Sally Lunn was born in France, but moved to Bath, England in 1680 to escape religious persecution. She brought with her a special skill: baking delicious brioche-style bread. Developing her own unique recipe, she sold her buns in the streets of Bath, soon becoming famous for the “Sally Lunn Bun.”Fast-forward 350 years to the 1930s: a baker in Bath with a love of archaeology decided to excavate the ground beneath his own house. What he …
Claudia Jones (born Claudia Cumberbatch) was a journalist, Black Nationalist and prominent member of the American Communist Party. Emigrating from Trinidad to NYC at eight years old, she was an extremely well-known peace activist and worked toward civil rights and women’s rights in America. Arrested for giving a speech promoting peace and women’s rights, in 1955 she was deported to England. There she founded the nation’s first Black newspaper, continued her work fighting racism and …
Living in Saxony 1100 years ago, in a culture much like the Vikings, Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim probably witnessed violence against women all the time. Violence was a part of society, and she retreated to an intellectual life. But there, too, she found violence against women in the ancient Roman plays she was reading. If she couldn’t change society, at least she could change the plays! She rewrote them, altering the plots so that the women …
Bessie Margolin grew up in the New Orleans Jewish Orphan’s Home, was one of the first women to graduate from Tulane Law School and earned her PhD in Law from Yale University in 1932. Her groundbreaking work as Assistant Solicitor of Labor for the New Deal’s Fair Labor Standards Act championed many of the wage and hour rights Americans take for granted today and enshrined in law the basic human dignity of American workers. She …
Maria Ruiz de Burton was a writer, entrepreneur and businesswoman, and the first Mexican-American woman to publish a novel in English. Born in 1832 in Baja California, Mexico to a prominent Spanish family, Maria Amparo Ruiz was fifteen when the Mexican-American war ended and California became part of the United States. She married the commander of the American forces that invaded Baja shortly after the end of the war, and his career took them all …
A classic story of a young woman defying her parents to follow her heart, but with a fascinating Russian twist! Sahib Gizzatullina lived for the stage, introducing Russian audiences to theater for the first time in their lives. She and her penniless traveling theater troupe experienced all the passion, heartbreak, and drama that you’d expect from a roving band of actors. But they did it during Russia’s most turbulent time: through the reign–and murder–of Tzar …
Sisters Jane and Anna Maria Porter were wildly popular writers–among the most widely-read writers in Regency England. (Yes, more popular than Jane Austen!) Their novels were on every British bookshelf, their poetry was popular and acclaimed, and Jane Porter’s historical novel The Scottish Chiefs would retain its popularity for nearly 150 years. So how did these bestselling icons of British literature end up nearly penniless and living as “professional houseguests” without a home to call …
Are public debates like the feuds we see on Twitter and Facebook a product of modern society? Gargi Vachaknavi has long been remembered in India for her brilliant performance in a public debate 2,700 years ago. Her story offers a refreshing model for how to engage in heated ideological discussions: she didn’t just throw down an epic victory, humiliating her opponent. She did something much more clever! Katie’s guest is Ravi M. Gupta, the Charles …
Rose Emily Ridge was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1973. After spending her childhood in Australia and New Zealand, she fled an abusive husband for California in 1907. Arriving in America, she promptly changed her name, her age, her nationality and her marital status and launched her new life as Lola Ridge, radical poet, anarchist organizer, and editor of the influential avant-garde magazine Broom. At her popular Greenwich Village salons she welcomed the country’s most …
Nine hundred years ago, the young Hildegard of Bingen was given by her parents to the Catholic Church. She was literally “walled up” in a tiny convent, completely cut off from the outside world. But over the course of her long and varied life, she emerged from the walls to embrace the world. She founded her own convents and traveled across Europe on preaching tours. She spent decades caring for the sick and infirm, resulting …
