Thursday, December 3, 2009

Hannah More


Hannah More - an English playwright of the 18th and 19th centuries. Having an extremely varied professional life, More began by writing plays of a 'pastoral' nature; plays suitable for women to perform. Several of these were met with great success (though several also failed), and eventually she turned from light-hearted dramas and poems to more serious subjects. A devout Christian, More turned to prose in order to write several treatises about morals and ethics. Several of her most famed works in this vein include Coelebs in Search of a Wife, Christian Morals and Practical Piety. Toward the end of her life, she devoted herself to philanthropy, helping to establish several schools in places in England where none existed.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Hannah Teter


Hannah Teter - an American snowboardist who won a gold medal at the Olympics in Torino. Hailing from an entire family of snowboarders, Hannah took up the sport at age eight and quickly took to it. She is best known for her work in the halfpipe, and the medal she won in Torino was in that category. Hailing from Vermont, she has used sales of local maple syrup to establish a charity that helps fight hunger in Africa. She also has a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavour named after her: Hannah Teter's Maple Blondie.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt - a German philosopher of the 20th century. Born in 1906 and dying in 1975, Hannah Arendt had a storied career in the field of philosophy, carried out under difficult circumstances as a Jewish person living during Nazi Germany. Having to flee several times in the pre-war and war era, Arendt wound up in the United States, where she continued her work in philosophy, writing the book The Origins of Totalitarianism in no small part about the Nazi Party. Her most influential book, The Human Condition, followed in 1958, but she coninued to work right up till her death, writing a wide variety of works focusing on human interaction and systems of politics.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Hannah Snell


Hannah Snell – a British soldier who, due to the laws of the time, dressed as a man in order to serve. An interesting true story of the 18th century, apparently her public crossdressing started after her husband mysteriously disappeared. She borrowed her brother-in-law's clothing and name and went off in pursuit of her husband, who had been executed for murder. She joined the Royal Marines in 1747 and had a storied career on the open seas for three years without revealing her gender, until doing so to her shipmates in 1750. After going public, she was honourably discharged and was granted an army pension. She then went on to open a pub entitled The Female Warrior.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Hannah Nixon


Hannah Nixon – the mother of Richard Nixon. Being the mother of one of history's most reviled American presidents can't be the most wonderful claim to fame, but nonetheless she was apparently very much an influence on the outlook of her son, who described her as 'a Quaker saint'. Born in Indiana in 1885, she carried the maiden name of Milhous, subsequently the middle name of Richard, the second of five children she bore to her husband Francis Nixon. In the Oliver Stone movie Nixon, she was played by Mary Steenburger.

Introduction

Welcome to a site devoted to one single topic: the name Hannah. If you have this name, or if you're thinking of giving it to your daughter, here's an ongoing list of famous namesakes, both real and fictional.

Enjoy!