Before Sara Josephine Baker took charge, a third of children died before their 5th birthdays.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the pioneering physician Sara Josephine Baker revolutionized public health care for children in New York City. When Baker started her public health work, the impoverished slums of Hell's Kitchen on the city's West Side were among the most densely populated places on Earth, and epidemics killed an estimated 4,500 people each week in the overcrowded immigrant tenements, including 1,500 babies. With a third of children born there dying before their fifth birthday, Baker famously remarked that "It is six times safer to be a soldier in the trenches than a baby in the United States." Thanks to her initiatives, the death rate plummeted, and Baker became famous as doctor who had saved 90,000 children in New York City and countless others as her reforms were replicated across the United States and in other countries. Continue reading → Continue reading

Remembering the forgotten history of the Women's Suffrage Movement's "Night of Terror"

The Silent Sentinels picketing the White House in 1917.

When we tell our children about the fight for women's suffrage in America, we often tell a sanitized version of the story. We talk about letter-writing campaigns, activist conferences, and stirring speeches — and occasionally, we mention defiant suffragists being hauled to jail. But we often shy away from the darker truths about the sacrifices and suffering many suffragists had to endure in the fight for women's right to vote. Continue reading → Continue reading

16 Trailblazing Female Wartime Heroes Who Belong in the History Books

Often, the popular image of women in wartime is worried wives, girlfriends, sisters, and daughters, pining at home for the men they love who are risking their lives on the battlefield. The reality, though, is much different! Women have always made significant contributions to war efforts — both on the homefront and on the front lines. While women's contributions at home, especially during WWII, have become more widely known, the stories of their heroism on the battlefield are rarely told. In every war there have been women who dared to spy across enemy lines; treat wounded soldiers in the midst of the fighting; report from the front as journalists, and fight shoulder to shoulder with their male peers. And although we don't hear of them often, women also fought for an equally important cause: peace. Continue reading → Continue reading

After witnessing the violent round-up of Jewish children by the Nazis, Marion Pritchard became an active resister who helped save the lives of 150 Dutch Jews.

While riding her bicycle to class at her university in Amsterdam in 1942, Marion Pritchard chanced upon a group of Nazi soldiers liquidating a Jewish children's home and watched helplessly as they violently threw young children into a truck. This encounter transformed the life of the young Dutch woman forever, leading her to become an active resister to the Nazi regime and ultimately save the lives of 150 Jewish children during World War II. Over three years, she risked her life numerous times by hiding Jewish refugees, arranging falsified identification papers, finding non-Jewish homes to take in Jewish children, and performing what was known as the "mission of disgrace" by falsely registering herself as the unwed mother of newborn babies to conceal their Jewish identity. "Most of us were brought up to tell [the] truth, to obey the secular law and the Ten Commandments," Pritchard reflected in 1996 during a lecture about her wartime experience. "By 1945, I had lied, stolen, cheated, deceived and even killed." Continue reading → Continue reading

Dr. Patricia Bath was an early pioneer of laser eye surgery whose cataract-removal invention has saved the vision of millions of people around the world.

A Renaissance woman in the world of vision, the pioneering ophthalmologist Dr. Patricia Bath not only founded the discipline of community ophthalmology to help underserved populations  have better access to vision care, she invented a device that quickly and easily dissolves cataracts, becoming the first African American female physician to receive a medical patent. Her invention of the Laserphaco Probe was recognized by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2014 as "one of the most important developments in the field of ophthalmology" for having "helped restore or improve vision to millions of patients worldwide." A trailblazer for both women and African Americans in medicine, Bath always considered the people she helped her greatest accomplishment, asserting that "the ability to restore vision is the ultimate reward." Continue reading → Continue reading

Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts of the U.S. in 1912. Today, the organization has 2.5 million members and it has been a part of the lives of over 50 million adult women.

 Juliette Gordon Low excitedly called her cousin after she returned from a trip to England in 1912. "Come right over!" she exclaimed. "I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight!" Low had been inspired by Robert Baden-Powell's Scouting Movement to create a similar organization dedicated to girls: the Girl Scouts. Today, the Girl Scouts of the United States has over 2.5 million members, 1.7 million girls and 750,000 adult volunteers. More than 50 million adult women enjoyed Girl Scouting in their childhood, many of whom say the organization helped shape them into the confident, capable women they are today. As Low famously said, "Scouting rises within you and inspires you to put forth your best." Continue reading → Continue reading

This trailblazing mathematician built the geodetic model of the Earth that became the foundation for GPS.

If you rely on your GPS for directions, you can thank a mathematician whose little-known contributions to the mathematical modeling of the Earth recently earned her one of the U.S. Air Force's highest honors: induction into the Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame! Dr. Gladys West, like the "human computers" at NASA who became famous with the book Hidden Figures, began her career by performing the complex hand calculations required before the computer age. However, her greatest accomplishment was the creation of an extremely detailed geodetic model of the Earth which became the foundation for the Global Positioning System. Although GPS is ubiquitous today, West says that in the moment, she wasn't thinking about the future: "When you’re working every day, you’re not thinking, ‘What impact is this going to have on the world?’" she says. "You’re thinking, ‘I’ve got to get this right.'" Continue reading → Continue reading

After surviving thirty years of domestic violence, Grandma Gatewood became a record-setting hiking pioneer who helped to save the Appalachian Trail from ruin.

In 1955, at the age of 67, Emma Rowena Gatewood became the first woman to solo hike the entire 2,190 mile (3,524 km) Appalachian Trail — wearing Keds sneakers and carrying an army blanket, a raincoat, a shower curtain, and a change of clothes in a homemade bag which she slung over one shoulder. For food, she foraged for wild plants, as well as carried dried meat, cheese, nuts, and dried fruit. The mother of 11 and grandmother of 23, Gatewood is now considered a pioneer of ultra-light hiking and one of the first high-profile ambassadors of the Appalachian Trail (AT). Her resilience and determination have inspired generations of hikers, whether they're walking a local state trail or tackling the full AT. "I would never have started this trip if I had known how tough it was," Gatewood observed after her hike, "but I couldn’t and I wouldn’t quit."  Continue reading → Continue reading

Dr. Shuping Wang faced violence and intimidation for exposing the truth about epidemics in China that killed more than one million people.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Shuping Wang discovered a shockingly high rate of contaminated blood at collection centers in China's Henan province. Despite threats, intimidation, and violence, Wang became a two-time whistleblower, exposing first China's hepatitis C epidemic and later its raging HIV epidemic, which killed over one million people in the country during this period. Wang said that there was never any question that she would persevere in exposing the truth about the epidemics even in the face of severe personal consequences. "Being a medical doctor, my primary interest is to my patients and to the public, not to myself," she said in an interview shortly before her death. "Speaking out cost me my job, my marriage and my happiness at the time, but it also helped save the lives of thousands and thousands of people." Continue reading → Continue reading

Julie Andrews, star of beloved classics "The Sound of Music" and "Mary Poppins," celebrates her 88th birthday!

Whether you first met her on stage at the West End in London or Broadway in New York; on the screen as Mary Poppins, Maria von Trapp, or Queen Clarisse Renaldi; or as the author of a beloved children's book like Mandy or The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles; or her memoirs Home and Home Work, chances are good you've been charmed by Julie Andrews! The legendary English performer and author is celebrating her 88th birthday today, and she's still touching the hearts of people around the world. Andrews is also quick to point out that her success over the years was far from smooth, however, providing an inspiring model of resilience for her fans young and old: "Perseverance," she says, "is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th." Continue reading → Continue reading