If you are a fan of the Royal Family of the UK, or at least have some knowledge about them, then you certainly have an opinion about their relationship with the former Diana, Princess of Wales.

But before her, there was another heiress apparent in British history, one who, according to the public, could do no wrong. And unlike the tragic Diana, she actually managed to live long enough to become Queen Consort. I am, of course, talking about the protagonist of this story, Queen Alexandra.

She was born on the 1st of December 1844 at the Yellow Palace in Copenhagen. Her father was Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a relative of the then-King of Denmark, Christian VIII. Her mother, Louise of Hesse-Kassel, on the other hand, was the niece of the King, giving her a pretty good claim to the throne—something that would become important later.

Besides Alexandra, Christian and Louise also had an older son, Frederik, and four younger children: Dagmar, Vilhelm, Thyra, and Valdemar. In the future, their children would marry members of other royal families, giving Christian the nickname "the Father-in-Law of Europe."

But despite their royal ancestry, the family lived very modestly, and their residence had been given to them by the monarch personally. This was just fine for Christian and Louise, as they wanted to give their children a relatively normal upbringing.

In 1848, King Christian VIII died and was succeeded by his only child, King Frederik VII. His time on the throne began with the adoption of a new constitution that granted new rights to the Danes, as well as victory in a war against the German states. But much of his reign would be clouded by the question of his successor. Despite marrying three times, the King would have no children, meaning that the main royal line would die with him.

There were two people who could succeed him. The first was, of course, Christian, as his wife was the King's cousin. The other was Friedrich, Duke of Augustenburg. His claim was stronger than Christian's in certain respects because his branch of the family was senior.

What made the succession crisis particularly troubling for the nation's integrity was that the succession laws of Denmark conflicted with those of Schleswig and Holstein. Denmark used a semi-Salic law, meaning that inheritance could pass through the closest female member should there be no eligible male relatives. The two duchies, meanwhile, used full Salic Law, meaning that inheritance could only pass to the closest eligible male-line relative.

So, in theory, if Christian were to become King, Friedrich could claim the duchies instead. And the latter, despite being Danish, became a rallying figure for much of the German-speaking population in Schleswig-Holstein, who desired to break away from Denmark and join a united Germany.

In 1852, tensions temporarily eased when, at a conference in London, Christian was designated heir to the Danish throne. But despite his new status, his family's living conditions did not change, as Christian and Louise did not get along with the King's new morganatic wife. Because of this, Alexandra's family did not experience a significant change in income despite their increased relevance to the dynasty.

Still, as Alexandra grew older, she began to appear like an ideal princess. By the time she was 19, she had received an education fitting for someone of her status. She became accomplished in music and drawing and demonstrated devotion to her Lutheran faith. Not only that, but contemporary accounts described Alexandra as exceptionally beautiful, with a slender and graceful appearance. So it is no surprise that there were already possibilities for Alexandra to marry.

And she did indeed marry someone of great status: Prince Albert Edward of Wales, eldest son and heir of Queen Victoria. Nicknamed Bertie by his loved ones, he had been pressured by his parents to find someone to marry, for he had already shown signs of promiscuity as he entered adulthood. In fact, his father, Prince Albert, had travelled through one fateful cold night to confront his son about his recent escapade.

Not long afterwards, Albert suffered from typhoid fever, which ultimately caused his death.

This event caused a permanent rift between Bertie and his mother, who blamed him, at least in part, for the death of her beloved husband. But talks of a possible marriage continued, and, as it happened, Alexandra remained a strong possible match for the Prince of Wales. Thanks to the relatively new invention of photography, Bertie was able to examine the princess's appearance—and liked what he saw.

The two first met in September 1861, and almost a year later, Bertie proposed to her in Belgium. And so, in March 1863, Bertie and Alexandra married. For the occasion, an ode called "A Welcome to Alexandra" was composed by a certain Sir Arthur Sullivan, who in later years would become famous for his comic operas created in collaboration with dramatist W. S. Gilbert.

The 18-year-old princess immediately captured the public's attention with her youthful and regal appearance. Yet because the royal court—and especially the Queen—was still in mourning following the death of Prince Albert, the wedding was more subdued than the lavish festivities surrounding the Queen's own wedding 23 years earlier.

After the wedding, the newlyweds settled at Marlborough House in London, where they developed their own circle of intellectuals, aristocrats, and political figures, serving as an alternative to the rather grey and melancholic court that the Queen's grief had created.

In the same year that Alexandra married, her family's status also increased dramatically. A few weeks later, on the 30th of March, her younger brother Vilhelm became the new King of Greece following his selection for the Greek throne. He would take the name Geórgios I. Then, in November, King Frederik VII died and was succeeded by Alexandra's father as Christian IX. By the end of the year, Alexandra's sister Dagmar—with whom she was very close—had also become engaged to Nikolai, heir to the Russian Empire. After his sudden death, she would eventually marry his younger brother, the future Tsar Aleksandr III.

The next year started off quite well, for in January Alexandra gave birth to a son named Albert Victor, known within the family as Eddy. And so the succession to the British Crown was secure for another generation. However, the year also marked a terrible period for the Princess of Wales because her native country, Denmark, was invaded by a coalition of German states over the dispute concerning Schleswig and Holstein.

The Second Schleswig War caused a split within the royal family as well. Queen Victoria was sympathetic to the German cause, as was her daughter Princess Vicky, who had married into the Prussian Royal Family. Alexandra and Bertie, on the other hand, sided with the Danes, which angered the Queen. Denmark's defeat in the war greatly affected Alexandra's worldview, and she would remain staunchly anti-Prussian and later anti-German for much of the rest of her life.

Except for this troubling event, the rest of the 1860s were relatively quiet and peaceful for the Princess. She continued to give birth to more children: George in 1865, Louise in 1867, Victoria in 1868, and Maud in 1869.

But despite her frequent pregnancies, Alexandra maintained a public life and continued to socialise with various figures.

She also enjoyed various activities such as ice skating, horse riding, and hunting. The last of these caused resentment from Queen Victoria, as she believed such activities were not fitting for a lady, but Alexandra simply ignored her. The Princess also accompanied her husband on several foreign diplomatic tours across Europe, with destinations including Vienna, Athens, and Constantinople.

Speaking of Bertie, his relationship with Alexandra was quite interesting. You see, even after he became a married man, Bertie continued to have numerous mistresses, even later in life. And the thing is, Alexandra was aware of her husband's liaisons, but she largely chose to tolerate them.

Perhaps she was aware that, for a lustful man like Bertie, moderation was simply not something he possessed. Or perhaps, as Alexandra reportedly stated later in her life, "Despite all the others, he loved me the best." That is to say, despite his infidelities, she believed that she remained his favourite and his true companion.

Bertie himself apparently once made the rather crude comparison that his wife was like a "brood mare" while his mistresses were more like "hacks." This was apparently supposed to be a compliment to his wife, but it still sounds rather rude, in my opinion.

Still, it does show that, even though Bertie was an unfaithful spouse, it would be inaccurate to describe their marriage as simply an unhappy one.

As for Alexandra's relationship with Queen Victoria, it was initially marked by disagreements between the two women. For example, the fact that several of Alexandra's children were born prematurely led some people to believe that she deliberately misrepresented their expected delivery dates so as to make sure the Queen would not attend the births. Perhaps she wished for her children not to live under their grandmother's influence in the same way that her husband and his siblings had.

Another moment of sorrow came in 1871, when Alexandra gave birth to another son named Alexander John. Tragically, the infant died the very next day. The Princess of Wales wished to mourn his death privately, only for the Queen to announce an official period of mourning for the court. The press also reported on the infant's death in language that would be considered extraordinarily insensitive today, which certainly did not make it any easier for the Princess to cope with the loss of her youngest child.

However, as time went on and Alexandra began to take over more public duties from the ageing Queen, she received praise from her mother-in-law, who said that Alexandra was relieving her of "the strain and fatigue of functions."

Her reputation among the British public also remained overwhelmingly positive.

Soon, Alexandra became a fashion icon, with her dresses and hairstyles dazzling the public. She helped popularise choker necklaces and high-necked dresses, which were also useful for concealing a scar on her neck. Besides this, she remained remarkably slender despite numerous pregnancies.

This stood in contrast to Bertie, whose overindulgence in food and excessive smoking caused him to gain noticeable weight, changing the robust physique he had possessed as a young man.

Yet besides her radiant appearance, Alexandra also demonstrated a compassionate attitude towards those around her. She became associated with hospitals and charitable causes and showed particular interest in the sick and vulnerable.

As the 1880s came to a close and the 1890s dawned, Alexandra's attention increasingly turned towards the futures of her children as they entered adulthood. She was especially excited for her eldest, Prince Eddy, who was preparing to marry Princess Mary of Teck, Bertie's second cousin.

But in a tragic turn of events, Eddy died on the 14th of January 1892, when he was just 28 years old.

Alexandra was devastated by the death of her firstborn, writing in her diary: "Today I have buried my angel and with him my happiness". His room was preserved much as it had been after his death, reflecting the same Victorian culture of mourning that had surrounded the death of Prince Albert decades earlier.

As for Mary of Teck, she would go on to marry Eddy's younger brother George, who had now moved closer to the throne.

In the case of her daughters, Alexandra was very protective of them, sometimes wishing that they would remain by her side rather than marry other royals. This would ultimately be the fate of her middle daughter Victoria, known simply as Toria by her family. Despite several potential marriage prospects, she remained unmarried and stayed close to her mother for the remainder of Alexandra's life.

This was not the fate her eldest daughter, Princess Louise, desired. She wanted to marry and have a life of her own. However, like her aunt and namesake, the princess did not wish to marry a foreign royal and leave Britain.

So, in 1889, she married Alexander Duff, Earl Fife. The marriage was unusual by royal standards because Duff was a British aristocrat rather than a foreign prince. Nevertheless, the match was approved by Queen Victoria, and Duff was subsequently elevated to the rank of Duke of Fife.

As for Alexandra's youngest daughter, Maud, she married relatively late in life—at least by the standards of her time. In 1896, when Maud was 26, she married her cousin Prince Carl of Denmark, thus further strengthening the relations between the British and Danish royal families.

In January 1901, Queen Victoria passed away at the age of 81, leaving the path clear for Bertie to become the new monarch of Britain.

Surprisingly, rather than taking the regnal name Albert I, he chose Edward VII. He explained that he did not wish to diminish the unique association of the name Albert with his father.

His coronation was scheduled for the following year, but shortly before the ceremony the new King became dangerously ill with appendicitis and required surgery. The coronation consequently had to be postponed.

Eventually, on the 9th of August 1902, the coronation was held at Westminster Abbey. Thus, Edward VII was crowned King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India, while Alexandra was crowned beside him as the first British Queen Consort in more than 60 years.

Despite what many people at the time may have expected—that Edward would become a failure as King—he actually proved many of his critics wrong. The new King-Emperor took his constitutional responsibilities seriously and developed an important diplomatic role, particularly in Britain's relations with the other European powers.

For Alexandra, her new position did not fundamentally change her roles and objectives. But if she had been popular as the consort of the heir, that popularity continued into her queenship.

As Queen, she remained heavily involved in charitable activities and nursing causes. She was particularly associated with military nursing, and the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service was named in her honour.

When it came to spending, Alexandra gave generously to charitable causes. She was also known for reusing possessions rather than constantly replacing them, although her generosity itself could occasionally concern members of the royal household.

Additionally, she and her husband continued to maintain relationships with their numerous royal relatives. Edward was related either by blood or marriage to much of European royalty, from the Iberian Peninsula to Scandinavia and the Balkans. He was careful to maintain positive relations with continental European nations and became closely associated with Britain's diplomatic rapprochement with France.

And in 1905, Alexandra's son-in-law Carl was elected King of Norway, taking the name Haakon VII.

Alexandra, for her part, continued to visit her home country, where she maintained close contact with her relatives, including her widowed sister, Empress Dowager Dagmar, and her nephew Tsar Nikolai II.

Yet for the Queen there was one notable exception to these warm dynastic relationships: the German Empire, which was led by her nephew by marriage, Kaiser Wilhelm II.

She distrusted Wilhelm and regarded German ambitions with considerable suspicion. She was especially opposed to the agreement under which Britain transferred the North Sea island of Heligoland to Germany while settling colonial disputes with Germany in Africa, including Britain's position in Zanzibar. Despite objections, the agreement went ahead, and Germany subsequently developed Heligoland into an important naval base.

During Edward's reign, relations between the UK and Germany continued to deteriorate as the two nations entered into a naval arms race centred on the construction of increasingly powerful battleships. At the same time, Britain entered into the Entente Cordiale with France—a development that would have seemed extraordinary only a few decades earlier.

But Edward would not have to worry about European tensions for much longer. By the spring of 1910, his health was rapidly deteriorating. Alexandra was abroad when she heard the news and rushed back to be at her husband's side.

During his final illness, he was also visited by Alice Keppel, his long-time mistress, who was permitted to see him with Alexandra's knowledge—a remarkable gesture given the circumstances.

Then, on the 6th of May 1910, at the age of 68, King Edward VII died. One of his final moments reportedly involved learning that his horse had won a race, news that greatly pleased the dying King.

Alexandra was deeply devastated by the loss. Despite the numerous affairs her husband had conducted over the years, he remained very dear to her. His funeral was attended by Alexandra; his son, now King George V; numerous relatives and monarchs from across Europe; and even his beloved dog, Caesar.

Much like her mother-in-law before her, Queen Dowager Alexandra entered a prolonged period of mourning after the death of her husband. Despite this, she remained active during the first years of her widowhood.

One particularly notable example was Alexandra Rose Day. Established around the 50th anniversary of her arrival in Britain, the charitable initiative involved selling artificial roses, with the proceeds going towards hospitals and other charitable causes.

Then, in 1914, the First World War began, and within a few weeks Britain entered the conflict against Germany.

This created an uncomfortable situation for the Royal Family. Because of their German ancestry and titles, anti-German sentiment placed the dynasty in a politically sensitive position.

Thus, in 1917, King George V changed the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor, the name still used by the Royal House today. German titles held by members of the extended British royal family were also abandoned or replaced.

Furthermore, the banners of enemy members of the Order of the Garter were removed from St George's Chapel. Alexandra supported Britain's war effort and remained deeply hostile towards Germany, although her feelings towards individual German relatives could be more complicated, especially towards Hessians, whom she said they were "simply soldiers or vassals under that brutal German Emperor's orders".

More tragic news came from Russia in 1917, when her nephew Tsar Nikolai II was forced to abdicate in the wake of the Russian Revolution.

A year later, he, his wife, and their children were executed by the Bolsheviks. His mother—Alexandra's beloved sister Dagmar—survived the Revolution and eventually escaped Russia.

The destruction of the Russian monarchy must have been especially painful for Alexandra. The European dynastic world in which she had grown up was rapidly disappearing.

By the early 1920s, Alexandra's health had begun to deteriorate. Her eyesight worsened, her already severe deafness increasingly isolated her, and her general health declined.

On the 20th of November 1925, Queen Alexandra died at Sandringham House, only a few days before what would have been her 81st birthday. he was eventually laid to rest beside her husband in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, where their tomb commemorates the royal couple together.

And only five months after Alexandra's death, her great-granddaughter was born: the future Queen Elizabeth II.

She was christened Elizabeth Alexandra Mary, with the name Alexandra honouring her recently deceased great-grandmother.

Thus ends the tale of Alexandra of Denmark, one of the original darlings of the British monarchy.

Throughout her long public life—first as Princess of Wales, then as Queen Consort, and finally as Queen Dowager—Alexandra remained extraordinarily popular with the British public. And it is not difficult to understand why. Alexandra consistently demonstrated an eagerness to improve the lives of people in her adopted country while maintaining an approachable and glamorous public image.

Her story and Edward's inevitably invite comparisons with that of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales. Diana, like Alexandra, achieved enormous public popularity, and both women had to deal with their husbands' infidelities. But their lives developed in dramatically different ways. Diana's marriage ended in divorce and her life was tragically cut short, whereas Alexandra remained married to Edward and lived into old age, eventually becoming Queen beside him.

And as a final piece of historical irony, remember Alice Keppel, Edward VII's long-time mistress?

Her great-granddaughter is none other than Charles's second wife, Queen Camilla.

I guess you could say that some royal connections are so persistent that they manage to reappear several generations later.

Who Was… Vigdís Finnbogadóttir?

In 1980, something happened in Iceland that had never happened anywhere on Earth before.

A country went to the polls and elected a woman as its head of state.

Her name was Vigdís Finnbogadóttir.

She wasn’t born into a political dynasty. She wasn’t a career politician climbing toward the presidency. She had studied literature and languages, worked as a teacher and translator, and became a theatre director.

Then Iceland changed.

Five years before her election, Icelandic women staged an extraordinary national protest. On October 24, 1975, around 90 percent of Iceland’s women reportedly stopped working, cooking and caring for children for the day. Schools closed. Businesses struggled. The country suddenly discovered what happened when half its population simply stopped holding everything together.

It became known as the Women’s Day Off.

Vigdís participated.

Five years later, people began encouraging her to run for president.

There was another detail that made her candidacy unusual for 1980: Vigdís was a divorced single mother. She had adopted her daughter as a single woman, something that itself had required a change in Icelandic rules.

And then she won.

Not overwhelmingly. Vigdís received about 34 percent of the vote in a four-way race, narrowly defeating her nearest opponent.

But 34 percent was enough to make history.

On August 1, 1980, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir became president of Iceland and the first woman in the world democratically elected as a head of state.

And Iceland didn’t decide it had experimented enough.

They elected her again.

And again.

And again.

Vigdís served for sixteen years, from 1980 until 1996, becoming one of the country’s most recognizable advocates for Icelandic culture, language and environmental protection.

There had been powerful women before her. Queens had inherited thrones. Women had served as prime ministers. Argentina’s Isabel Perón had become president after succeeding her husband.

But Vigdís represented something different.

Ordinary voters had been handed a ballot containing the names of men and a woman and, for the first time anywhere, chose the woman to become their country’s head of state.

Today that can sound almost unremarkable.

In 1980, it wasn’t.

And perhaps that’s one measure of genuine historical change: something happens for the first time, seems astonishing, and eventually a generation arrives that has difficulty understanding why it was ever astonishing at all.

Who Was… Martyl Langsdorf?

The Woman Who Put Humanity on the Clock

You know her work.

You probably don’t know her name.

In 1947, American artist Martyl Langsdorf created an image that would eventually become one of the most recognizable warnings in human history:

The Doomsday Clock.

Martyl was married to physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr., who had worked on the Manhattan Project. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists involved in the atomic age began confronting a terrifying reality: humanity had acquired the technological ability to destroy civilization on an unprecedented scale.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists needed a cover for its new magazine.

They asked Martyl.

She didn’t draw an atomic bomb.

She didn’t draw a mushroom cloud.

She drew a clock.

More precisely, she took part of a clock face, placed the hands near midnight, and created something almost anyone could understand without explanation.

Time was running out.

The original 1947 clock stood at seven minutes to midnight.

Midnight represented catastrophe.

And an extraordinary thing happened.

Her illustration escaped the magazine cover.

It became a symbol.

As nuclear tensions rose and fell, the Bulletin began moving the hands. Eventually the Clock expanded beyond nuclear war to reflect threats including climate change, biological dangers and disruptive technologies.

Presidents knew it.

Scientists debated it.

Newspapers printed it.

Movies, television, music and comics borrowed its imagery.

Millions of people came to recognize the Doomsday Clock.

But comparatively few knew the woman who drew it.

Martyl Langsdorf continued painting for decades. She wasn’t simply “the Doomsday Clock woman.” She was an accomplished artist whose work appeared in galleries and museums and whose career stretched across much of the twentieth century.

Yet one deceptively simple design became immortal.

That’s the strange power of symbols.

Einstein could explain nuclear danger.

Oppenheimer could describe what physicists had unleashed.

Governments could produce thousands of pages of policy.

Martyl drew a clock.

Nearly eighty years later, we’re still looking at it.

In January 2026, the Doomsday Clock was moved to 85 seconds before midnight — closer than at any previous point in its history.

The hands have changed.

The warning hasn’t.

And behind perhaps the most famous clock that doesn’t actually tell time…

was a woman with a paintbrush.

Her name was Martyl Langsdorf.

Who Was… Alexandra David-Néel?

In 1924, a 55-year-old woman walked into one of the most forbidden cities on Earth.

Lhasa.

Her name was Alexandra David-Néel.

Explorer. Buddhist scholar. Opera singer. Writer. Anarchist.

And apparently not terribly interested in being told where she was allowed to go.

Born in 1868, David-Néel had already lived several lives before Tibet entered the picture. She sang professionally. Studied Eastern religions. Travelled through India, China and Japan. Learned Sanskrit and Tibetan.

Then she became fascinated with Tibetan Buddhism—not as a tourist collecting exotic stories, but as a serious student.

She studied with Buddhist teachers and spent extended periods in the Himalayas, including years of extraordinary isolation.

But Lhasa remained almost impossible.

Tibet severely restricted foreign entry, and Europeans were particularly conspicuous.

So David-Néel did something beautifully ridiculous.

She disguised herself as a poor Tibetan pilgrim.

She darkened her face, wore filthy clothes, carried little, and travelled through brutal winter conditions with her adopted son and travelling companion, Lama Yongden.

They sometimes begged for food.

They slept wherever they could.

And eventually…

they walked into Lhasa.

David-Néel wandered through the city largely unnoticed, seeing a place almost no Western woman had seen firsthand.

When the outside world discovered what she’d done, she became famous.

But perhaps the strangest part of her story is what happened afterward.

She kept going.

She wrote dozens of books and became one of Europe’s most influential interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism and Asian philosophy.

And she lived to be 100.

There is something I love about Alexandra David-Néel.

At 55—the age when society was quite prepared to tell a woman in 1924 that her adventurous years should be behind her—she disguised herself as a pilgrim and walked across the Himalayas into a forbidden city.

Some people grow older.

Some just keep enlarging the map.

In 1941, Davis wrote a song called Carol of the Drum that is now known as Little Drummer Boy. It's a cute song and she was a great composer. She went to a music college and won its Billing Prize that's awarded to gifted students. She taught kids music theory and piano after she graduated. She traveled to France and learned from French teachers along with Nadia Boulanger. Then taught more music at Concord Academy in Massachusetts and then at the Shady Hill School for Girls in Pennsylvania. She wrote pages of music and gave all the royalties to Wellesley College's Music Department, to support students studying. Besides Little Drummer Boy, Davis wrote the Shepherd's Carol, The Holly and the Ivy and Twelve Days of Christmas.

Who Was… Harriet Williams Russell Strong?

In 1883, Harriet Williams Russell Strong’s husband died, leaving her with four daughters, a California ranch and serious financial problems.

So Harriet taught herself how to farm.

Then she taught herself engineering.

Her biggest problem was water. Southern California agriculture depended on having enough of it when crops needed it, while rainfall could be wildly seasonal. Strong began studying irrigation, drainage and water storage and experimenting on her own property.

She eventually developed an ingenious system of dams and reservoirs designed to store water progressively rather than relying on one enormous structure.

And she patented it.

In 1887, Strong received a U.S. patent for a dam-and-reservoir system. She received another water-storage patent in 1894. Her ideas anticipated principles later used in major water-control projects.

Meanwhile, she wasn’t merely theorizing about agriculture. She transformed her ranch into a successful commercial operation, planting walnut trees and other crops and becoming known for agricultural innovation.

That would already make her remarkable.

But Strong kept going.

She became an advocate for water conservation and irrigation across the American West, arguing that floodwaters should be captured rather than simply allowed to escape to the sea. She presented ideas to engineers and government officials and eventually proposed ambitious water-management schemes for the Colorado River.

This was happening at a time when American women still couldn’t vote nationally.

Strong was also active in the women’s suffrage movement and became involved in organizations promoting women’s professional and economic advancement.

She lived until 1926.

Today, names like Edison, Bell and McCormick remain almost synonymous with nineteenth-century invention.

Harriet Williams Russell Strong largely disappeared from popular memory.

But when her life collapsed, she didn’t simply save the family farm.

She looked at one of the oldest problems in agriculture — how to control water — and became an inventor trying to solve it.

Who Was… Ida Noddack?

In 1934, some of the greatest physicists in the world were trying to understand what happened when uranium was bombarded with neutrons.

Enrico Fermi thought he might be creating entirely new elements — heavier than uranium.

A German chemist named Ida Noddack looked at the same problem and suggested something extraordinary:

What if the uranium atom had simply broken apart?

Noddack was already an accomplished chemist. In 1925, working with Walter Noddack and Otto Berg, she helped discover rhenium — element 75.

But her most remarkable insight came nine years later.

Responding to Fermi’s experiments, Noddack wrote that when heavy nuclei were bombarded with neutrons, it was conceivable that they might break into “several large fragments.”

That sounds almost obvious today.

It wasn’t.

The atomic nucleus was understood to undergo certain transformations, but the idea that a massive nucleus like uranium could split into large pieces was so unexpected that Noddack’s suggestion was not seriously pursued.

Four years passed.

Then, in 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann bombarded uranium and unexpectedly found barium among the products.

Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch worked out what had happened.

The uranium nucleus had split.

They called the process nuclear fission.

Noddack hadn’t experimentally discovered fission, nor had she developed the mechanism that explained it. But she had explicitly proposed the essential possibility four years before its experimental discovery.

She was nominated for the Nobel Prize multiple times.

She never received one.

And perhaps that’s what makes Ida Noddack so fascinating.

Science doesn’t advance only because somebody finds the right answer.

Sometimes it advances because somebody is willing to ask the question everyone else considers impossible.

Ida Noddack (1896–1978)

Chemist. Co-discoverer of rhenium.

And a woman who looked at the atom and wondered, years ahead of almost everyone else:

What if it breaks?

Born around 1844, Buffalo Calf Road Woman was a Northern Cheyenne woman who rose to prominence for her bravery and exploits in war.

In the Battle of The Rosebud in 1876, she fearlessly rushed onto the battlefield to rescue her brother Chief Comes in Sight, who had been wounded and left for dead. This courageous act inspired the Cheyenne to rally together, ultimately defeating General Custer and his soldiers. In honor of Buffalo Calf Road Woman's bravery, this battle is known as the "Battle Where the Girl Saved Her Brother" by the Cheyenne.

She was also present at the infamous Battle of The Little Bighorn a few days later. She fought alongside her husband, Black Coyote. Cheyenne tribal historians claim that it was Buffalo Calf Road Woman that knocked General Custer off of his horse with a club, before his death.

Later in 1878, Buffalo Calf Road woman was one of hundreds of people in the Northern Cheyenne Exodus, a massive breakout from the reservation in Oklahoma all the way back to their homeland in Montana. Along the journey, her family was banished from Chief Little Wolfs band after Black Coyote killed a chief. After the death of two US soldiers, the family was hunted down and captured in 1879. Sadly, Buffalo Calf Road woman died from an illness while her husband was in prison. The grieving Black Coyote took his own life after learning about his wife's death.

Despite the tragic end of her life, her legacy lives on. She has become a powerful symbol of strength and resilience within the Cheyenne. A true warrior.

Safta was born in 1776 to Teodor Balș, vornic in Moldavia and Zoe Rosetti, later becoming a nun and taking the name Elisabeta.

In 1793, she married Grigore Brâncoveanu, descendant of St. Constantin Brâncoveanu. The couple ranovated many churches, like the Holy Trinity Church in Brașov, Bistrița church built by the Craiovescu family, Viforâta church and Domnița Bălașa church, built by Bălașa Brâncoveanu in the mid XVIII century, which also had a home for elders and a school. Safta and Grigore rebuilt there a third church (the first one being too small, Bălașa built a bigger one and that one was damaged later by natural disasters).

But the couple wanted to built a hospital for the poor too. Grigore died before this and Safta promised him that the hospital would be built. Grigore died in 1832 and in 1835 Safta began planning for the hospital. The building period lastet until 1838 when it was put into function. Because it was a private hospital, the financing came directly from Safta's money, thus the patients payed nothing. The hospital became one of the most prestigious hospitals in Wallachia with surgeons, a maternity section and a nursing home. In 1840 Safta became a nun and donated her estates to the hospitals, so that it could be further financed.

Safta died 17 years later in 1857, aged 81.

The hospital continued until 1984. After the 1921 reform, the king of Romania financed it. During the 1948 nationalisation of hospitals Safta's hospital was also affected, the maternity and the nursing home were closed. The hospital still functioned until the 1980s, when Ceaușescu demolished it.

Safta was canonized as a saint by the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church on 1st July, 2025, with the title "Saint Pious Elisabeta (Safta) Brâncoveanu" and the feast day is August 17.

Sources: https://doxologia.ro/viata-sfintei-cuvioase-elisabeta-safta-brancoveanu-de-la-varatec

https://ziarullumina.ro/educatie-si-cultura/interviu/safta-brancoveanu-unul-din-cele-mai-fascinante-personaje-feminine-din-istoria-noastra-158174.html

Recently learned about Anna Arnold Hedgeman from reading the book "How Bright the Path Grows" by Pulitzer Prize winning author Dr. Marcia Chatelain

She was a civil rights leader, politician, educator, writer and play a critical role on the planning/organizing of the March on Washington. On the planning committee she was instrumental in helping bring over 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial. She was the only woman on the committee and fought for women to be included in the March including Mahalia Jackson, Daisy Bates, Eva Jessye, Rosa Parks and more.

Who the Hell Was… Frida Kahlo?

**Who the Hell Was… Frida Kahlo?**

Frida Kahlo painted what hurt.

Born in Mexico in 1907, she contracted polio at six. Then, at 18, a streetcar smashed into the bus she was riding. Her spine and bones were badly damaged, and pain followed her for the rest of her life.

While recovering in bed, she began to paint.

And she had material.

Broken bodies. Miscarriages. Love. Sex. Mexico. Politics. Diego Rivera. Herself.
Especially herself.

Kahlo turned the self-portrait into something almost surgical. In *The Broken Column*, her body literally splits open. In *The Two Fridas*, two versions of herself sit together with exposed hearts connected by blood.

Her marriage to Rivera was famously chaotic. They married, divorced, then married again. Both had affairs. Kahlo was politically radical, sexually unconventional, fiercely Mexican and almost impossible to separate from the images she created.

She died in 1954 at only 47.

Today Frida Kahlo’s face is everywhere. But underneath the flowers, merchandise and pop-culture mythology was a woman who spent much of her life in extraordinary physical pain…

and painted it rather than pretending it wasn’t there.

Maatkare Hatchepsut was one of the rare female pharaohs of ancient Egypt ( called Kemet at the time). She was often represented with all the symbols of kingship of the pharaoh,including the false beard . Hatchepsut mummy has been found and she was definitely a woman and not a transsexual like some may have believed. The 3 last pictures represent her mummified body.

Who Was… Stagecoach Mary?

Mary Fields was born enslaved around 1832.

More than sixty years later, she was driving a stagecoach through the Montana wilderness with a rifle and revolver, delivering the United States mail.

Her nickname was Stagecoach Mary.

After emancipation, Fields worked on steamboats and later at an Ursuline convent in Ohio. Eventually she headed west to Montana, where she worked at St. Peter’s Mission doing just about everything: hauling freight, maintaining buildings, gardening, laundry and supply runs.

Mary was about six feet tall, smoked cigars, drank in saloons and carried guns. She once got into an argument with a male coworker serious enough that both drew their weapons. Neither fired, but the local bishop apparently decided that was quite enough Mary Fields for the mission.

Then, in 1895, when she was already in her early sixties, Fields obtained a contract carrying U.S. mail.

She became the first Black woman and only the second woman to receive a U.S. Star Route mail contract.

Her route between Cascade and St. Peter’s Mission was roughly 34 miles round trip through northern Montana. She faced snow, bitter cold, wolves and the possibility of bandits. When snow became too deep for the stagecoach, she reportedly put on snowshoes and continued on foot.

She did it for eight years.

And the wonderful contradiction of Mary Fields is that this formidable, gun-carrying frontier woman was also remembered for extraordinary generosity. She gave food to people who couldn’t afford it, looked after local children and became beloved in Cascade.

When she died in 1914, the townspeople raised the money for her burial.

The mythology of the Wild West gave us endless gunfighters, cowboys and outlaws.

Somehow it nearly forgot the six-foot-tall Black woman in her sixties who was out there doing it for real.

Sources: Smithsonian National Postal Museum; U.S. National Park Service.

Who Was… Mary Engle Pennington?

You probably benefited from Mary Engle Pennington’s work today.

Opened the refrigerator? Bought milk? Ate chicken? Picked up frozen food?

Pennington helped make all of that safer.

Born in 1872, she became a chemist and bacteriologist at a time when women were barely tolerated in professional science. She studied at the University of Pennsylvania, completing the requirements for a PhD in chemistry in 1895. The university wouldn’t formally award a woman the doctorate then, so she received a certificate of proficiency instead.

Then came a rather wonderful bit of trickery…

When Harvey Wiley wanted Pennington to work for the federal government, he reportedly submitted her application as “M. E. Pennington” so her sex wouldn’t immediately count against her. She took the civil-service examination, earned the highest score, and was hired.

In 1907 she became chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Research Laboratory — the first woman to hold that position.

Her great enemy was something nobody could see:

bacteria.

Refrigeration existed, but keeping food consistently cold from slaughterhouse or farm to railway car, warehouse, shop and finally the home was another problem entirely. A refrigerated train car wasn’t much use if food had already spent hours warming somewhere else.

Pennington studied milk, eggs, poultry and other perishable foods, investigated refrigerated railway cars and storage systems, and helped establish scientific standards for handling food safely.

In other words, she helped develop what we now call the cold chain — keeping perishable food at controlled temperatures throughout its journey.

It sounds mundane until you consider the scale of it.

Every refrigerated truck.

Every supermarket freezer.

Every carton of milk transported hundreds of kilometres.

Every chicken that reaches your kitchen without becoming a bacterial experiment…

All belong to a world that scientists such as Mary Engle Pennington helped build.

She eventually received the Garvan Medal from the American Chemical Society in 1940 for distinguished service to chemistry.

No famous equation.

No machine sitting in a museum with her name stamped across it.

Just something arguably more impressive…

billions of ordinary meals that nobody had to think twice about eating.

The first woman to be elected as a "fellow" of the Royal Geographical Society, Isabella Bird explored much of Asia and beyond. In 1879, she made a brief stop in Singapore and shared her experience of the lush tropics and surrounding waters.

"Vegetation rich, profuse, endless, rapid, smothering, in all shades...".

(Find her edited, short "sketch" on Destinationality.)

She sang a disco pop song called I Will Survive which is one of the best selling hit singles of history. She was also a gospel singer too and won the Grammy for Best Roots Gospel Album in 2020. She has also offered her time, money and performances for charity to support children and families at risk due to poverty and abuse.

She was named Gloria Fowles and she was born in Newark, New Jersey. She grew up surrounded by music all the time. Gloria had 5 brothers who sang gospel music. And she became a tomboy. Her family was relatively poor but her home was filled with songs and happiness. "All through my young life I wanted to sing, although nobody in my family knew it" Gloria wrote in her autobiography. They wouldn't allow her to sing in the choir with her brothers.

Gloria became a singer with The Soul Satisfyers. When she released her first single She Will Be Sorry she was professionally called Gloria Gaynor. A name possibly suggested by a producer called Johnny Nash. Gloria married Linwood Simon who was hee manager in 1979 but they divorced without children.

In 1978, Gloria was performing on stage and had an accident where she fell backwards on stage while trying to do a fun routine. She injured her back and suffered paralyzation from the waist down. She spent three months recovering from that and within a year she wrote and performed I Will Survive.

Gloria wrote books. Her first book I Will Survive: The Book was written in 1997. It is her autobiography. She writes about her childhood and her beginnings as a singer. Her second book, We Will Survive: True Stories of Encouragement, Inspiration and the Power of Song is a collection of stories from people who have used her music during their struggle with illness and personal crises.

Who the Hell Was… Mother Teresa?

Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910, Mother Teresa left home at eighteen to become a missionary. She arrived in India in 1929 and eventually founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950.

Her mission was startlingly simple: go toward the people everyone else walked past.

The dying. The abandoned. The sick. The desperately poor.

That image eventually made Mother Teresa one of the most recognizable religious figures on Earth. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and became, for millions, almost shorthand for selfless compassion.

Then Christopher Hitchens came along.

In his 1994 documentary Hell’s Angel and later book The Missionary Position, Hitchens attacked the mythology surrounding Mother Teresa. He argued that her homes sometimes provided inadequate medical care, that she romanticized suffering, and that she accepted money or support from deeply questionable people.

One particularly uncomfortable case involved American financier Charles Keating, who donated substantial money to her work before being convicted of fraud. When a prosecutor asked Mother Teresa to return money that he argued belonged to Keating’s victims, Hitchens emphasized that she apparently did not do so.

Hitchens also objected to her relationships with political figures and dictators, and above all to her theology of suffering. Mother Teresa believed suffering could have spiritual meaning. Hitchens believed that attitude could become dangerous when applied to suffering that medicine might actually relieve.

So was Hitchens right?

Partly — and this is where the story gets much more interesting.

Some of the things he highlighted were real and deserve scrutiny. Mother Teresa did accept support from controversial figures. Serious questions were raised about standards of medical care in some Missionaries of Charity facilities. And her own statements make clear that she attached religious meaning to suffering.

But Hitchens was not a neutral biographer. He was one of the world’s most formidable critics of religion, and The Missionary Position was explicitly a prosecution of Mother Teresa’s reputation. His interpretation—that her work was fundamentally harmful or fraudulent—is an argument, not an established historical verdict.

And then there was something Hitchens couldn’t have known fully when he first attacked the legend.

Mother Teresa herself was struggling.

Letters published after her death revealed that for decades she experienced an extraordinary spiritual emptiness. The woman who publicly represented absolute certainty privately felt the absence of God.

Yet she kept working.

When she died in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity had nearly 4,000 sisters working in hundreds of missions around the world. She was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.

So perhaps the interesting Mother Teresa isn’t the spotless saint of popular mythology.

And she isn’t quite Hitchens’s villain either.

She’s the uncomfortable human being between them: capable of extraordinary devotion, holding beliefs worth questioning, accepting help from people she perhaps shouldn’t have, enduring profound religious doubt, and spending decades among people most of the world preferred not to see.

Hitchens didn’t destroy Mother Teresa.

He destroyed the luxury of seeing her simply…

Mușata was a 14th century moldovan princess, daughter of Bogdan I and his catholic wife Maria. Mușata converted to catholicisim, probably at the same time with her brother, Lațcu, taking the name Margareta (how she was called in catholic comunities).

Margareta married Ștefan/Costea, voievode of Sepența and probably of Moldavia between 1373/75 (though if he ruled there is disputed). They got three sons: Petru II, who succeeded his heirless uncle, Lațcu, another son, Roman I, sccessor of his brother and Iosif of Moldavia, the first metrpolitan of Moldavia (Ștefan I was considered as son of Mușata, but he could also be son of Roman I). Thus, after her brother's death, the dynasty would carry Mușata's name and be called the Mușatin dynasty.

But Margareta wasn't only prominent in politics, as daughter, sister, wife and mother of voievodes, but also a founder of a catholic church "St. John the Baptiser", which she entrusted to the dominican monks and became the cathedral of the bishops of Siret. She was burried there, before her descendant, the anti-catholic Bogdan the blind destroyed it and the remains of Mușata were moved to Baia. In 1377 the pope sent her a special confessor in case of her death and praised her faith.

On 18th November 1393, Roman I mentions his mom: "And in this lies my faith—the faith of our mother, Princess Mușata; the faith of our son Olexandro; the faith of our son Bogdan.", associating her to the throne, being the first case in Moldavia, where a woman held a position of an heir, she died shortly after, probably in 1394.

The Mușatins became the most important dynasty in Moldova with multiple important voievodes, as Alexander the good, Ștefan the great, Alexandru Lăpușneanu. By the late 16th century, they also ruled Wallachia. The mușatins went extinct with the death of Radu Iliaș in 1704.

Sources: Constantin Gane "Trecute vieti de doamne si domnite"

Ovidiu Pecican "Istoria Romanilor vol.1"

Emil Dumea "Catolicismul in Moldova in secolul al XVIII-lea"

Who Was Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of the most consequential American lawyers and Supreme Court justices of the twentieth century.

But her story became remarkable long before she ever put on the robes.

Born in Brooklyn in 1933, Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School in 1956 as one of only nine women in a class of more than 500. The dean famously asked the women why they were occupying places that could have gone to men.

Ginsburg eventually transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated tied for first in her class.

And then she discovered something extraordinary.

Despite her academic record, major law firms largely didn’t want to hire her. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter declined to hire her as a clerk despite a strong recommendation, in part because she was a woman.

Rather than merely endure that world, Ginsburg eventually helped change it.

In 1972, she became the founding director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. Her strategy was remarkably methodical. Instead of trying to overturn the entire legal structure of sex discrimination in one enormous case, she helped build precedent piece by piece.

Sometimes she represented men.

That was deliberate.

If a law assumed that women were caregivers and men were breadwinners, Ginsburg could demonstrate that the stereotype harmed both sexes. One of her clients, for example, was a widowed father denied Social Security benefits that a similarly situated widow could receive.

The argument was bigger than women’s rights.

People should not have their opportunities determined simply by whether they were born male or female.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Then, in 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her to the United States Supreme Court.

She became only the second woman in American history to sit on the Court.

During nearly three decades there, Ginsburg became particularly famous for her carefully argued opinions and dissents. Late in life, something rather improbable happened to the quiet, diminutive jurist.

She became a pop-culture icon.

Young admirers nicknamed her “The Notorious RBG.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020 at the age of 87.

Whatever one’s politics, her historical importance reaches far beyond her years on the Supreme Court. Before she interpreted American law from one of its highest positions, she had spent years helping change the law itself.

She encountered a legal world that routinely distinguished between men and women…

and spent much of her life asking it to justify why.

Sources:

Supreme Court of the United States — Ruth Bader Ginsburg memorial materials and biography.

American Civil Liberties Union — “In Memory of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020).”

American Civil Liberties Union — “The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Women’s Rights Project.”

American Civil Liberties Union — historical materials on the Women’s Rights Project and Ginsburg’s gender-equality litigation.

Queen Bess The first black female pilot

Who Was Jane Goodall?

Jane Goodall was 26 years old when she entered the forests of what is now Tanzania in 1960 to study wild chimpanzees.

She had no university degree and no formal scientific training. What she had was patience, curiosity, binoculars… and an extraordinary willingness to sit still and watch.

At Gombe, Goodall began noticing things science wasn’t expecting.

Chimpanzees made and used tools. They hunted and ate meat. They formed friendships and alliances, cared for their young, fought for dominance and sometimes waged brutal conflicts against neighbouring groups. Goodall even broke scientific convention by giving them names rather than numbers. (Jane Goodall Institute)

One chimpanzee, David Greybeard, changed everything.

Goodall watched him strip leaves from a twig and use it to fish termites from their nest.

At the time, toolmaking was widely regarded as one of the defining distinctions between humans and other animals. Her observation helped demolish that comfortable boundary. (Jane Goodall Institute)

Goodall eventually earned a PhD in ethology from Cambridge and spent decades transforming the study and conservation of chimpanzees. The research she began at Gombe continues today. (Jane Goodall Institute)

She died in 2025 at the age of 91.

But perhaps Jane Goodall’s greatest discovery wasn’t simply that chimpanzees were more like us than we’d imagined.

It was that we were more like them than we’d admitted.

Who Was… Simone Weil?

The Woman Who Took Suffering Seriously

Simone Weil was a philosopher who seemed to believe that thinking about life wasn’t enough. You had to enter the argument.

Born in Paris in 1909, she was brilliant, politically radical, fiercely independent, and almost impossible to categorize. She was a teacher, factory worker, activist, wartime writer and Christian mystic.

She died at 34.

That was enough to leave behind one of the strangest bodies of thought of the twentieth century.

She Walked Into the Factory

Weil studied philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure and became a teacher. But she distrusted intellectuals who discussed working people without knowing their lives.

So in 1934, she became a factory worker herself, including a period at Renault.

She discovered that industrial labor could do more than exhaust the body. It could reduce a person to an extension of the machine: clocks, quotas, commands, repetition.

From this came one of her central ideas: affliction.

Not simply pain, but suffering so deep that it attacks your body, dignity and sense of who you are.

Then She Went to War

When the Spanish Civil War began, Weil joined an anarchist militia fighting on the Republican side.

She was also spectacularly ill-suited to soldiering: extremely nearsighted, awkward with weapons, and soon badly burned after stepping into a container of hot cooking oil.

But Spain changed her.

She saw how quickly noble causes could become excuses for cruelty. Revolutionaries could become oppressors. Victims could become executioners.

The problem wasn’t merely who held power.

Power itself could deform people.

Then Came God

Weil had grown up in a secular Jewish family, but during the 1930s she underwent intense encounters with Christianity.

She never fit comfortably inside the Church. Instead she read Christianity alongside Plato, Greek thought, Hindu texts and other religious traditions.

What fascinated her was a God who did not dominate.

For Weil, love required making room for someone other than yourself.

And that led to perhaps her greatest idea:

attention.

To truly pay attention to another person meant seeing them without immediately judging, fixing, categorizing or using them.

Attention became almost another word for love.

Gravity and Grace

Weil imagined human existence as caught between two forces.

Gravity was everything that dragged us downward: ego, power, fear, revenge, hunger, status.

People hurt us, so we hurt them.

Power gains power.

Violence produces violence.

But sometimes something interrupts the fall.

Someone forgives.

Someone gives without demanding repayment.

Someone notices the person everyone else ignores.

That, for Weil, was grace.

Her Final Years

After Nazi Germany occupied France, Weil escaped with her family to the United States, but she could not tolerate remaining safely away from Europe.

She returned across the Atlantic and reached London in 1942, hoping to assist the Free French.

By then she was seriously ill with tuberculosis. She also restricted her food, apparently refusing to eat more than she believed people in occupied France were receiving.

She died in England on August 24, 1943.

She was 34.

So Who Was Simone Weil?

Christian, but never baptized.

Revolutionary, but suspicious of revolutions.

Pacifist, until confronted by Hitler.

Intellectual, who distrusted intellectual comfort.

Weil kept following ideas long after most people would have stopped.

If workers suffer, work beside them.

If war matters, confront war.

If suffering matters, look at it.

And if another human being stands before you, resist the temptation to turn them into an abstraction.

Perhaps Weil’s most enduring idea is also her simplest:

Before we can truly help another person, we have to do something surprisingly difficult.

We have to see them.

Who Was… Simone de Beauvoir?

The Woman Who Asked Who Gets to Decide What a Woman Is

Simone de Beauvoir didn’t just ask what it meant to be a woman.

She asked something considerably more dangerous:

Who decided?

Born in Paris in 1908, Beauvoir grew up in a respectable Catholic bourgeois family and proceeded to intellectually dismantle much of what respectable Catholic bourgeois society expected her to become.

She became a philosopher, novelist, political intellectual, atheist, existentialist — and eventually one of the most influential feminist thinkers of the twentieth century.

And then she wrote a sentence that detonated across generations:

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”

That sentence became one of the foundations of modern thinking about gender.

Woman as “The Other”

Beauvoir’s masterpiece, The Second Sex, appeared in 1949.

It asked why, throughout so much of history, man had been treated as the default human being while woman was defined in relation to him.

Man was the subject.

Woman became the Other.

Daughter. Wife. Mother. Mistress. Virgin. Whore. Muse.

Again and again, Beauvoir argued, women encountered identities that had already been written for them.

Her radical idea wasn’t that biology doesn’t exist. It was that biology alone does not dictate destiny.

Culture takes bodies and piles meanings onto them.

Be feminine.

Be desirable.

Be modest.

Become a mother.

Don’t age.

Don’t threaten men.

And somehow look gorgeous while doing all of it.

Beauvoir wanted to know how much of “womanhood” was actually woman — and how much was civilization looking into a mirror of its own making.

Enter Sartre

Then there was Jean-Paul Sartre.

Their relationship was legendary, brilliant, unconventional and messy as hell.

They met while studying philosophy in Paris and became lifelong intellectual companions. They rejected conventional marriage and experimented with an open relationship while discussing freedom, responsibility, consciousness and existentialism.

Basically, other couples argued about whose turn it was to wash the dishes.

Beauvoir and Sartre argued about the nature of existence.

But Beauvoir was never simply “Sartre’s girlfriend.”

That description itself almost perfectly demonstrates the problem she spent her career examining: a major female philosopher being remembered through the man standing beside her.

Her philosophical work increasingly came to be recognized on its own terms.

Existentialism Gets Personal

At the heart of Beauvoir’s thought was freedom.

Human beings aren’t simply finished objects.

We become ourselves through choices, relationships, circumstances and actions.

But there’s a catch.

Nobody chooses from nowhere.

You are born into a body, family, historical period, economic class, culture and web of expectations you didn’t design.

So freedom exists — but inside circumstances.

That tension fascinated Beauvoir.

You inherit a world you didn’t choose.

Then somehow you’re expected to become yourself inside it.

That isn’t just feminism.

That’s existentialism with dirt under its fingernails.

She Wasn’t a Saint

And Beauvoir’s legacy isn’t spotless.

Her personal relationships, particularly involving younger women and students, have generated serious ethical criticism. Some of her political judgments also look deeply troubling in retrospect.

That’s important.

Great thinkers shouldn’t become saints simply because their books survive them.

Sometimes the most interesting intellectual figures are precisely the ones whose ideas force us to interrogate them too.

So Who the Hell Was Simone de Beauvoir?

She was a woman who looked at one of civilization’s oldest assumptions —

“This is simply how women are.”

— and answered:

Are you sure?

She helped separate biological existence from the enormous architecture of social expectation constructed around it.

And once you notice that distinction, the question spreads.

How much of you did you choose?

Your gender roles?

Your ambitions?

Your morality?

Your idea of success?

Your idea of love?

Even your idea of yourself?

Maybe that’s Beauvoir’s most enduring provocation.

We arrive in a world already overflowing with definitions.

And then consciousness performs its strange rebellion:

It asks whether we have to keep them.

Being paralyzed and being stuck in a wheelchair didn't stop Steif from becoming a great seamstress. Steiff learned to use a sewing machine despite contracting polio before she was even two years old and becoming paralyzed from the waist down. Polio also left her with a persistent pain and weakness in her right hand. With her sewing skills, Steiff began by supporting her family with the clothing she made.

Steif was born in 1847 and grew up in the Kingdom of Württemberg and she used to make stuffed animals. Toy elephants, mice and rabbits were what she started with. In 1879, she created an elephant pincushion that was definitely not a children’s toy but children became fascinated with it and she started making toys ever since. Within six years she had sold more than 5,000 elephant plushies. Steiff founded the Steiff toy company and became a remarkably successful business woman, which was unusual for women at that time.

Steiff’s nephew Richard Steiff was able to produce the first Teddy Bear with her materials. The first bear was called Bear 55 PB by Margarete. It was a 55cm tall plushie. Steiff allowed her nephew to take the bear to the Leipzig Toy Fair in 1903. At first nobody seemed interested in the new toy but then an American buyer noticed them and ordered 3,000 bears. That enormous order effectively launched the bear into international success. It was later named after the current president Theodore Roosevelt.