Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author
ENHEDUANNA, PRINCESS, PRIESTESS AND THE WORLD’S FIRST KNOWN AUTHOR The world’s first known author is widely considered to be Enheduanna, a woman who lived in the 23rd century BCE in […]
Australia’s first known female voter, the famous Mrs Fanny Finch
AUSTRALIA’S FIRST KNOWN FEMALE VOTER, THE FAMOUS MRS FANNY FINCH On 22 January 1856, an extraordinary event in Australia’s history occurred. It is not part of our collective national identity, […]
The Life of Clara Barton – Volume 1 – Audiobook
THE LIFE OF CLARA BARTON – VOLUME 1 – AUDIOBOOK By William E. Barton (1861 – 1930) Clarissa Harlowe Barton (December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912) was a pioneering American […]
The Life of Clara Barton – Volume 2 – Audiobook
THE LIFE OF CLARA BARTON – VOLUME 2 – AUDIOBOOK By William E. Barton (1861 – 1930) Clarissa Harlowe Barton (December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912) was a pioneering American […]
Women of America – AudioBook
WOMEN OF AMERICA – AUDIOBOOK By John Ruse Larus (1858 – 1920) The present volume completes the story of woman as told in the series of which it forms part. The […]
Sardines for breakfast, hypothermia rescues: the story of the cash-strapped, post-pandemic 1920 Olympics
Since the global pandemic began, debate has raged over whether Tokyo should go ahead with the Olympic Games, now set to open on July 23. The same heated debates were […]
How do archaeologists know where to dig?
National Geographic magazines and Indiana Jones movies might have you picturing archaeologists excavating near Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge and Machu Picchu. And some of us do work at these famous places. […]
How Eleanor Roosevelt reshaped the role of First Lady and became a feminist icon
“Well-behaved women seldom make history” is a phrase frequently trotted out around International Women’s Day, and just as frequently attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. It doesn’t matter that the former First […]
The Siege of Haarlem, Kenau, and Creating a Heroine
The Dutch Revolt, the conflict that created an independent Netherlands free from Spain, also created a lot of legends around events and people, placing them firmly in the shared consciousness. […]
The Reality of Joan of Arc
Last spring, I found myself in the surprising position of explaining to a student sitting in my office that Joan of Arc was real. At the small liberal arts college […]
Caste: A Divisive Structure in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany
In her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson writes that the ways in which we are divided today are “like the wind, powerful enough to knock […]
‘I want to scream and scream’: Australian nurses on the Western Front were also victims of war
The revival of interest in Anzac since the 1980s has depended in part on the repositioning of soldiers as victims. We rarely celebrate their martial virtues, and instead note their […]
Who will have us? Jewish Refugees before WW2
The plight of Jewish refugees after the outbreak of World War II in 1939 is well documented. Hundreds of thousands of people fled Nazi persecution and hoped to find a […]
Beyond Marie Curie: The Women In Science History We Don’t Talk About
Beyond the exceptional talents of Marie Curie, Rosalind Franklin and Ada Lovelace, it’d be easy to think that women didn’t used to participate in science. But as science historians Leila […]
The priestess Pythia at the Delphic Oracle, who spoke truth to power
In a time and place that offered few career opportunities for women, the job of the priestess of Apollo at Delphi stands out. Her position was at the centre of […]
Wise women: 6 ancient female philosophers you should know about
By Dawn LaValle Norman, Australian Catholic University. When we conjure up ancient philosophers the image that springs to mind might be a bald Socrates discoursing with beautiful young men in […]
Boudicca revolt: Essex dig reveals ‘evidence of Roman reprisals’
The destruction of a “clearly high status” Iron Age village “may represent reprisals after the Boudiccan revolt”, an archaeologist has said. More than 17 roundhouses were discovered in a defensive […]
Wauba Debar, an Indigenous swimmer from Tasmania who saved her captors
Though her brave acts were acknowledged after her death, Wauba Debar’s grave was later robbed in the name of “science”. By Megan Stronach, University of Technology Sydney and Daryl Adair, […]
Millicent Bryant, the first Australian woman to get a pilot’s licence
Before the glamorous flyers of the 1930s like Amelia Earhart, “Chubby” Miller and Nancy Bird Walton, another woman opened the way to the skies — and were it not […]
Prehistoric female hunter discovery upends gender role assumptions
Researchers have generally thought that only prehistoric males hunted, however a recent publication in Science Advances disputes this notion. Big-game hunting is an overwhelmingly male-biased behavior among recent hunter-gatherer societies. […]
What Hamilton Got Wrong
It’s important to take historically-based art, whether a painting that condenses a battle or the acclaimed Broadway smash Hamilton: An American Musical, with a grain of salt. Rather than expecting these works to look at history through the factual lens of a primary source, they should be taken as an altered view of history designed to generate the interest of the masses.