Forgotten By History

Female firefighters at Pearl Harbor (1941).

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

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

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

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.

Catherine Leroy, female photographer in Vietnam.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 

CHINA. Beijing. April to June 1989. Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Tiananmen Square protests were student-led demonstrations in Beijing in 1989. The students called for democracy, greater accountability, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, though they were loosely organised and their goals varied. At the height of the protests, about a million people would assemble in the Square (see picture 2). The protests were forcibly suppressed after the government declared martial law. In what became widely known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, troops with assault rifles and tanks killed unarmed civilians trying to block the military’s advance towards Tiananmen Square. The number of civilian deaths has been estimated at anywhere between hundreds and thousands.

Public memory of the Tiananmen Square protests has been suppressed by the authorities since 1989. Textbooks have little, if any, information related to the protests. Print media containing reference to the protests must be consistent with the government’s version of events. Following the protests, officials also banned controversial films and books, and shut down a large number of newspapers. Within a year, 12 percent of all newspapers, 8 percent of publishing companies, 13 percent of social science periodicals and more than 150 films were banned or shut down.

Currently, many Chinese citizens are reluctant to speak about the protests because of potential repercussions. Many young people born after 1980 are completely unfamiliar with the events and are apathetic about politics while older intellectuals no longer aspire for political change and instead focus on economic issues. Youth in China are generally unaware of the events that took place, of the symbols such as tank man (see last picture), or of the significance of the date June 4 itself. The entire surface of Tiananmen Square was later resurfaced, to remove evidence of blood stains left there after the crackdown. 

Charles Lightoller was in charge of lowering lifeboats on the port side of the RMS Titanic. Lightoller strictly enforced the “women and children first” evacuation policy, not allowing any male passengers to board the lifeboats besides auxiliary seamen. Lifeboats were lowered with empty seats with the intention of filling from the water, but sailed off under capacity. Lightoller ordered men occupying Lifeboat 2 off the boat, threatening them with an unloaded revolver. As the Titanic sank further, Lightoller made it to the overturned Collapsible B and took charge of the 30 survivors until rescued by another lifeboat. Lightoller was the last survivor taken aboard the RMS Carpathia and the most senior crew member to survive the sinking of the Titanic. He was portrayed by Jonathan Phillips in James Cameron’s Titanic.

In 1940, Lightoller with his son Roger and a young Sea Scout named Gerald Ashcroft, sailed his private yacht, the Sundowner, across the English Channel to assist in the Dunkirk evacuation. Lightoller brought back 127 servicemen on the boat which was licensed for 21 passengers. On the return journey, Lightoller evaded gunfire from enemy aircraft, using a technique described to him by his youngest son, Herbert, who had joined the RAF and been killed earlier in the war. His actions inspired the character Mr. Dawson, played by Mark Rylance in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk.

Sometimes when I’m doing my research… reading about this ship and her crew. About the passengers crowded around the boats. Walking down Scotland road or the stokers and the greasers…

I can almost see her rivets.

I can almost smell that fresh paint.

I’ve caught myself lost in her corridors, white paneling that I can almost feel.

The chill off the water as it invades.

It’s almost too​ much sometimes.

How can you miss a place you’ve never seen? Long for the warm smile of a person you’ve never met?

And it happens in weirdest locations:

At your desk when someone sets an appointment for the 15th.

In the living room when the news talks about an Atlantic current coming in.

Or when your sitting in your pew and you can't explain why all of a sudden you feel so sad, as though you've just lost something. Then you realize the prelude is "Nearer my God to thee" and then you can hear a violin in your head. A crowd that hums like bees and a brave man saying "Gentlemen, it's been a privilege playing with you tonight."

And in some way you feel like you should thank them, for allowing you to study their individual lives and collective deaths. You want to thank them for allowing you to make their stories unsinkable.