The Manchester Historian – Page 3 – Manchester Historian

16th century Spain – the apogee of Spanish imperialism and ruled by King Philip II, whose goal of an entirely Catholic Europe, perpetuated the brewing of a Spanish invasion of England. The Spanish Armada was strong – her soldiers and ships seemingly unconquerable. However, this young girl from Madrid doubted the fleet’s brilliance.

Throughout history, women have often played a pivotal but underappreciated role in political resistance. Traditional gender norms of the mid-20th century placed women in less political roles; they were subservient housewives. In reality, many women have been crucial in the fight against totalitarian regimes, the Mirabals illustrating as such.

On the night of January 14, 1887, in Washington DC, the drag queen was born, or at least the concept of the drag queen was revealed to the American public. Prior to this date, her Majesty William Dorsey Swann arranged balls in which men gathered in gowns of satin and silk and sashayed the night away. Such events went on for years, yet the existence of drag balls was only exposed to the American public on the night of January 14th, when the ball was raided by police. According to The Washington Critic, ‘six coloured men’ dressed in ‘female attire’ were arrested as ‘suspicious persons’.

In 1970, black revolutionary Angela Yvonne Davis was prosecuted for three capital felonies including first-degree murder, though she was not present when any violence took place. Davis was a professor of philosophy at UCLA just a year before, where she was fired on the grounds of being a communist.

When Pêro Vaz de Caminha arrived in Brazil on the 22nd of April 1500 aboard Pedro Alvares Cabral’s voyage of ‘discovery’, he was awestruck. The letter he wrote to the Portuguese King Manuel I is in stark contrast to those written by other explorers of the period.