Six decades ago, US President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would put human beings on the Moon by the end of the decade. But it wasn’t until 2016 that Margaret H. Hamilton (b. 1936), a computer scientist and software innovator, was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work on […]
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani human rights activist, especially for women’s and girls’ education, and the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate (the second Pakistani to receive the prize). Born in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan in 1997, she started writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu, detailing her life during […]
Marie Curie was a pioneer of modern science. Despite a career that was physically demanding and ultimately fatal, she discovered polonium and radium, championed the use of radiation in medicine and fundamentally changed the understanding of radioactivity. Marie Curie was born Marie Skłodowska in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, to a family of teachers who believed […]
Most people, at least in the United States, have heard of Betsy Ross, the woman credited with making the first American flag, but who was Araminta Ross? Araminta Ross was a person of immense stature in a small body. Only about 5 feet tall (1.53 m), enslaved and illiterate, she dedicated her long life to […]
Olena Zelenska, a former architecture student who is a screenwriter by profession, is credited with initiating Ukraine’s accession to the G7 international initiative on gender equality – the Biarritz Partnership – in December 2019 during a speech at the third Ukrainian Women’s Congress (a permanent public platform that defines the gender policy agenda for the […]
Today, March 8th, we commemorate women heroes. There are too many to list, of course, but The Good Times will highlight a few inspirational women who have made a real difference or who have even altered the course of history. Over the next several weeks, we will draw special attention to the accomplishments of such […]
Dressed in a flannel skirt with trousers underneath, on July 22, 1871, British mountaineer Lucy Walker (1836-1916) reached the top of the Matterhorn (4,478 m/14,692 ft). She was the first woman to do so. Before that exploit, in 1870, Walker made the first female ascent of the Aiguille Verte (4,122 m/13,524 ft) in the Mont […]
Once upon a time, a Frenchman named Joseph Ferdinand Cheval had a vision. And he had the passion to see his vision through. A postman by profession, from 1879 to 1912, after work, often in the dark working by candlelight, he toiled 93,000 hours over 10,000 days to build a palace. He was no architect […]
Here’s another upbeat story from the World Economic Forum about a man who is making a difference. His simple technique in Burkina Faso boosts the planting of trees and contributes to the Great Green Wall. This movement is fighting desertification in the Sahel region and halting the expansion of the Sahara Desert by the planting […]
On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident occurred on Japan’s north-eastern Pacific coast, becoming the second worst nuclear accident in history. According to Britannica.com, officials reported that tsunami waves from the Japan earthquake disabled the plant’s cooling systems, resulting in fuel rods in three reactors partially melting down, releasing radiation. By April, […]
