We went with fifty friends on our latest women’s history tour to the City of Light! From a private nighttime tour of Versailles to a luncheon at Veuve Clicquot, through pastries shaped like apples at A. LaCroix patisserie, and an ocean of glorious onion soup, we filled our suitcases with treasures and our hearts with joy.
But perhaps the best souvenirs we all brought home were the lifelong friends we made along the way.
(more…)
Three times a year a collection of History Chicks listeners embark on a Field Trip with us, this September that adventure was to New York City! Our travel organizer, Laura Hart of Like Minds Travel, put together an itinerary of experiences and places that feature some of our former subjects, this time over a 5-day weekend.
(more…)
They said it couldn’t be done; that the deck, and the odds, were stacked against her, but Trudy Ederle listened only to her heart during her record-breaking swim across the English Channel. She was the first woman to accomplish this feat, and her record would hold for another 24 years, but there was a lot more to her life than one phenomenal swim.
(more…)
Emily Roebling stepped in to facilitate the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge after her husband, its chief engineer, fell victim to a mysterious illness. Though her contributions were kept shadowed at the time, later generations have realized how critical she was to the project’s completion (and she did so much more afterward!)
(more…)
We wrap up our two-part series on the life of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria! This is an epic tale of war (more than we’ve ever discussed) and family (also more than we’ve ever discussed!) We talk about the many steps she took as Maria Theresa reassembled the empire she had inherited and strategically laid the foundations of cultural reform that changed the course of history.
(more…)Destined from her cradle for a seat on the throne, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had to fight both the prejudices of her age and some of the greatest warriors of the time to secure her empire. Her life was so large, it’s going to require two episodes! In this one, we begin with a little background on her family, you may have heard of them? The Habsburgs? They of a 700-year dynasty? There were a lot of wars, fluid country lines, alliances, and lands that extended across modern-day Europe that helped shape the world that Maria Theresa was born into, and we give you an outline of that history.
(more…)
