Actually History

08/13/2026

She helped prove one of the most important discoveries in modern astronomy.

She was never awarded a Nobel Prize for it.

Born in 1928, Vera Rubin pursued astronomy at a time when women faced major barriers in the field. Princeton rejected her graduate application because she was a woman.

Rubin kept going.

In 1965, she became the first woman officially permitted to observe at Palomar Observatory. The observatory had barred women in part because it had no women’s restroom. When Rubin arrived, she drew a skirt on a paper figure and taped it to the men’s restroom door.

Then she found something that changed our understanding of the universe.

By studying the rotation of galaxies, Rubin found evidence that vast amounts of invisible matter were holding them together. Her work became some of the strongest evidence for what we now call dark matter.

She never received a Nobel Prize. She died in 2016.

Three years later, the National Science Foundation renamed a major observatory in her honor. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory became the first U.S. national observatory named after a woman.

Swipe to learn her story.

08/12/2026

She proved one of the most important discoveries in modern physics. Two men won the Nobel Prize for it.

In 1956, physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang challenged a basic rule of physics called the law of conservation of parity: the belief that nature should behave the same way if everything were flipped like a mirror image.

They had the theory. But they needed an experiment to prove it. So they turned to Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, one of the world’s leading experts on beta decay.

Wu spent months designing an incredibly difficult experiment. By the end of 1956, she had the answer. Parity was not conserved. It overturned a fundamental assumption in physics.

In 1957, Lee and Yang won the Nobel Prize. Wu was left out. She went on to receive more than 20 Nobel nominations. She never won.

Swipe to learn her story.

08/07/2026

Marie Tharp created the first map of the entire ocean floor. But she wasn’t allowed on the ships that collected the data.

Working from a desk at Columbia University while her male colleagues sailed the Atlantic, she spent years turning sonar readings into the most detailed maps of the seafloor ever produced.

In 1953, her maps revealed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a massive rift valley running down the center of the Atlantic Ocean. It was the first real evidence that the seafloor was spreading — and proof of continental drift.

Her collaborator’s first response was to call it “girl talk.” Jacques Cousteau crossed the Atlantic specifically to prove her wrong. His cameras found exactly what she had mapped.

When Bruce Heezen presented their research at Princeton in 1957, a geologist stood up and proclaimed, “Young man, you have shaken the foundations of geology.” The applause went to him. Marie was back in her office, and she wouldn’t set foot on a research ship for another decade.

She kept mapping. By 1977, her work had revealed the full scope of what she’d found: a connected mountain range spanning around the entire globe.

In 1997, the Library of Congress named her one of the greatest cartographers of the 20th century. She died in 2006. For most of her career, history told the story without her name in it.

Swipe to learn the story they left out.

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07/24/2026

When Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled his design for the Guggenheim Museum, critics mocked it. They called it a washing machine. An inverted oatmeal bowl. A mistake.

Hilla von Rebay called it perfect.

She had sought out Wright and convinced Solomon Guggenheim to commission him. She believed only he could create a museum worthy of abstract art.

Wright’s spiraling ramp broke every convention of gallery design. Visitors would move through art instead of simply passing by it. The building embodied Hilla’s philosophy: art should be experienced as movement, freedom, and transcendence.

Then everything changed.

Solomon Guggenheim died in 1949. His family assumed control of the foundation. The Museum of Non-Objective Painting was renamed. Hilla was removed as director.

Ten years later, on October 21, 1959, Wright’s masterpiece opened to the public.
Hilla wasn’t invited.

The building bore Solomon R. Guggenheim’s name. Yet before Hilla entered his life, his collection centered on Old Masters and traditional European painting. She transformed his vision, built the collection, championed abstract art, and helped bring Frank Lloyd Wright to the project that became one of the world’s most recognizable museums.

For decades, historians and curators have worked to restore her place in that story.

So the next time you walk the Guggenheim’s spiral ramp and look up at its skylight, remember whose vision made it possible.

Her name was Hilla von Rebay.

Watch our full episode on Actually History. Link in bio.

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07/24/2026

History erased the woman who shaped the Guggenheim Museum, changing the course of modern art forever.

In the 1940s, few would have imagined that a young woman from France would assemble one of the greatest collections of modern art ever created.

Born in 1890 into a noble family, Hilla von Rebay was the daughter of a Prussian general. She received an elite classical art education. She grew up surrounded by tradition — and rejected it.

She studied in Paris, Munich, and Berlin, where she met the pioneers of the European avant-garde. Around 1910, at just 20 years old, she discovered non-objective art: art that abandoned realism in favor of pure form, color, and emotion.

For Hilla, it changed everything.

She became one of modernism’s fiercest champions, helping break the rules that had defined Western art for centuries.

This is where her story really begins.

Watch our full episode on Actually History. Link in bio.

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07/23/2026

The Guggenheim Museum exists because of a woman whose name isn’t on it.

Hilla von Rebay was a German baroness, a trained artist, and the person who built Solomon Guggenheim’s entire collection from nothing. She identified the artists, acquired the works, traveled to Europe to meet Kandinsky, Klee, and Chagall, and distributed stipends to painters she believed in. She ran the museum for 13 years.

In 1943, she commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a permanent home for the collection, writing to him that she wanted a temple of spirit, a monument.

That building became the Guggenheim.

When Solomon died in 1949, his family removed her from the board of the collection she had actually built. By 1952, she was out as director entirely. When the museum opened on October 21, 1959, she was not invited.

Hilla von Rebay never set foot inside the Guggenheim Museum. 

Watch our full story on Actually History. Link in bio.

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07/23/2026

The woman who helped shape modern art and envisioned the Guggenheim Museum was erased from the story she helped create.

In 1928, Hilla von Rebay was commissioned to paint a portrait of a copper mining heir named Solomon Guggenheim. By the time she finished the portrait, she hadn’t just become his friend—she had completely transformed the way he saw art, converting him to the bold new world of modernism.

Before meeting Hilla, Solomon’s collection reflected the celebrated artistic traditions of the era: Old Masters and the refined realism of the European academic canon. Under Hilla’s guidance, he became one of the most influential collectors of modern art in history.

Over the next decade, Hilla, with Guggenheim’s patronage, built the Guggenheim art collection. She identified the artists, acquired the works, and traveled throughout Europe to meet the pioneers of the avant-garde (artists like Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Bauer.)

In 1939, she opened the first physical home for the collection in Manhattan. It was a temporary space she called the Museum of Non-Objective Painting. It was a tribute to a revolutionary idea: that art didn’t have to depict the visible world to hold meaning.

Then she went further. As the museum’s first director, she proposed a permanent home for the collection. She commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright, and together they envisioned what would become the Guggenheim Museum.

But she would never set foot inside it.

After Solomon died, his family pushed her out — removing her not only from the museum she helped create, but from the extraordinary collection she had spent decades building.

Watch our full episode on Actually History. Link in bio.

Who else deserves to have their story told? Drop a name below. ⬇️

06/05/2026

Most people know Monopoly. Far fewer know the woman who actually invented it.

Episode 17 of Actually History tells the story of Elizabeth "Lizzie" Magie: an inventor, writer, and economic reformer who created The Landlord's Game in 1904.

History credits Charles Darrow with inventing Monopoly. The truth i...

12/25/2025

This holiday season, we’re unwrapping gifts from remarkable women in history.

Join us as we revisit the discoveries, ideas, and cultural shifts shaped by women throughout history; many of them buried in footnotes or erased from the historical record altogether.

From science and technology to music, art, and culture — we’re still living with their impact today.

As the year winds down, we’re looking back with intention and giving credit where it’s actually due.

12/23/2025

This holiday season, we’re unwrapping gifts from remarkable women in history.

Join us as we revisit the discoveries, ideas, and cultural shifts shaped by women throughout history; many of them buried in footnotes or erased from the historical record altogether.

As the year winds down, we’re looking back with intention and giving credit where it’s actually due.