On today’s Moncrieff Show, Seán will be chatting to American writer Megan Mayhew Bergman and learning about some of history’s most forgotten women.
In her short story collection Almost Famous Women, Megan weaves the tales of women whose lives were tinged with greatness and fame, who now only remain as a footnote in history books, residing in the margins of conversations. The women, who strived for brilliance, led lives that often left them lonely and isolated.
Some of them were household names (Marlene Dietrich), while others pursued that fame and faltered (James Joyce’s daughter Lucia and Lord Byron’s daughter Allegra).
You can listen in to Seán’s interview with Megan here: http://www.newstalk.com/player/
Women have often gotten a raw deal when it comes to be remembered in our history books. Here’s a list of five ladies who’ve changed the world, but who you’ve probably never heard of...
- Lyudmila Pavilchenko
With all the hype and controversy surrounding American Sniper right now, spare a moment for this Soviet super shooter.
After the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Pavilchenko rose through the ranks to become a fearless sniper. Abandoning her university studies to pick up arms, she is credited with 309 official kills, and is the most deadly women in history with a rifle.
After doing her part to help turn the tide against the German forces, she went back to college and finished her degree.
- Claudette Colvin
Given that yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, it seems fitting to mention one of the African-American civil-rights movement’s forgotten heroines.
While Rosa Parks celebrated stand to remain sitting at the front of the bus is credited with launching the entire wave of mass protest, 15-year-old Colvin did the very same thing, nine months before her.
In fact, it was her US Supreme Court case that resulted in the desegregation of the Alabama bus system.
- Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
In 1925, the prevailing theory amongst astronomists was that stars must be made of the same heavy materials (iron, carbon, silicon) as the Earth. 25-year-old Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin wrote a dissertation in which she claimed that stars, and indeed the universe, were probably made of hydrogen.
Henry Norris Russell, the world’s leading astrophysicist and her supervisor, completely dismissed her theories as “impossible,” but four years later published his own paper claiming the exact same thing.
Today, science books in every school acknowledge that hydrogen is the most common atom in the universe, though Payne-Gaposchkin is never accredited with discovering this.
- Elizabeth Magie
The next time you pass go and collect €200, give thanks to Elizabeth Magie for inventing the world’s favourite board game, Monopoly.
Traditionally, Charles Darrow, an unemployed door-to-door salesman, gets the credit for having crafted the property trading game. But it was actually invented 30 years earlier, when Magie secured a patent for The Landlord’s Game, which hoped to teach players to follow the number crunching of economist Henry George.
Forgotten by history, Magie only received a payment of $500 from the Parker Brothers company, which has made millions from her game.
- Rosalind Franklin
Watson and Crick claimed the Nobel Prize in Physiology & Medicine in 1962, four years after Rosalind Franklin passed away to cancer.
But it took a few more decades before they would acknowledge the pivotal role she played in their discovery of the double helix shape of DNA. An estranged male colleague of hers showed Watson and Crick an image she had taken – without her permission.
Forthright and single-minded, Franklin’s achievement was almost entirely airbrushed out of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century.
