August 1, 2020 • 10 mins
Caroline Herschel became the first woman to discover a comet on this day in 1786. / On this day in 1911, cartoonist Jackie Ormes was born.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey y'all, Eve's here. Today's episode contains not just one,
but two nuggets of history. These are coming from the
T D I H C vall, so you'll also here
to hosts. Consider it a double feature. Enjoy the show.
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
(00:21):
the past, one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and it's August one. Caroline Herschel
was born on this day in Sight six and she
was the sister of astronomer William Herschel, who was twelve
years older than she was, and she didn't have the
(00:42):
same access to education or an independent life that he
did as a woman in Germany in the late eighteenth century.
But she wasn't just William's sister. She was an astronomer
in her own right. So when they were children, their parents,
especially their father, had a really strong idea of what
he wanted their lives to be like. He really wanted
(01:03):
William to study music, and Caroline was destined to be
a good wife and a homemaker, so at first that
was really how they he steered their educations. William learned
a lot about things like music and philosophy and French,
and while sometimes Caroline did get to participate in the
same sorts of study, she spent a lot more learning
how to run a household. But in seventeen sixty one,
(01:25):
Caroline contracted typhus and she almost died. She was so
weak that she had to crawl up and down the
steps in her house rather than walking up and down them,
and that went on for months. This illness was really serious,
and it also affected her growth, and her mother in particular,
thought she was not going to be attractive to men
as a potential wife anymore, so instead of training her
(01:49):
to be someone's wife and run a household, they instead
started focusing on the idea of her becoming a scullery maid.
She would be doing a lot of the same work,
but she would be doing it as a job, a
job for pay, rather than the unpaid job of being
someone's wife. This whole time, though, like I alluded to earlier,
her father had been teaching or some things like music
(02:10):
and philosophy on the side, but that came to an
end after he became paralyzed after a seizure, and he
continued to be in really poor health until seventeen sixty seven,
when he died and she was nineteen. But then in
seventeen seventy one, William proposed that his sister Caroline come
to work as his housekeeper and then also to accompany
(02:30):
him in concerts, so she would sing and he would
play the organ, and she was overjoyed at this possibility.
She started practicing in secret, and finally the two of
them departed for England on August sixteenth of seventeen seventy two. Now,
in addition to that musical career that his father had
wanted for him so badly, William had also been studying astronomy,
including starting to publish in some papers. Caroline started out
(02:54):
by keeping his house and keeping the accounts she sang
on stage, and she started working with her brother on
his astronomical pursuits. She learned and she assisted until eventually
William gave her her own telescope. She started identifying and
cataloging clusters and galaxies and so many other astronomical bodies.
(03:15):
On August one, six and for several nights after that night,
she spotted an object that was moving in the sky
that turned out to be a comet. This makes her
the first woman credited with discovering a comet, and after
she did so, William, who by this point had become
the King's astronomer, lobbied for her to have an actual
paid position, and she got one. This made her the
(03:37):
first woman who was paid as a professional scientist in
Great Britain. So William definitely opened a lot of doors
for Caroline. She was able to get access to things
she couldn't have had access to otherwise because she was
his sister. But she was an astronomer in her own right,
and her work continued long after her brother's death. In
(03:58):
the decade after that first calm At discovery, she found
seven more. She helped expand the number of known star
clusters from a hundred to twenty five hundred. She earned
medals from the Royal Astronomical Society, from the King of
Denmark and from the King of Prussia. She became an
honorary member of the Royal Society of London in eighteen
thirty five and the Royal Irish Academy in eighteen thirty eight.
(04:21):
And today there are comets, asteroids, and a lunar crater
named after her. She died on January nine of eighteen
forty eight at the age of ninety seven. Thanks to
Terry Harrison for her audio skills on these episodes of
the Stay in History Class, and you can learn more
about Caroline Herschel on the June episode of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. You can subscribe to This Day
(04:42):
in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and wherever
else you get podcasts. Tomorrow we'll have an infamous Rise
to power. Welcome to This Day in History Class, where
we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
(05:12):
The day was August first, nineteen eleven. Zelda Jackson ORMs,
better known as Jackie ORMs, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
ORMs is considered the first African American woman who was
a professional cartoonist. Jackie's parents were William Winnifield Jackson and
Mary Brown Jackson. Jackie's mom raised Jackie and her younger
(05:36):
sister after their father died in a car accident, but
when Jackie was a child, the family moved to Monoga Hala, Pennsylvania.
She went to Minanga Hala High School, where she was
already writing and drawing. While in high school, the Pittsburgh Courier,
a black newspaper, assigned her to cover a boxing match,
(05:57):
but after she graduated, she began working as a proof
reader at the Pittsburgh Courier. She also worked as a
freelance reporter, covering police beats, court cases, and human interest stories,
but she was more interested in drawing. In nineteen thirty seven,
Jackie's first comic strip, Torti Brown and Dixie to Harlem,
(06:19):
first appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier. The comic was about
Torti Brown, a black girl from a small town in
Mississippi who moved to New York City to become a performer.
Torti was self reliant, and she found success at the
Cotton Club in Harlem. Though the comic strip followed Torti's escapades,
(06:39):
it also addressed racism in the US and the challenges
black people moving north face. The Courier was widely read
in and outside of Pittsburgh, and the strip also ran
in more than a dozen other black newspapers around the country.
The comic strip ran until April of nineteen thirty eight.
And in the end there were fifty three original Torti strips.
(07:03):
Jackie married Earl ORMs in nineteen thirty six. They moved
to Ohio where Earl could be closer to his family,
but they eventually moved to Chicago. They had a child, Jacqueline,
but she died at age three of a brain aneurysm.
While in Chicago, ORMs began working as a reporter for
The Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, but by nine her
(07:28):
single panel cartoon called Candy, that was about a housemaid,
began publishing in The Defender in a run that lasted
several months. In nineteen forty five, Jackie's single panel cartoon,
Patty Joe and Ginger began running in the Pittsburgh Courier,
the Chicago Defender, and other black papers. The cartoon was
(07:49):
about an outspoken girl named Patty Joe and her silent
and consistently shocked older sister, Ginger. It ran for eleven
years until nineteen fifty six. The cartoon even inspired a
Patti Joe doll that had an extensive wardrobe and was
successful among black and white children, though production of the
doll did not last long. When the smith Man syndicate
(08:13):
reached out to ORMs in nineteen fifty and asked her
to bring back the Torchy character. She agreed to do
so and created the comic strip Torty Brown's Heartbeats. At first,
she was set to just draw the panels and work
with a writer to come up with the storylines, but
she eventually gained soul control over the production of the cartoon,
(08:35):
and she addressed big issues of the day in this
cartoon too, like environmental pollution, racial injustice, and foreign policy.
The FBI investigated ORMs because she attended communist meetings, but
no reference to the left leaning views espouse in her
cartoons appeared in her files Torchy togs or paper dolls
(08:57):
of Torchy with a range of upscale outfits supplemented the
comic strip. Her career as a cartoonist ended when the
Defender and Courier neglected comic strips to focus on social
and political issues, but she continued to create murals and
other art into her later years, until her rheumatoid arthritis
(09:17):
got too severe for her to work on them. ORMs
was also engaged in her community through organizations like the
Chicago Urban League and the Southside Community Art Center. She
and her husband were friends with artists like jazz singers
Sara Vaughan and Lena Horne. She died of a cerebral
hemorrhage at age seventy four in Salem, Ohio. Jackie ORMs
(09:42):
did pioneering work as a syndicated cartoonist, and she's remembered
for her nuanced depictions of black women and girls, as
well as the bold social commentary she put in her cartoons.
I'm Eve Jeff Cote and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. And if
you haven't gotten your fill of history after listening to
(10:03):
today's episode, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and
Facebook at t d I h V podcast We'll see
you Tomorrow. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
(10:26):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Hey y'all, Eve's here. Today's episode contains not just one,
but two nuggets of history. These are coming from the
T D I H C vall, so you'll also here
to hosts. Consider it a double feature. Enjoy the show.
Welcome to This Day in History Class from how Stuff
Works dot com and from the desk of Stuff you
Missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore
(00:21):
the past, one day at a time with a quick
look at what happened today in history. Welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and it's August one. Caroline Herschel
was born on this day in Sight six and she
was the sister of astronomer William Herschel, who was twelve
years older than she was, and she didn't have the
(00:42):
same access to education or an independent life that he
did as a woman in Germany in the late eighteenth century.
But she wasn't just William's sister. She was an astronomer
in her own right. So when they were children, their parents,
especially their father, had a really strong idea of what
he wanted their lives to be like. He really wanted
(01:03):
William to study music, and Caroline was destined to be
a good wife and a homemaker, so at first that
was really how they he steered their educations. William learned
a lot about things like music and philosophy and French,
and while sometimes Caroline did get to participate in the
same sorts of study, she spent a lot more learning
how to run a household. But in seventeen sixty one,
(01:25):
Caroline contracted typhus and she almost died. She was so
weak that she had to crawl up and down the
steps in her house rather than walking up and down them,
and that went on for months. This illness was really serious,
and it also affected her growth, and her mother in particular,
thought she was not going to be attractive to men
as a potential wife anymore, so instead of training her
(01:49):
to be someone's wife and run a household, they instead
started focusing on the idea of her becoming a scullery maid.
She would be doing a lot of the same work,
but she would be doing it as a job, a
job for pay, rather than the unpaid job of being
someone's wife. This whole time, though, like I alluded to earlier,
her father had been teaching or some things like music
(02:10):
and philosophy on the side, but that came to an
end after he became paralyzed after a seizure, and he
continued to be in really poor health until seventeen sixty seven,
when he died and she was nineteen. But then in
seventeen seventy one, William proposed that his sister Caroline come
to work as his housekeeper and then also to accompany
(02:30):
him in concerts, so she would sing and he would
play the organ, and she was overjoyed at this possibility.
She started practicing in secret, and finally the two of
them departed for England on August sixteenth of seventeen seventy two. Now,
in addition to that musical career that his father had
wanted for him so badly, William had also been studying astronomy,
including starting to publish in some papers. Caroline started out
(02:54):
by keeping his house and keeping the accounts she sang
on stage, and she started working with her brother on
his astronomical pursuits. She learned and she assisted until eventually
William gave her her own telescope. She started identifying and
cataloging clusters and galaxies and so many other astronomical bodies.
(03:15):
On August one, six and for several nights after that night,
she spotted an object that was moving in the sky
that turned out to be a comet. This makes her
the first woman credited with discovering a comet, and after
she did so, William, who by this point had become
the King's astronomer, lobbied for her to have an actual
paid position, and she got one. This made her the
(03:37):
first woman who was paid as a professional scientist in
Great Britain. So William definitely opened a lot of doors
for Caroline. She was able to get access to things
she couldn't have had access to otherwise because she was
his sister. But she was an astronomer in her own right,
and her work continued long after her brother's death. In
(03:58):
the decade after that first calm At discovery, she found
seven more. She helped expand the number of known star
clusters from a hundred to twenty five hundred. She earned
medals from the Royal Astronomical Society, from the King of
Denmark and from the King of Prussia. She became an
honorary member of the Royal Society of London in eighteen
thirty five and the Royal Irish Academy in eighteen thirty eight.
(04:21):
And today there are comets, asteroids, and a lunar crater
named after her. She died on January nine of eighteen
forty eight at the age of ninety seven. Thanks to
Terry Harrison for her audio skills on these episodes of
the Stay in History Class, and you can learn more
about Caroline Herschel on the June episode of Stuff You
Missed in History Class. You can subscribe to This Day
(04:42):
in History Class on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and wherever
else you get podcasts. Tomorrow we'll have an infamous Rise
to power. Welcome to This Day in History Class, where
we bring you a new tidbit from history every day.
(05:12):
The day was August first, nineteen eleven. Zelda Jackson ORMs,
better known as Jackie ORMs, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
ORMs is considered the first African American woman who was
a professional cartoonist. Jackie's parents were William Winnifield Jackson and
Mary Brown Jackson. Jackie's mom raised Jackie and her younger
(05:36):
sister after their father died in a car accident, but
when Jackie was a child, the family moved to Monoga Hala, Pennsylvania.
She went to Minanga Hala High School, where she was
already writing and drawing. While in high school, the Pittsburgh Courier,
a black newspaper, assigned her to cover a boxing match,
(05:57):
but after she graduated, she began working as a proof
reader at the Pittsburgh Courier. She also worked as a
freelance reporter, covering police beats, court cases, and human interest stories,
but she was more interested in drawing. In nineteen thirty seven,
Jackie's first comic strip, Torti Brown and Dixie to Harlem,
(06:19):
first appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier. The comic was about
Torti Brown, a black girl from a small town in
Mississippi who moved to New York City to become a performer.
Torti was self reliant, and she found success at the
Cotton Club in Harlem. Though the comic strip followed Torti's escapades,
(06:39):
it also addressed racism in the US and the challenges
black people moving north face. The Courier was widely read
in and outside of Pittsburgh, and the strip also ran
in more than a dozen other black newspapers around the country.
The comic strip ran until April of nineteen thirty eight.
And in the end there were fifty three original Torti strips.
(07:03):
Jackie married Earl ORMs in nineteen thirty six. They moved
to Ohio where Earl could be closer to his family,
but they eventually moved to Chicago. They had a child, Jacqueline,
but she died at age three of a brain aneurysm.
While in Chicago, ORMs began working as a reporter for
The Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, but by nine her
(07:28):
single panel cartoon called Candy, that was about a housemaid,
began publishing in The Defender in a run that lasted
several months. In nineteen forty five, Jackie's single panel cartoon,
Patty Joe and Ginger began running in the Pittsburgh Courier,
the Chicago Defender, and other black papers. The cartoon was
(07:49):
about an outspoken girl named Patty Joe and her silent
and consistently shocked older sister, Ginger. It ran for eleven
years until nineteen fifty six. The cartoon even inspired a
Patti Joe doll that had an extensive wardrobe and was
successful among black and white children, though production of the
doll did not last long. When the smith Man syndicate
(08:13):
reached out to ORMs in nineteen fifty and asked her
to bring back the Torchy character. She agreed to do
so and created the comic strip Torty Brown's Heartbeats. At first,
she was set to just draw the panels and work
with a writer to come up with the storylines, but
she eventually gained soul control over the production of the cartoon,
(08:35):
and she addressed big issues of the day in this
cartoon too, like environmental pollution, racial injustice, and foreign policy.
The FBI investigated ORMs because she attended communist meetings, but
no reference to the left leaning views espouse in her
cartoons appeared in her files Torchy togs or paper dolls
(08:57):
of Torchy with a range of upscale outfits supplemented the
comic strip. Her career as a cartoonist ended when the
Defender and Courier neglected comic strips to focus on social
and political issues, but she continued to create murals and
other art into her later years, until her rheumatoid arthritis
(09:17):
got too severe for her to work on them. ORMs
was also engaged in her community through organizations like the
Chicago Urban League and the Southside Community Art Center. She
and her husband were friends with artists like jazz singers
Sara Vaughan and Lena Horne. She died of a cerebral
hemorrhage at age seventy four in Salem, Ohio. Jackie ORMs
(09:42):
did pioneering work as a syndicated cartoonist, and she's remembered
for her nuanced depictions of black women and girls, as
well as the bold social commentary she put in her cartoons.
I'm Eve Jeff Cote and hopefully you know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. And if
you haven't gotten your fill of history after listening to
(10:03):
today's episode, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and
Facebook at t d I h V podcast We'll see
you Tomorrow. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit
(10:26):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
This Day in History Class News
Host
Gabe Luzier
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