#OnThisDay, April 12, 1961, at 6:07 AM UTC, the Vostok 1 spacecraft launched with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard, making him the first human to travel into space (Gagarin: First in Space, 2013).

#OnThisDay, April 12, 1961, at 6:07 AM UTC, the Vostok 1 spacecraft launched with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin aboard, the first human to travel into space (depicted in Gagarin: First in Space, 2013)

Very early #OnThisDay, 12 Apr 1944, Odette Wilen parachutes into France to work as a wireless operator for the British Special Operations Executive. The SOE supports the French resistance.

Wireless operators were at the greatest risk of discovery, as their position could be triangulated whenever they were transmitting messages back to London.

Wilen evades capture by minutes and escapes over the Pyrenees. She lives until 2015.

#OnThisDay, April 11, 1471, King Edward IV of England entered London unopposed, taking Henry VI prisoner and returning him to the Tower of London (depicted in The White Queen, “War at First Hand” 2013)

#OnThisDay, 11 Apr 1913, the Nevill Pavilion in Tunbridge Wells, UK, is destroyed by arson. No-one is injured. Suffragettes are suspected of starting the fire because their leaflets are found nearby, but no-one is ever caught.

"I don’t wear men’s clothes, I wear my own."

#OnThisDay, 10 Apr 1864, army surgeon Dr Mary Edwards Walker is captured by the Confederates during the US Civil War. She later receives the Medal of Honor.

As well as serving in the Civil War, and being a dress reformer who preferred to wear trousers, she was also a suffragist who declined to take her husband’s name when they married.

#OnThisDay, April 9, 1413, Henry V was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey (depicted in The King, 2019)

#OnThisDay, 8 Apr 1968, Barbara Jane Harrison dies trying to rescue trapped passengers in an airplane fire at Heathrow.

She was later awarded the George Cross for bravery: she remains the only individual woman to receive the GC in peacetime.

#WomenInHistory #History #AviationHistory #Histodons

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#OnThisDay, 8 Apr 1959, Mary K Hawes initiates a project to create the first universal programming language for computers used by businesses and government. Grace Hopper led the team that then created COBOL. Some mainframes are still using it.

Today, April 7, 1862, Union General Ulysses S. Grant defeated Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh, in one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War (depicted in How the West Was Won, 1962)

Today, April 6, 1710, Maundy Thursday, Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough saw each other for the last time (depicted in The Favourite, 2018)

The whaling industry was an unexpected player in the fight against #slavery.

How whale oil and spermaceti contributed to abolition:
https://theconversation.com/abolition-wasnt-fueled-by-just-moral-or-economic-concerns-the-booming-whaling-industry-also-helped-sink-slavery-250980

#history @histodons #Histodons @blackmastodon #BlackMastodon

Very early #OnThisDay, 6 Apr 1944, Lillian Rolfe and Violette Szabo separately arrive in occupied France to work for the British Special Operations Executive (SEO). Rolfe is a wireless operator, Szabo a courier.

Szabo returns to the UK at the end of April but goes back to France in June 1944 and is captured. Rolfe is captured in July 1944.

They are executed together, by shooting, in Ravensbrück concentration camp in Feb 1945.

Today, April 5, 1887, teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the meaning of the word “water” as spelled out in the manual alphabet (depicted in The Miracle Worker, 1962)

Today, April 5, 1895, author Oscar Wilde loses his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who accused him of homosexual practices (depicted in Wilde, 1997)