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Posted by: Amber Paranick
This Friday, March 8, 2019, is International Women’s Day and today we return to our historical newspaper archives for stories featuring change-making women in newspapers searchable in Chronicling America, the Library’s freely available database that provides access to historic United States newspapers published between 1789 and 1963. As the Library’s digital collection grows to 15 …
Posted in: Biography, Newspapers, Women's History
Posted by: Amber Paranick
Coined as the Hello Girls as early as the late 19th century, female telephone switchboard operators were widely known as having gentle and polite voices regardless of demanding and impatient callers. During World War I, French-speaking Hello Girls were enlisted to improve wartime communication, transmitting crucial information over a battlefield phone system to troops on …
Posted in: Digitized Newspapers, Newspapers, Women's History, World War I
Posted by: Amber Paranick
What are you afraid of? “Subways!” Mabel Stark, renowned Bengal tiger trainer, told the New-York Tribune in 1922. “Trains roaring through the tunnel terrify me more than any beast I’ve ever met,” she said. Following a nervous breakdown, the former nurse sought a “simpler & easier” profession: training wild jungle cats for the big top. …
Posted in: Animals, Biography, Digitized Newspapers, Newspapers, Women's History
Posted by: Amber Paranick
The flapper bursts onto the American scene in the early 1920s and becomes America’s post-Great War aesthetic ideal. She’s daring, with a sassy and independent spirit and exists at a time when the entire world’s a stage—and she’s the “It” girl. This new modern girl might drive cars, smoke cigarettes, vote, drink hooch, and kick …
Posted in: Newspapers, Women's History