No cultural symbol of the 1920s is more recognizable than the flapper. A young woman with a short “bob” hairstyle, cigarette dangling from her painted lips, dancing to a live jazz band. Flappers romped through the Roaring Twenties, enjoying the new freedoms ushered in by the end ...read more
The Mexican Revolution rose out of a struggle for civil liberties and land and would eventually topple the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and begin a new age for Mexico. The war, which started in 1910, was, at its core, one of the first social revolutions and women—as well as ...read more
September 11, 2001 was supposed to be a typical day for Lieutenant Heather Penney of the District of Columbia Air National Guard. As Penney recalled in a 2016 interview with HISTORY, that morning she was attending a briefing at Andrews Air Force Base, planning the month’s ...read more
On September 7, 1968, a group of women led by the New York Radical Women gathered outside Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey to protest the Miss America pageant being broadcast live inside. The unexpectedly large gathering of protesters, their theatrical antics on the ...read more
Women (and men) began surfing in Hawaii and other Polynesian islands at least as far back as the 17th century. And while Christian missionaries tried to suppress surfing in the 1800s, a Hawaiian princess helped bring it back long before Gidget and Moondoggie hit the beach.Prior ...read more
Martha Gadley’s marriage was a nightmare. When her husband drank, he turned increasingly violent. One night, he used an ax to chop a hole in the floor and threatened to push her into the room below. He refused to bring her water when she was sick. When she left the house, he ...read more
“ENGLAND OR DROWN!” proclaimed the New York Daily News on its frontpages. It was August 6, 1926, the day that an American, Gertrude Ederle, was poised to become the first woman to swim the English Channel.Only five men had ever swum the waterway before. The challenges included ...read more
On the surface, it was just another tea party—a well-behaved group of women passing cups of brewed beverages around the genteel table of Jane Hunt, a well-to-do New York woman who had invited four others to dine with her.But this tea party was not for shrinking violets. Hunt’s ...read more
Women have always played vital roles in revolutionary uprisings, contrary to popular patriarchal narratives. Throughout history, thousands of women have fought against regimes they perceived as oppressive, either with the pen, the podium, or their own fists. In honor of July ...read more
This week the Miss America Organization announced they were dropping the swimsuit competition—the main component of the first Miss America pageant—from future contests. While all eyes are now on the scholarship organization and the authenticity of its stand to prioritize ...read more
This week, the Miss America Organization announced that it’s eliminating the swimsuit competition in an effort to focus less on women’s appearances. It’s not clear what, exactly, the beauty pageant will be about now that it’s trying to deemphasize the “beauty” part. In any case, ...read more
On December 16, 1941, nine days after Pearl Harbor, a mother of three from Maryland named Adelaide Hawkins signed an affidavit with the U.S. Office of Strategic Services [OSS] in Washington saying she would “defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, ...read more
It came in a brown bottle, marketed as a safe way for married women to treat menstrual disorders. But the contents of that little brown bottle were as potent as a bomb. Inside was Enovid, the world’s first birth control pill. Soon, Enovid would usher in a new era of sexual ...read more
Confederate President Jefferson Davis occupied an anxious home in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War. A steady leak of information dripped from the highest ranks of the Confederacy to the Union. Davis was wary of a mole in his house, but had no idea how to stop the flow of ...read more
Supreme Court Justice nomination hearings are never dull. But few observers expected the issue of whether Clarence Thomas should serve on the highest court of the land to become a firestorm—and a national referendum on sexual harassment.That all changed on October 11, 1991, when ...read more
It was an electric day in Detroit for those passing through Cobo Hall at a NAACP celebration dinner in April of 1995. Rosa Parks and her niece, Urana McCauley, had come for the event following the death of McCauley’s grandmother. At just 19 years old, McCauley was in awe. The ...read more
Mary Todd Lincoln paced the parlor alone. Hours before, she had witnessed the point-blank assassination of her husband Abraham Lincoln at the nearby Ford’s Theatre; now, she had been banished from the president’s bedside by a furious Secretary of War Edward Stanton, who kicked ...read more
Farming families in Buckingham County, Virginia crowded into the tent, peering eagerly at the spectacle in front of them. It wasn’t a political meeting, or a church revival—it was a turkey-cooking contest, and it riveted the crowd.The turkeys weren’t the center of attention at ...read more
History Reads is a weekly series featuring work from Team History, a group of experts and influencers, exploring history’s most fascinating questions.“Well-behaved women seldom make history,” wrote Harvard historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich memorably in 1976. She argued that ...read more
Roe v. Wade was a landmark legal decision issued on January 22, 1973, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute banning abortion, effectively legalizing the procedure across the United States. The court held that a woman’s right to an abortion was implicit in ...read more
History Flashback takes a look at historical “found footage” of all kinds—newsreels, instructional films, even cartoons—to give us a glimpse into how much things have changed, and how much has remained the same.During World War II, it was a common sight in the U.S. to see ...read more
When the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity decided to sell some land they owned in Dublin, Ireland, to pay their debts in 1992, the nuns followed the proper procedures. They petitioned officials for permission to move the bodies of women buried in the cemetery at their Donnybrook ...read more
History and lore of the American frontier have long been dominated by an iconic figure: the grizzled, gunslinging man, going it alone, leaving behind his home and family to brave the rugged, undiscovered wilderness.But as scholars of the American West continue to explore the ...read more
