift. 


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Mae Jamison is an astronaut who holds a degree in chemical engineering from Stanford University and was the first black woman in space.


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Ada Lovelace was a mathematician and considered to be the world’s first computer programmer. 


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Patricia E Bath is ophthalmologist and the inventor of the Laserphaco Probe, which is used to treat cataracts. 


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Barbara McClintock won a Nobel prize for her discovery that genes could move in and between chromosomes.

That’s it for now, part three will be on its way. (Josephine Baker was requested in the first installment, just know I did not forget her! She’s in a different folder, titled ‘famous people you didn’t know were complete badasses, and she, along with Hedy Lamar and Audrey Hepburn will be in the next installment :) )

Part 3

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Josephine Baker, though today remembered for her dancing, singing, and larger than life personality, actually played a significant role in WWII. She joined Women’s Auxiliary of the Free French Air Force, got her pilot’s license in 1933, and by 1944 she raised 3,143,000 francs for the war effort. She entertained the troops, which was a doubly whammy of justice. She refused to entertain segregated troops, so the French military was forced to integrate the troops for all her performances. She also smuggled secret messages in her music across countless borders. 


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Audrey Hepburn is known as one of the most beautiful and talent actresses of the 1950′s, but her contributions to the world started far before her first film and continued until well after her cinematic heyday. In WWII stricken Austria, Audrey, then an aspiring ballerina, would give secret ballet performances to raise money for the Austrian resistance. She even helped smuggle secret messages for the resistance. On one such occasion, she was stopped by an enemy soldier. He asked her what she was doing and she, pretending not to understand, presented him with a bouquet of wildflowers she’d been absentmindedly picking. She was let go and the message was delivered safely. It was her experience in the war which would later prompt her to become one of the founders of UNICEF. 


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Hedy Lamarr was an actress well known for her piercing gaze and deadpan wit. What she’s less known for is being a brilliant mathematician who invented the frequency hopping spread spectrum. Without her invention, we wouldn’t have bluetooth or wifi. 


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Ching Shih was one of the world’s most successful pirates. At the death of her (pirate) husband, the former prostitute took command of his ships and started her pirating career. At the height of her career she commanded 1800 ships and more than 80,000 male and female pirates. She became powerful enough to challenge every empire’s naval forces in the world and her Red Flag Fleet was feared from the Chinese coast to Malaysia. Unable to defeat her, the Chinese government caved and offered her amnesty. She surprised everyone by taking it and became one of the few pirates in history to retire. She also took care of her crew even after her retirement; most of Ching’s pirates were pardoned. She died a respectable millionaire. 


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Sophie School was an active member of the White Rose non-violent resistance group in WWII Germany. In 1943 she, along with her brother and the rest of the White Rose were arrested for passing out leaflets encouraging passive resistance. She and her brother were beheaded by guillotine just a few hours later. Her last words were “How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause. Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”


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(Written by Emporer-of-nerds) Constance Markievicz (was a) Very important figure in the Irish independence movement, first woman elected to the British House of Commons, and one of the first women to hold a cabinet position in government (Minister for Labour of the Irish Republic (which was a short-lived revolutionary state predating the current Ireland/Éire))!


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Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English ambassador to Turkey in the early 1700s, and documented her experience carefully. When she saw the Turkish perform an early method of small-pox vaccination, she urgently wrote home. She is responsible for the first variolation small-pox vaccinations in Europe. 


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Marie Curie is fairly well known. Unfortunately she’s often known as the ‘assistant’ to her husband. She was a pioneering physicist and chemist, who’s work with radiation was groundbreaking. She was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the only one to win one in two fields for her discovery of polonium and uranium. It’s also notable that she was the first woman in Europe to receive a doctorate degree. Her discoveries made the x-ray machine possible, and Curie immediately put it to work. She invented a small, mobile type of x-ray machine and worked with her daughter at casualty collection points in WWI, using the machine to locate shrapnel and bullets in wounded soldiers. She died of pernicious anemia, a result of years of radioactive exposure. Many of her notebooks are still too radioactive to be read. 


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Margherita Hack was an Italian astrophysicist and became administrator of the Trieste Astronomical Observatory, bringing it to renowned respect and fame. She was a prolific science writer and was awarded the Targa Giuseppe Piazzi for the scientific research, and later the Cortina Ulisse Prize for scientific dissemination. Asteroid 8558 Hack, discovered in 1995, was named in her honor.

(This installment was a little all over the place as far as achievements go, and short, since it was mostly requests! Hypatia of Alexandria was also requested but she, along with Sappho and others, are getting their own installment. The next installment will center around women of the literary world!)

Great respect for this!

Note that there were many many more, both before and after photography was invented.

Don’t ever let some fuckboy tell you that women just cleaned and cooked until very recently.

I feel like I want, like, amazing, huge portraits painted of all these women in the finest fine art oils, and for them to adorn hallowed halls everywhere.

A WOMEN OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY MUSEUM.

Can I see some movies about these gals?

Lieutenant Pavlichenko  has a movie

@fuckyeahwarriorwomen