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Louis Pasteur was stuck. For two years, he’d been obsessed with chicken cholera—a devastating disease that swept through French poultry farms, killing entire flocks within days. By 1878, Pasteur had …
He left the bacterial cultures sitting on the laboratory shelf—stoppered only with cotton plugs—and went on holiday himself. Read MoreEighteen-year-old Elizabeth Cochrane was living in Pittsburgh when the local newspaper published an article titled “What Girls are Good For” (having babies and keeping house was the answer, according to …
“What Girls are Good For” (having babies and keeping house was the answer, according to the article) Read MoreAmy Elizabeth Thorpe learned early that the world underestimated women. Born in 1910 to a Marine Corps colonel, she discovered by fourteen that beauty opened doors men thought they controlled. …
A woman stood naked before a guard—and saved thousands of lives in that single moment. Read MoreHe was 30. His warning saved hundreds. His body was never found. May 18, 1980. Dawn broke over the Cascade Range in Washington State, and David A. Johnston was exactly …
His last words were “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!”—then the mountain erased him. Read Morein rural Louisiana a white girl named Sue Eakin pulled an old book from her family’s plantation home. Its pages were worn. Its spine unremarkable. Its title did not announce …
She was only twelve years old when the truth found her. It was bound in cloth and dust and waiting quietly on a shelf no one thought to question. Around 1930 Read MoreIn 2007, Mayim Bialik defended a doctoral dissertation in neuroscience at UCLA. At the time, much of Hollywood still saw her as a washed-up child star from a canceled sitcom. …
Mayim Bialik defended a doctoral dissertation in neuroscience at UCLA Read MoreBorn in 1873 in Virginia, Willa moved to the Nebraska prairie at age nine. While other girls played with dolls, she roamed the grasslands, befriended immigrant families—Bohemian, Swedish, German—and listened …
In 1890s Nebraska, Willa Cather cut her hair short, wore men’s suits, and insisted people call her “William.” She was a teenager, and she was done pretending. Read MoreFor most of her life, Anna Mary Robertson Moses had done exactly what was expected of a poor woman born in 1860. She worked. She endured. She survived. At twelve, …
She was seventy-eight years old, widowed, and invisible. Read MoreWorcester, Massachusetts. 1920. Robert Goddard stood in his physics lab at Clark University and made a prediction that would make him a laughingstock. He told the world that rockets could …
The neighbors called the police on him. Twenty years later, his “crazy” invention put humans in space. Read MoreMyrna Loy was box office gold in the 1930s and 1940s. Audiences adored her as Nora Charles in The Thin Man films—witty, sophisticated, the ideal partner who could match her …
Hollywood called her “the perfect wife.” She responded by becoming one of the most dangerous women in 1940s America. Read More