Carve Her Name
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carvehername.bsky.social
Carve Her Name
@carvehername.bsky.social
3.9K followers 430 following 2K posts
Every day women have, and are, making history. Follow us to get daily posts on what women have done #OnThisDay. 🗃️

We check replies on weekdays, but not always at weekends.

https://carvehername.org.uk/ and https://linktr.ee/CarveHerName
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carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 11 Nov 1906, British composer Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers opens in Leipzig. Appalled at cuts made by the production, she removes all copies of the score from the pit to prevent further performances.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #VotesForWomen #BritishHistory #MusicHistory 🗃️
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sketch of Ethel Smyth by John Singer Sargent (1901). She is a white woman with light hair in a bun, mostly hidden under a large tam o'shanter hat.
November 11, 2025 at 9:30 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
A lifelong "dress reformer", she wore trousers under short dresses and eventually switched to trousers and jackets. She was frequently arrested for her choice.

"I don't wear men's clothes, I wear my own clothes," she said.

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Dr Mary Edwards Walker in later life. She is a white woman with white hair wearing trousers, a frock coat and a topper. She still has the medal on the breast of her coat.
November 11, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 11 Nov 1865, Dr Mary Edwards Walker receives the Medal of Honor from US President Andrew Johnson for her services as a field surgeon in the American Civil War.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #WomenInWar #AmericanHistory 🗃️

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Dr Mary Edwards Walker in a dress in around 1863, wearing the medal. She is a white woman with dark hair tied back.
November 11, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 10 Nov 1917, 41 suffragists are arrested outside the White House in Washington DC.

This was the largest number of women arrested on the same day.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #VotesForWomen #AmericanHistory 🗃️
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The silent sentinels standing in front of the white House with their banners demanding the vote. They are all white women in long skirts.
November 10, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 9 Nov 1994, voters in Sri Lanka elected Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga as their President. She was sworn in on 12 Nov and served for ten years.

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in the 1990s. She is a Sri Lankan woman wearing a sari.
November 9, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 8 Nov 1938, Crystal Bird Fauset is elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, becoming the first African-American woman state legislator.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
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Black and white photo of Crystal Bird Fauset sitting with Eleonor Roosevelt. Fauset is on the left of the picture and is a black woman in a light dress. Roosevelt is on the right, and is a white woman in a dark dress.
November 8, 2025 at 9:05 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
UK followers can use the code 'LIVES' to get 10% off Atwood's memoir, Book of Lives, @bookshop-org-uk.bsky.social during November.

uk.bookshop.org/a/15... *

(*If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support indie bookshops.)
Promo showing the cover of Atwood's new memoir, Book of Lives, where she is dressed in pink and holding a finger to her lips. It includes a note of the promo code 'lives'.
November 7, 2025 at 9:30 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 7 Nov 2000, Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood wins the Booker Prize for fiction for the first time, having previously been nominated 3 times (including for the Handmaid's Tale in 1986).

She wins again in 2019, jointly sharing the prize with Bernardine Evaristo.

#ReadMoreWomen
Margaret Atwood holding a copy of The Blind Assassin after winning the Booker in 2000. Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo congratulate each other on jointly winning the prize in 2019. Atwood is a white woman with white hair, and Evaristo is a Black woman with natural hair.
November 7, 2025 at 9:30 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
“I may be the first woman member of Congress but I won’t be the last.”

#OnThisDay, 7 Nov 1916, Jeanette Rankin is elected to the US House of Representatives. She was the first woman elected to the House.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
black and white photo of Jeanette Rankin in the 1920s. She is a white woman with fair or red hair.
November 7, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 6 Nov 2012, Elizabeth Warren is elected US Senator for Massachusetts: the first woman to represent the State.

Her reading of Coretta Scott King's criticism of Jeff Sessions at his AG confirmation hearing prompted criticism, in turn creating the slogan #NeverthelessShePersisted.
Photo of Elizabeth Warren at a podium on her campaign trail. She is a white woman with blonde hair.
November 6, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
Anthony is subsequently arrested, put on trial and found guilty.

At her trial she says: "you have trampled under foot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored."
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photo of Susan B Anthony in the 1870s. She is a white woman with dark hair, wearing a plaid dress.
November 5, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 5 Nov 1872, suffragists Susan B Anthony and 13 other women illegally vote in the US Presidential election.

Nine of the voters were initially reported as a "minor topic".

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #WotesForWomen 🗃️

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MINOR TOPICS. Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY has had the honour of leading to the polls the advanced guard of the coming squadrons of female voters. The little band of nine ladies whose ballots were received by the election inspectors at Rochester deserve a permanent place in history, We have heard before of solitary instances of the recognition of the female franchise; but this picket guard of nine is a tangible enough force to make people reflect on the future possibilities which it involves. The fact is not stated, but we may assume with tolerable certainty that the nine ladies at Rochester showed their capacity for an intelligent exercise of the franchise by voting for GRANT and DIX.
November 5, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 4 Nov 2012, Fawzia Yusuf Adam became the first woman to be Foreign Affairs Minister for Somalia. She also became Deputy Prime Minister. She was in post until Jan 2014.

Fawzia Yusuf Adam in 2013. She is a Black woman wearing a black and silver hijab.
November 4, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 3 Nov 1992, voters in Illinois, USA, make Carol Moseley Braun the first African-American US Senator. She takes up office in 1993.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
A campaign badge for Carol Moseley Braun, and a portrait photo of her. She is a Black woman with a classic 1990s blow-out hair do.
November 3, 2025 at 12:30 PM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 3 Nov 1914, American Mary Phelps Jacob is granted a US patent for the brassiere.

This is one of the more straightforward moments in her life. Thread. 👇

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory #FashionHistory 🗃️

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Caresse Cosby with her whippet. She is a white woman in a patterned dress and a huge hat. The whippet is a whippet.
November 3, 2025 at 12:00 PM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 3 Nov 1896, Martha Hughes Cannon is the first woman elected to any US state senate, getting more votes than her husband in the Utah election. The local Dem paper said: “Mrs. Mattie Hughes Cannon is the better man of the two.“

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AmericanHistory 🗃️
Photo of the Utah Senate in 1897. Mattie Hughes Cannon is stood in the front row, just left of the centre. Everyone is white.
November 3, 2025 at 11:33 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
Muriel was the queen of publicity stunts for Women's Freedom League (a breakaway of the WSPU). Their motto was 'Dare to be free'.

Here's Muriel using a dirigible to scatter leaflets across London in 1909. She's lying in that framework beneath the balloon.

www.bbc.co.uk/videos...
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postcard of the VOTES FOR WOMEN dirigible setting out for Westminster
October 28, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 28 Oct 1908, Muriel Matters, Violet Tillard and Helen Fox unfurl a banner and then chain themselves to the grille in the Ladies Gallery in the House of Commons, London, demanding votes for women.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory 🗃️
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Dramatic newspaper illustration of Muriel Matters being taken away along with the trellis she had chained herself to.
October 28, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 26 October 2017, Jacinda Ardern was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand.

She was the third woman to be NZ PM (after Jenny Shipley in 1997 and Helen Clark in 1999) and served two terms.

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Jacinda Ardern giving a press conference on the day she was sworn in. She is white woman with black hair.
October 26, 2025 at 2:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 25 Oct 2018, Sahle-Work Zewde was unanimously elected as President of Ethiopia by its parliament.

Her election was a week after the Prime Minister had appointed a gender equal cabinet.

Sahle-Work was the first woman to be President and served until 2024.
Sahle-Work Zewde standing in front of a UN flag. She is a Black woman with dark hair that is turning silver at the temples.
October 25, 2025 at 9:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 25 Oct 1996, the last “Magdalene laundry” in Ireland closes.

In 2013, the Irish government issued a formal state apology to the women forced to work in the homes.

#IrishHistory #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory 🗃️
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A young girl standing by a huge mangle, with mounds of laundry behind her. Other workers are in the background. 15 women and girls working in a laundry room.
October 25, 2025 at 8:30 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 25 Oct 1947, women in Malta vote for the first time. Almost 35,000 women go to the polls.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #VotesForWomen #MalteseHistory 🗃️
newspaper clipping about the election, reading: Women Vote for First Time. YESTERDAY'S POLLING IN MALTA ELECTIONS. GREY skies and strong winds yesterday greeted the first day of polling on the reinstitution of responsible government in Malta, Nevertheless, early risers were waiting at the polling stations when these opened at 8 a.m. Women who are voting for the first time in Maltese history. rose to the occasion and, in some stations, even outnumbered men, though in general men were more numerous.
October 25, 2025 at 8:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 24 Oct 1901, American Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first *person* to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

The cat did *not* do the stunt with her.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #AmericanHistory 🗃️
Annie Edson Taylor standing with the barrel "Queen of the Mist". She is a white woman in a floor-length skirt, dark jacket and a big hat. A small pale cat is sitting on top of the barrel.
October 24, 2025 at 8:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
#OnThisDay, 23 Oct 1915, 20,000+ women march in a 5 mile long parade through New York City, USA, demanding the right to vote.

There is no record of African-American women being invited to join the march.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #VotesForWomen #AmericanHistory 🗃️
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large crowds watch the parade. The front has 24 women all in white and carrying banners. Everyone is white.
October 23, 2025 at 8:00 AM
carvehername.bsky.social
Love is like an itchin' in my heart...

#OnThisDay, 22 Oct 1966, The Supremes become the first all-woman group to get to no 1 in the US Billboard album charts with The Supremes A' Go-Go.

www.youtube.com/watc...

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #AmericanHistory #PopHistory 🗃️
Cover of the album, showing the members of the Supremes dancing
October 22, 2025 at 8:00 AM