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!)
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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.
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Gertrude Bell, a daughter of privilege took her enormous intelligence, unfathomable bravery, and an entire set of Wedgwood china into the uncharted parts of the Middle East, making maps, discoveries, and friends along the way. Her work helped pave the way for the establishment of the modern country of Iraq.
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born on July 14, 1868, in County Durham, England. She was the first child and only daughter of Sir Hugh Bell and Mary Shields Bell, and, after her mother passed away, was raised since childhood by her stepmother, Florence Olliffe Bell. Gertrude grew-up in a wealthy family of fairly progressive thinkers and was educated at Queens College and Oxford University (where they had only recently begun enrolling women and still didn’t give them actual degrees.)
She did follow some convention and, after being denied marrying the man she loved for the conventional reason of him not making enough money, she did her conventional debutant time doing traditional debutant activities. But, once she had aged out of “marriageable” and became “chaperone” age, her life really got going.
Gertrude traveled extensively for most of the rest of her life. And not all posh, typical travel (although she did travel with an entourage and glamping supplies) we’re talking about activities like mountain climbing and desert wandering in the Middle East. This was her favorite area to explore and live, made easier by being fluent in Arabic and not holding back from speaking her mind.
Her adventures were numerous, at times her numerous friendships were lifesaving, and her documentation of the people she met and the lands she loved aided in the establishment of modern-day Iraq and divvying up the freshly fallen Ottoman Empire, and guiding Great Britain through WW1.
Gertrude Bell, CBE: author, adventurer, archaeologist, museum creator, unofficial but effective diplomat, political advisor, and a woman who put (parts) of convention aside to live her life by her own rules died on July 12, 1926, at her home in Baghdad. She was 57 years old.
TIME TRAVEL WITH THE HISTORY CHICKS
Books!
Web!
An entire site dedicated to her: The Gertrude Bell Society
A timeline of her life from Women in Exploration.
Despite what appears to us as an easy yes, Gertrude was not in favor of women getting the vote, she was (as were many in her class) anti-suffrage. Find out why in this article from a Newcastle University blog, dig into their archive on her, and more about her life in another from the same school.
This is the museum that she helped establish, The Iraq Museum.
A discussion about her death from an overdose of sleeping pills.
The history of “Cook’s tour” (which isn’t about someone who cooks going on a tour.)
An explanation of the Balfour Declaration after WWI
Moving Pictures and Audio!
Sigh. Watch it if you must, but it’s not a favorite over here.
Instead, watch this documentary series from PBS, Letters From Baghdad, it’s much…much better.
And if you know Greta Gerwig, maybe she should get her eyes on Gertrude’s story.
We have a Pinterest Board for every subject! Check all of them out on Pinterest!
Break music: Spy vs Spy by Sound of Seventy-Three. End music: Intrepid by Love Amplifier
(used by permission from Ilicense Music)
When we left Althea in part one, she was 24 and after years of training, practice, competition, and a village of supporters working with her and behind the scenes, she was finally invited to the American Lawn Tennis Association Championship at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York in 1950! Getting to this national tournament wasn’t easy, but few things in Althea’s life are.
It wasn’t easy to get to Forest Hills, or through college, or onto a short-lived career as a college physical education teacher…it wasn’t even easy to get her application through to become a WAC, a member of the military Women’s Army Corps, a position that never fully panned out for Althea. She was floundering in her life and ready to give up tennis when she was tapped by the US State Department for a Goodwill Tour to Asia, along with three other tennis players.
This travel led Althea to travel on her own throughout Europe to play in tournaments, improve her game, and play with the best competition in the world! Soon she became that competition for others, winning her first major tournament in France then on to the oldest in the world: Wimbledon. She cracked through racial barriers, gender barriers, and economic barriers to win scores of tournaments including 11 “Grand Slam” tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title.
But competitive tennis in the 1950s was for amateurs only, and Althea couldn’t support herself playing the game she loved by competition, so she retired in 1958 and crafted an interesting life recording an album, appearing twice on the Ed Sullivan Show, writing an autobiography, acting, and modeling for ads until she landed a five-year run touring with the Harlem Globetrotters to play exhibition games. When that ended, she began to hit a different type of ball when she toured with the Ladies Pro Golfer Association (LPGA.)
The remainder of her life was full of struggles and successes…just like the years that came before. Althea Gibson died on September 28, 2003, she was 76 years old.
Time Travel With The History Chicks
Books!
Biographies we liked:
Kid books we liked:
Web!
We have a Pinterest board for every subject, it’s a glorious place to dive into some rabbit Holes! Here is Althea’s!
Alice Marble was an important figure in Althea’s story… but she was also one for Wonder Woman’s (and all women of history!)
Lady Boxing has a long history, here’s a place to start your tumble down this rabbit hole!
Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, two lines of which are over the entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon.
The history of “play streets” like the ones Althea learned paddle tennis on, how to visit Wimbledon
Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture online exhibit about Althea, and she’s represented at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island (to access the museum’s Metaverse, go to the VISIT page and scroll down.)
Resilient Grace is an online retailer with a mission of telling the stories of historic, African American women (Susan has a few of her shirts including the Shirley Chisholm one that she wears when she votes!)
Moving Pictures
If Serena Williams can’t explain it so anyone can understand it, you expect us to? Here’s an article on how to score tennis. Godspeed.
There are a couple documentaries out there, Althea is on Peacock, and there is an American Masters, PBS one available on AppleTV+ and Prime (and maybe other services, that’s the two we watched.)
Quick links to our coverage of two previous subjects mentioned in Althea’s story: Babe Didrikson Zaherias and Fannie Lou Hamer
Our 2024 Field Trips to Austria and Paris are both sold out, and there are just a few spaces for our New York trip in September. There, we will also have a Locals’ Meet-up Dinner Cruise that’s open for reservations now. If you’re interested in any of these, please see Like Minds Travel for information and to sign up!
Break Music: Slow Cookin’ by Joe Smith and the Spicy Pickles; End Song: Play the Game by Lilly Wolf used by permission from iLicense Music.
