My Science School

Amelia Earhart was an American aviator who set many flying records and championed the advancement of women in aviation. She became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first person ever to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland.

Amelia Earhart didn’t flinch. The 21-year-old was attending an air show in Canada in 1918 when a stunt plane dived right toward her. But instead of running out of the way, she faced the plane down  hat wasn’t Earhart’s only brave moment. Born in Kansas on July 24, 1897, she volunteered during World War I starting in 1917, treating wounded Canadian soldiers returning from the European battlefields. Nearby were pilot practice fields, where she discovered her passion for flying.

"...decide...whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying..." said Amelia Earhart, and she lived her life based on her own words. As a child, she was known for her fierce independence, quite uncommon for girls of the era, and was full of adventure traits that would immortalise her, well after her death.

Ironically, when Earhart saw her first aircraft at the lowa State Fair in Des Moines, as a 10-year-old, her father tried to pique his daughters' interest in taking their first flight. However, one look at the rickety thing and all she wanted to do was return to her merry-go-round for she found the plane to be "a thing of rusty wire and wood and not at all interesting".

However, it seemed she was destined to take to the skies one way or the other for, when she was 23, on December 28, 1920, she and her father attended an aerial meet at Daugherty Field in Long Beach, California. After inquiring about flying lessons, she was booked for a passenger flight the following day, and the cost was $10 for a 10-minute flight with Frank Hawks. That ride changed her life forever, and in her book, Last Flight, she reveals how. "By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly." Not too long after, she bought The Canary, her first plane, a second-hand yellow Kinner Airster.

Take off

On May 16, 1923, Earhart became the 16th woman in the U.S., to be issued a pilot's license by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Soon after, a series of events led her to live in Medford, Massachusetts. Her interest in aviation strong as ever, she became a member of the American Aeronautical Society's Boston chapter and was eventually elected its vice president. She also flew the first official flight out of Dennison Airport in 1927. She donned multiple hats as she penned local newspaper columns promoting flying. And as her interest grew, so did her fame. =

Then, in 1928, Earhart received a phone call from Capt. Hilton H. Railey, who asked her if she was interested in flying the Atlantic. Later, that year, she I was a passenger on a transatlantic flight and became the first woman to do so. Four years later, she set off on her own from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland, to Paris. Though she landed in Ireland instead, because of weather conditions and mechanical failure, she was instrumental in setting two records she became the first woman and the second person to fly solo across the Atlantic. For this, she was awarded a gold medal from the National Geographic Society, presented by Herbert Hoover, then U.S. President.

In 1935, she added another feather to her cap, another first to her list of achievements –she became the first person to fly from Hawaii to the American mainland, thus, also becoming the first person to fly solo over the Pacific and consequently, the first to fly solo over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Final flight

Nowhere close to being done, in June 1937, she set forth on a J mission to circumnavigate the earth by air. In short, she aimed to fly around the world at the equator and thus become the first woman in the world to do so. With her new plane, Lockheed Electra, 39-year-old Earhart set off on the journey from Miami, the US, along with her navigator Fred Noonan After multiple stops along the way, including Karachi and Calcutta, on June 29, they landed in Lae, Papua New Guinea, with just 7,000 miles left in their journey, after which they took off on July 2 for Howland Island, about 2.500 miles from Lae. It was deemed the most challenging leg of their trip.

However, after a run-in with inclement weather and fading radio transmissions, all contact with the Electra was lost, for, the plane carrying Amelia and Noonan vanished. Search efforts went on till 1939, within which time, multiple speculations and theories had arisen about her disappearance. However, on January 5, 1939, Earhart was declared dead.

Earhart's impact on women's rights was unmissable, and throughout her life, she doggedly represented what she thought women ought to do and stand for. In 1935, she was an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counsellor to female students, at Purdue University. She was also a member of the National Woman's Party and an early supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment. She remained an inspiration for women, silently motivating them to fly high, literally, and otherwise, while she lived, and much later too, decades after her death.

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Emmeline Pankhurst was an English political activist and a leading figure in the suffrage movement in Great Britain. Her tireless campaigning in the face of police brutality and failing personal health made her an icon of British politics. Let us look at one of her most influential public addresses titled, "Freedom or Death"

On November 13, 1913, British activist Emmeline Pankhurst gave one of the most influential speeches of the suffragette movement titled, Freedom or Death" at a meeting of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in Hartford, Connecticut. U.S.

On this day, the founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) took the stage to argue that women's liberation could only be achieved by civil war.

Sign of the times

One of the greatest political changes of the 20th Century was obtaining the vote for women; but behind this accomplishment lay decades of refusals by successive governments.

The long-standing campaign for women's suffrage began in 1865 but when years of peaceful protest and innumerable petitions failed to translate into political change, women took to the streets to rally for their right to vote. It was during this time that Emmeline Pankhurst. along with her daughters Christabel and Sylvia, came up with a public campaign of engagement and spectacle to gain media attention change public opinion, and influence the Parliament through (their motto) deeds and not words.

Freedom or Death

In her 1913 speech, Pankhurst addressed herself as a soldier on leave from the battle, since she was temporarily relieved from her prison sentence on account of what was popularly called the "cat and mouse act"

But her failing health could not derail her from utilising this occasion to speak on the need to fight against the injustices perpetrated on women by society. At the time working women she explained, were earning a meagre amount of two dollars a week: wives had no right on their husband's property and no legal say in the upbringing of their children. Girls were seen as marriageable at the age of 12 and divorce was considered to be an act against God: violence and assault on women rarely received any significant penalty, and above all, there was no legal framework that represented their gender in the constitutional setup. In this political environment, the right to vote, she insisted, was the first step towards getting political equality and attaining full citizenship.

The path to militancy Justifying the rise of the self-proclaimed militant suffragettes, she proclaimed "you cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs" The double standard of the society that reveres men as the harbinger of change and women as creatures to be domesticated has forced us down this road. The history of politics is a testament to the fact that one has to be more noisy" and disruptive to gain the media's attention and see their grievances addressed.

Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act 1913

 This 1913 law, also known as the cat and mouse act, was especially passed to suppress the women's movement and allowed for the early release of prisoners who were so weakened by partaking in hunger strikes that they were on the verge of dying. Addressing this legislative move by the Government, she said "There are women lying at death's door... who have not given in and won't give in... they are being carried from their sick beds on stretchers into meetings. They are too weak to speak, but they go amongst their fellow workers just to show that their spirits are unquenched and that their spirit is alive, and they mean to go on as long as life lasts...either women are to be killed or women are to have the vote." (excerpt from Freedom or Death)

World War-l

Less than a year after this speech World War I broke out. The government released all imprisoned suffragists to join the workforce and support the war effort. It was only after the Representation of the People Act was passed in 1918 that property-owning British women over 30 were granted the right to vote.

Key takeaways from the speech

1. One must never hesitate to fight for social good.
2.  Women's rights are human rights.
3.  Equality is the soul of liberty.
4. It takes courage to challenge the familiar and resilience to succeed.
5.  Actions hold more meaning than words.

DID YOU KNOW?

• The colour scheme for the Suffragette movement was purple, white and green which stood for dignity purity and fertility.
• Pank-a-Squith was a pro women's suffrage board game created by WSPU in the early 1900s. The game's goal was to avoid all the pitfalls of suffragette life and get the right to vote.
• The Museum of London holds the diary entries, letters and sketchbooks written on toilet paper, passed between imprisoned suffragettes and eventually smuggled out of the prison building.

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Malala Yousafzai, (born July 12, 1997, Mingora, Swat valley, Pakistan), Pakistani activist who, while a teenager, spoke out publicly against the prohibition on the education of girls that was imposed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; sometimes called Pakistani Taliban).

October 9, 2012, was a day like any other, when a group of young girls were on their bus ride back home, in Pakistan's Swat Valley, after an exam at school. They were unwinding on the ride, like every other student after an exam. Chit-chat and laughter filled the bus until terror struck. A masked gunman onboarded, and even before the girls could gather themselves and overcome their initial shock, he shouted, "Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all."

Upon being identified, a 15-year-old was shot at While two others were wounded in the shooting, it was the former who was most affected. She was Malala Yousafzai, and had been shot for constantly speaking up for the education rights of girls in the Valley, and opposing the Taliban's draconian rules and their acts of destroying schools and obstructing eduction. It is in honour of this fierce. courageous teen that the United Nations declared July 12. her birthday, as International Malala Day, in 2013, on her 16th birthday, when she spoke at the UN to call for worldwide access to education.

Early days

Daughter of education activist Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala had grown up knowing the importance of education. She was further inspired by the twice-elected Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and started speaking about education rights as early as September 2008, when she was just 11.

However, Malala's first step towards fame came in late 2008, when BBC Urdu website's Aamer Ahmed Khan and his colleagues, zeroed in on a novel way to cover Pakistani Taliban's growing sway in Swat. They decided to ask a schoolgirl to blog anonymously about her life there. Their Peshawar correspondent, who had been in touch with a local school teacher, Ziauddin Yousafzai, could not find any students willing to report, as their families deemed it dangerous. Finally, he suggested that his own daughter, 11-year-old Malal do it, and on January 3, 2009, her first entry was posted on the BBC Urdu blog. Later, that year, she and her father were approached by a New York Times reporter for a documentary, and interviews on several news channels. By the end of 2009. her BBC blogging identity was revealed.

Danger brews

As her fame rose, so did the imminent jeopardy to her life. Death threats against her were published in newspapers, slipped under her door, and posted on Facebook. It culminated in the attack in October 2012. She was airlifted to the military hospital in Peshawar, then moved to Rawalpindi's Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology, and finally to the UK's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where she underwent surgeries.

Whilst convalescing in hospital, on October 15 2012. UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, the former British Prime Minister, visited her and launched a petition in her name and "in support of what Malala fought for". Under the slogan I am Malala, its main demand was that there be no child left out of school by 2015.

Youngest Nobel laureate

She was discharged from the hospital on January 3, 2013, and continued with her activism soon after. In October 2014, along with Indian children's rights activist Kailash Vidyarthi, she was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, for her struggle against the suppression of children and young people, and for the right of all children to education. At 17, she became the youngest Nobel laureate, and the second Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize after Physics laureate Abdus Salam, in 1979. Today, she continues to serve the cause of education and work towards what she truly believes.

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Lakshmi Menon, an Ernakulam-based social entrepreneur and designer, has fashioned eco-friendly mattresses for COVID-19 patients from PPE scrap material.

When Lakshmi Menon saw a poor family sleeping on the bare ground, she decided to do something to help the needy. In March 2020, she conceived the idea of shayya mattresses made out of tailoring scrap.

PPE to the rescue

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, hospitals and First-Line Treatment Centres (FLTCS) in Kerala struggled to provide enough beds for patients. Mattresses became the need of the hour, each one costing between 500-700. When Lakshmi called up tailoring units for scrap to make shayyas, she discovered that they had switched to making personal protective equipment (PPE) suits for healthcare workers. A lot of scrap material is generated while making these suits. As it contains small amounts of plastic, it can be disposed of or recycled by a professional agency only something that many tailors cannot afford. So, they would get rid of the scrap by burning it, causing air pollution. Lakshmi then decided to create shayyas from PPE scrap.

These mattresses are easy to make, requiring no stitching. The scraps are braided together and arranged in a zigzag manner before their ends are tied together with scrap cloth. The resulting shayya is 1.8 m (6 ft) long and 0.7 m (2.5 ft) wide. Unlike a regular mattress, which is difficult to disinfect, it can be washed with soap and reused.

Jobs for local women

 Lakshmi employs around 20 local women who had become jobless during the lockdown. Each woman makes one shayya a day, for which she is paid 300. A shayya is sold at the same price to cover the labour charge. Around 700 shayyas have been donated so far.

Lakshmi's innovative project addressed three major issues - waste management, job creation and the lack of bedding for patients. It has t been recognised by the United Nations in their list of best practices. To enable NGOs, students, etc. to replicate her model, Lakshmi provides them with online training.

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Julia Lorraine Hill (known as Julia Butterfly Hill, born February 18, 1974) is an American environmental activist and tax redirection advocate. She is best known for having lived in a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, roughly 1500-year-old California redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997 and December 18, 1999.

When Julia Lorraine Hill was seven years old, a butterfly landed on her finger during a hike with her family in Arkansas, USA. Amazingly, it stayed there for the rest of the hike, earning her the nickname 'Butterfly'.

At age 22, Julia was in a near-fatal car accident. The crash changed her life. She decided to become an eco-warrior.

Hill climbs Luna

Julia joined the movement to preserve the redwood forest in Humboldt County, California. Hundreds of the massive, ancient redwood trees were marked for cutting down by the Pacific Lumber Company. Several activists prevented the loggers from chopping the trees by climbing them and staying put for a few hours, sometimes a few days. Julia chose a 55-m-tall redwood that was almost 1500 years old and climbed it on December 10, 1997. She called it Luna because she had ascended it on a moonlit night.

Though she hadn't planned on it, the days turned into weeks. Soon, the 24-year-old had spent 42 days atop Luna, longer than anyone else! Volunteers from Earth First! and other organisations helped her build a covered shelter on top of the tree.

Succeeds finally

During her 738-day vigil, the logging company subjected Julia to loud horns and blinding lights. They flew helicopters so close that she was buffeted by strong winds from the rotors. She also lived through one of the worst winters in California history. However, Julia stuck firm. She only came down on December 18, 1999, when the company agreed to preserve Luna and create a three-acre buffer zone around itJulia wrote a memoir called The Legacy of Luna and continued to work actively against deforestation. She set up Circle of Life, a foundation that offers tools for sustainable living.

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On June 18, 1983, Sally K. Ride was onboard the space shuttle Challenger for the STS-7 mission, thereby becoming the first American woman to go into space. Apart from making two space flights, Ride championed the cause of science education for children.

The first decades of space exploration was largely dominated by two countries the US and the Soviet Union This period is even referred to as the Space Race as the two Cold War adversaries pitted themselves: against each other to achieve superior spaceflight capabilities.

While the two countries were neck and neck in most aspects. the Soviets sent a woman to space much before the US. Even though Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in June 1963, it was another 20 years before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space

Urged to explore

Ride was the older of two daughters born  to Carol Joyce Ride and Dale Ride. Even though her mother was a counsellor and her father a professor of political science. Ride credits them for fostering her interest in science by enabling her to explore from a very young age.

An athletic teenager, Ride loved sports such as tennis, running, volleyball, and softball. In fact, she attended Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles on a partial tennis scholarship. She even tried her luck in professional tennis, before returning to California to attend Stanford University.

By 1973, Ride not only had a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics, but had also obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She got her Master of Science degree in 1975 and obtained her Ph.D. in Physics by 1978

Restriction removed

Having restricted astronaut qualification to men for decades,  NASA expanded astronaut selection with the advent of the space shuttle from only pilots to engineers and scientists, opening the doorway for women finally. Having seen an ad in a newspaper inviting women to apply for the astronaut programme Ride decided to give it a shot

Out of more than 8,000 applications, Ride became one of six women who were chosen as an astronaut candidate in January 1978. Spaceflight training began soon after and it included parachute jumping, water survival, weightlessness, radio communications, and navigation, among others. She was also involved in developing the robot arm used to deploy and retrieve satellites.

Ride served as part of the ground-support crew for STS-2 and STS-3 missions in November 1981 and March 1982. In April 1982, NASA announced that Ride would be part of the STS-7 crew, serving as a mission specialist in a five-member crew.

First American woman in space

On June 18, 1983, Ride became the first American woman in space. By the time the STS-7 mission was completed and the space shuttle Challenger returned to Earth on June 24, they had launched communications satellites for Canada and Indonesia. As an expert in the use of the shuttle's robotic arm, Ride also helped deploy and retrieve a satellite in space using the robot arm.

Ride created history once again when she became the first American woman to travel to space a second time as part of the STS-41G in October 1984. During this nine-day mission, Ride employed the shuttle's robotic arm to remove ice from the shuttle's exterior and to also readjust a radar antenna. There could have even been a third, as she was supposed to join STS-61M, but that mission was cancelled following the 1986 Challenger disaster.

Even after her days of space travel were over, Ride was actively involved in influencing the space programme. When accident investigation boards were set up in response to two shuttle tragedies - Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 Ride was a part of them both.

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Geetanjali Shree has become the first Indian author to win the prestigious International Booker Prize for her "utterly original" Hindi novel "Tomb of Sand", a family saga set in northern India about an 80-year-old woman who travels to Pakistan to confront the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition and re-evaluates what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman and a feminist.

At a ceremony in London on Thursday, the 64-year-old New Delhi-based writer said she was "completely overwhelmed" with the "bolt from the blue" as she accepted her 50,000-pound prize, and shared it with the book's English translator Daisy Rockwell. The prize is split between author and translator equally.

"Tomb of Sand", originally "Ret Samadhi", is set in northern India and follows an 80-year-old woman in a tale the Booker judges dubbed a "joyous cacophony" and an "irresistible novel".

"I never dreamt of the Booker. I never thought I could. What a huge recognition, I'm amazed, delighted, honoured and humbled," said Shree in her acceptance speech. "There is a melancholy satisfaction in the award going to it. 'Ret Samadhi/Tomb of Sand' is an elegy for the world we inhabit, a lasting energy that retains hope in the face of impending doom. The Booker will surely take it to many more people than it would have reached otherwise, that should do the book no harm," she said.

Reflecting upon becoming the first work of fiction in Hindi to make the Booker cut, the author said it felt good to be the means of that happening. "But behind me and this book lies a rich and flourishing literary tradition in Hindi, and in other South Asian languages. World literature will be richer for knowing some of the finest writers in these languages. The vocabulary of life will increase from such an interaction," she said.

Rockwell, a painter, writer and translator living in Vermont, US, joined her on stage to receive her award for translating the novel she described as a "love letter to the Hindi language". "Ultimately, we were captivated by the power, the poignancy and the playfulness of ‘Tomb of Sand’, Geetanjali Shree's polyphonic novel of identity and belonging, in Daisy Rockwell's exuberant, coruscating translation," said Frank Wynne, chair of the judging panel.

This is a luminous novel of India and Partition, but one whose spellbinding brio and fierce compassion weaves youth and age, male and female, family and nation into a kaleidoscopic whole," he said.

The book's 80-year-old protagonist, Ma, to her family's consternation, insists on travelling to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.

The Booker jury was impressed that rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Shree's playful tone and exuberant wordplay resulted in a book that is "engaging. funny, and utterly original", at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.

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Enheduanna, a princess and priestess, who lived in the 23rd Century BC, is considered to be the world's first known author. She lived 1,700 hundred years before Sappho, and 1,500 years before Homer. She was born in Mesopotamia, the birthplace of the first cities and cultures. Her father King Sargon the Great, was history's first empire builder who conquered the separate independent city-states of Mesopotamia under a unified banner.

Royal Duties

Sargon was viewed as a foreign invader by the people of the older Sumerian cities of the south because he spoke Akkadian and belonged to the north. To bridge the gap between the two cultures, the king appointed his only daughter, Enheduanna, as the high priestess.

The women of the royal family were well educated and traditionally served religious roles in the kingdom. They were taught to read and write in both Sumerian and Akkadian and trained to perform mathematical calculations.

Until Enheduanna, writing was only used in record-keeping rather than composing original literary works that could be attributed to an author. Her duties entailed managing the city's grain storage facilities, overseeing hundreds of temple workers and presiding over monthly sacred rituals.

Her written works aimed at bringing together the older Sumerian cultures and the newer Akkadian civilisation. She accomplished this by composing 42 religious hymns that combined mythologies from both traditions.

Enheduanna's poetry for Goddess Inanna (goddess of desire and war), is considered to be her most valuable contribution to the literary tradition of the time. Her odes to the deity mark the first time an author used the personal pronoun T. After her demise, she was honoured as a minor deity. Her poetry was widely circulated, studied and performed throughout the empire for over 500 years. Her works went on to inspire and influence the Hebrew Old Testament, the epics of Homer and many Christian hymns. Today, her legacy is preserved in excavated clay tables from that period.

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The first woman to travel in space was Soviet cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova. On 16 June 1963, Tereshkova was launched on a solo mission aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6. She spent more than 70 hours orbiting the Earth, two years after Yuri Gagarin’s first human-crewed flight in space.

Tereshkova was born on 6 March 1937 in the village of Bolshoye Maslennikovo in central Russia. Her mother was a textile worker, and her father was a tractor driver who was later recognised as a war hero during World War Two. At the time of his death on the Finnish front, Tereshkova was only two years old. 

After leaving school, Tereshkova followed her mother into work at a textile factory. Her first appreciation of flying was going down rather than up when she joined a local skydiving and parachutist club. It was her hobby of jumping out of planes that appealed to the Soviets' space programme committee. On applying to the cosmonaut corps, Tereshkova was eventually chosen from more than 400 other candidates. 

Tereshkova received 18 months of severe training with the Soviet Air Force after her selection. These tests studied her abilities to cope physically under the extremes of gravity, as well as handle challenges such as emergency management and the isolation of being in space alone. At 24 years old, she was honourably inducted into the Soviet Air Force. Tereshkova still holds the title as the youngest woman, and the first civilian to fly in space. 

While Tereshkova remains the only woman to have flown solo in space, her mission was a dual flight. Fellow cosmonaut Valeriy Bykovsky launched on Vostok 5 on 14 June 1963. Two days later, Tereshkova launched. The two spacecraft took different flight paths and came within three miles of each other. The cosmonauts exchanged communications while making 48 orbits of Earth, with Tereshkova responding to Bykovsky via her callsign ‘Seagull’. During the flight, the Soviet state television network broadcast a video of Tereshkova inside the capsule, and she spoke with the Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev over the radio. 

In her later life, Tereshkova was decorated with prestigious medals and has held several prominent political positions both for the Russian and global councils. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, she was an official head of State and was elected a member of the World Peace Council in 1966. 

Today, she holds the position of Deputy Chair for the Committee for International Affairs in Russia. She also remains active within the space community and is quoted as suggesting that she would like to fly to Mars - even if it were a one-way trip. 

Credit : Royal  museums greenwich

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Helen Keller was the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree, graduating from Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1904. Her autobiography, The Story of My Life, written during her junior year at Radcliffe has been translated into 50 languages and remains in print to this day. She is remembered as an advocate for persons with disabilities, while her life story continues to be an inspiration to millions across the world.

Despite the fact Helen was virtually unable to communicate; her parents were determined to find a tutor for her because they believed she could learn. They finally met Anne Sullivan, and their hopes were fulfilled. Anne herself was partially blind, but she learned the manual alphabet while she was a student at the Institute.

Anne Sullivan taught Helen the manual alphabet by pressing the handshapes into Helen’s palm. Helen was soon able to read Braille and write with a special typewriter. Helen also eventually learned to speak by feeling Anne’s throat as she spoke and imitating the vibrations. Helen made history in 1904. She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college. She graduated from Radcliffe College with honors. Speaking about war, capital punishment, and child labor, Keller lectured all over the world for most of her life. As a champion for people with disabilities, she provided inspiration for those who might have otherwise lost hope.

Anne Sullivan was a constant companion to Helen until her death in 1936. At the age of eighty-eight, Helen died in 1968 in Westport, Connecticut.

Helen is truly an inspiration to all people–not just people with disabilities. She proves that anything can be accomplished through hard work, dedication, and faith.

Credit : Start ASL

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Marie Curie (November 7, 1867-July 4, 1934) was a French Polish physicist and chemist, famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity and the discovery of polonium and radium.  She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris (La Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Pantheon in Paris]

In 1867, Maria Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, Poland. She was a bright and curious child who did well in school. At the time, the University of Warsaw refused students who were women. But that didn’t stop young Maria! Instead, she learned in secret. She went to informal classes held in ever-changing locations, called the “Floating University.”

In 1891, the woman the world would come to know as Marie Curie made her way to Paris. There, she enrolled at the Sorbonne, a university that didn’t discriminate. Over the next few years, she completed advanced degrees in physics and mathematics. She also met French physicist Pierre Curie. The two married in 1895.

Marie and Pierre worked closely over the next decade. Marie’s biggest discoveries came from studying uranium rays. She believed these rays came from the element’s atomic structure. Curie created the term “radioactivity” to name the phenomena she had observed. Her findings led to the field of atomic physics.

Together, the Curies studied the mineral pitchblende. Through their experiments, they discovered a new radioactive element. Marie named it polonium in honor of her native Poland. The two later also discovered the element radium.

In 1903, Marie and Pierre Curie were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Marie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize. That same year, she also became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from a French university. After Pierre’s death in 1906, Marie took over his teaching job at the Sorbonne. She was the first female professor at the institution.

In 1911, Curie became the first person—of any gender—to win a second Nobel Prize. This time, she was recognized for her work in the field of chemistry. Curie’s scientific reputation was known around the world. In fact, she was invited to attend the Solvay Congress in Physics. There, she joined other famous scientists of the day, including Albert Einstein.

After World War I began in 1914, Marie used her scientific knowledge to support France’s efforts in the war. She helped to develop the use of portable X-ray machines in the field. In fact, the medical vehicles that carried these machines became known as “Little Curies.”

Marie Curie never knew the toll her work would take on her health. She died in France in 1934 from advanced leukemia related to prolonged exposure to radiation. Today, Curie’s notebooks are still too radioactive to be safely handled. They are stored in lead-lined boxes in France.

Marie Curie left a great legacy of accomplishment and scientific curiosity. Her daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, followed in her footsteps. Joliot-Curie received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1935, one year after her mother’s death.

In 1995, Marie and Pierre Curie’s remains were placed in the Panthéon in Paris. This is known as the final resting place of France’s most distinguished citizens. Marie Curie was the first woman to be interred there on her own merit.

Credit : Wonder Opolis

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American Elizabeth Magie invented the Landlord's Game (precursor of the modern Monopoly) in 1904, as a sign of protest against the barons and monopolists of the Gilded Age (a period in the U.S. marked by materialism and corruption). The purpose of the game was: to educate people about how the rich were unfairly profiting off the labour of the commoners.

A progressive woman

She was heavily influenced by the writings of Henry George, a political economist and land reformer. His progressive views on taxes and wealth inequality were imperative in laying the foundation of the Landlord's Game.

Magie curated two different versions of the game - an anti-monopolist version where wealth created was equally distributed among all the players, and a monopolist version where everyone tried to get as rich as possible while bankrupting others. This duality was her attempt at demonstrating how the first variation is morally superior.

Magie's game patented

 Patented in 1904, the game was a hit among the masses, especially among the Quakers (a group of people who embraced equality and peace, and rejected war) of the Atlantic. But to her dismay, the game designed to educate people about the evils of monopoly ended up doing quite the opposite.

As its popularity gained momentum, people started customising and modifying the rules of the game while drawing the design by hand on fabric or table cloth. One of those people was Charles Darrow. His version had a circular board, and more cut-throat rules. He also added small illustrations of actual streets of the Atlantic city (with their names) and colour-coordinated them - to create the board we know today.

Her game is sidelined

In 1935, Parker Brothers bought the rights to Darrow's version of the Monopoly and added a portly mascot with a top hat and a cane (rumoured to be modelled around American banker JP Morgan). They also distributed metal tokens with each set inspired by trinkets Darrow had used from his niece's charm bracelet. While this deal made Darrow a millionaire, Magie's patent was bought by the brothers for mere $500.

The truth emerges

In 1948, with the death of Elizabeth Magie, the very truth of the origin of Monopoly had nearly died with her, as officially the company still credited Darrow as the inventor of the game. Things changed in 1973, when the Parker Brothers engaged in a legal battle with a professor named Ralph Anspach over the creation of his anti-monopoly game, and accidentally uncovered Magie's patents.

Even now, with more than a century under its belt, Monopoly is considered the best-selling board game in modern history, and has been translated into 47 languages.

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Shakuntala Devi (1929-2013) was a mathematical wizard known as "the human computer" for her ability to make incredibly swift calculations. In 1977, at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she extracted the 23rd root of a 201-digit number in 50 seconds, beating a computer which took 62 seconds. In 1980, she correctly multiplied two 13-digit numbers and recited the 26-digit solution in only 28 seconds at the Imperial College in London earning her a place in the 1982 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. She further demonstrated her multiplication skills by multiplying two 13-digit numbers 7,686,369,774,870 x 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by a computer at Imperial College in London. She correctly answered 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730 in only 28 seconds, which earned her a place in the 1982 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Her mathematical gifts were first demonstrated as she was doing card tricks. A genius mathematician, Shakuntala Devi passed away at a hospital in Bangalore, India, April 21. She was 83.

Credit : Siliconeer

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Spintharus  michelleobamaae, a "smiley-faced" spider, is named after the former U.S. First Lady. She became a role model for women and an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families. Michelle Obama’s journey began in the South Side of Chicago, where Fraser and Marian Robinson instilled in their daughter a heartfelt commitment to family, hard work, and education. Michelle earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School. In 1988, she returned to Chicago to join the firm of Sidley Austin. It was there that she met Barack Obama, a summer associate she was assigned to advise. They were married in 1992.

By that time Michelle had turned her energies to public service. She was assistant commissioner of planning and development in Chicago’s City Hall before becoming the founding executive director of the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares young people for public service. In 1996, she joined the University of Chicago as associate dean of student services, where she developed the university’s first community service program. In 2002, she went to work for the University of Chicago Medical Center, where in 2005 she became the vice president of community and external affairs. Worldwide, she championed the education of girls and women. In a commencement address at the City College of New York she told graduates, “Never view your challenges as obstacles.”

Credit : THE WHITE HOUSE

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On May 10, 1857, the “sepoys” of Meerut rebelled against the British East India Company. Very soon, others joined them under the banner of Bahadur Shah II, the Mughal emperor, to whom the rebels gave the title Shahenshah-e-Hind. The rebellion became a full-fledged uprising against the British, with kings, nobles, landlords, peasants, tribals, and ordinary people fighting together. Yet historians tend to ignore, and to completely forget, the role of the women who came out of their homes and joined the men in fighting the Company Bahadur.

She crowned her 11-year-old son Birjis Qadar the ruler of Awadh, under Mughal suzerainty, on June 5, 1857, after a spectacular victory by the rebel forces in the Battle of Chinhat. The British were forced to take refuge in the Lucknow Residency, a series of events that became famous as the Siege of Lucknow, while her diktat ran in Awadh as regent of Birjis Qadar.

The longest and fiercest battles of the First War of Independence were fought in Lucknow. The begum ruled for 10 months as regent and had the biggest army of any of the rebel leaders that fought the British in 1857.

 

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