DID YOU KNOW? for August 1 – August 14, 2023

Dr. Lonnie Johnson ((born October 6, 1949), a NASA engineer and founder and president of Johnson Research and Development, invented the Super Soaker while working on spacecraft system designs at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “I was working on a new type of heat pump that would use water as a working fluid instead of freon and I was experimenting…and I machined these nozzles and, I’d hook them up to the sink in my bathroom, and I was looking at the stream of water coming out of a nozzle, and I turned and shot the stream across the bathroom, and I thought jeez it would be neat to have a really powerful toy water gun,” explained Dr. Johnson. 

Learn more: https://www.becauseofthemwecan.com/blogs/culture/meet-lonnie-johnson-the-man-who-made-a-splash-in-the-toy-industry-by-inventing-the-super-soaker

DID YOU KNOW? for July 10 – 24, 2023 

Cecilia Payne (May 10, 1900 ­ – December 7, 1979) was the first person to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College, with what Otto Strauve called “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” And in 1950’s, Payne became the first female professor and chair of the Astronomy Department at Harvard. Payne’s work is foundational to the modern study of variable stars. She was also awarded the Henry Norris Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society.

Learn more here: https://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/curriculum-collections/cosmic-horizons-book/cecilia-payne-profile 

DID YOU KNOW? for June 26 – July 10, 2023 

Patricia Roberts Harris (May 31, 1924 – March 23, 1985) was the first Black woman to sit on the board of a large U.S. public company. With accolades including service as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, U.S. secretary of housing and urban development, and as U.S. secretary of health and human services, Harris made history when she was elected to the board of IBM in 1971. The organization Black Women on Boards recently shed light on Harris’s history-making directorship and this remarkable achievement is now the subject of the documentary OnBoard.

Learn more...

The Patricia Roberts Harris Wikipedia page.

Lila MacLellan, author of Fortune‘s Modern Board newsletter, writes about OnBoard in a new Fortune piece.

DID YOU KNOW? for June 13 – 26, 2023 

Zitkala-Ša, Lakota for Red Bird, aka Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (February 22, 1876 – January 26, 1938) was a political activist who found work wearing many hats – as a Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, and educator. Zitkala-Ša recounted her struggles with cultural identity, emphasizing the friction between the majority culture in which she was educated and the Dakota culture into which she was born and initially raised. Her work helped bring traditional Native stories to a mainstream audience and influenced Congress to pass the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

Learn more….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zitkala-Sa

DID YOU KNOW? for May 30 – June 12, 2023

Alice Ball (July 24, 1892 – December 31, 1916) was a black chemist in Hawaii who at the age of 23 in 1915 discovered a way of treating leprosy before antibiotics. Unfortunately, others claimed credit for it. Scholar Paul Wermager explains, “Not only did Alice Ball overcome the racial and gender barriers of her time to become one of the very few African American women to earn a master’s degree in chemistry, [but she] also developed the first useful treatment for Hansen’s disease. Her amazing life was cut too short at the age of 24. Who knows what other marvelous work she could have accomplished had she lived.” 

Learn more…

https://www.biography.com/scientists/alice-ball

DID YOU KNOW? for May 9 – 22, 2023

The Indian Citizenship Act, established on June 2, 1924, was enacted by Congress to grant citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. However, some states barred Native Americans from voting until 1957. Learn more about the Indian Citizenship Act and its precursor, the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, which had devastating on Native American people and their culture.

Learn more…

https://www.loc.gov/item/today-in-history/june-02/

DID YOU KNOW? for April 25 – May 8, 2023

Florence Lois Weber (June 13, 1879 – November 13, 1939) was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, producer and director. In 1914, Weber became the first American woman to direct a full-length feature film and in 1917, she became the first American woman director to own her own film studio. Weber has been noted as one of "the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films".

Learn more…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Weber

DID YOU KNOW? for April 4 – 24, 2023

Learn More….

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Wessels_Williams

DID YOU KNOW? for March 21 – April 3, 2023

Joy Harjo (May 9, 1951 – present) is the first Native American to be appointed as the United States poet laureate, serving from 2019-2022. Harjo has written nine books of poetry, several plays, children’s books and two memoirs. Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. Harjo has received an American Book Award, PEN Center USA literary award, the Wallace Stevens Award for proven mastery in the art of poetry from the Academy of American Poets, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and more. In 2019, Harjo was elected a Chancellor the Academy of American Poets. She directs an arts mentorship program for young Mvskoke women and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

Learn More….

https://www.joyharjo.com/

DID YOU KNOW? for March 7 – 20, 2023 

Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 – August 4, 1931) was the first African American physician admitted to the American College of Surgeons. A pioneering heart surgeon, Williams performed the first successful human open-heart surgery in 1893 at Provident Hospital in Chicago, IL. As an advocate to end racial disparities in the medical field, he co-founded the National Medical Association in 1895, a professional organization for black medical practitioners because the all-white American Medical Association did not grant membership to black doctors.

Learn more…

https://www.jsums.edu/gtec/dr-daniel-hale-williams/