My public school education taught me very little on either the English or American women’s suffrage movements. I received a sterilized, almost Disneyfied briefing on the mass of ladies who fought for the vote, but they remained a nameless marching sea of stern-faced sashes and hats. (To be fair, this was a school that still had the U.S.S.R. on the maps, so historical pedagogy may have taken a backseat to acquiring basic resources like toilet paper, and possibly clearing out asbestos.) It was only years later and of my own accord that I beefed up on stories of women terrorizing politicians, enduring hunger-strikes (and the subsequent force-feedings) and yes—throwing themselves in front of the King’s horse.

Up until very recently, I had presumed that last one was more of a symbolic than violent gesture—a bit of pedestrian-on-equestrian hassling. On the contrary, British suffragette Emily Wilding Davison actually chucked herself in front of—and grabbed the reins of—a galloping horse as it was running the Epsom Derby in 1913. The video below is actual footage of the brutal event.
 

 
Davison valued the cause more than self-preservation; she had previously been thrown in jail nine times and suffered 49 force-feedings while on hunger strike. This time she targeted the horse owned by King George V for maximum uproar. As you can see, the impact was incredibly violent. She held on for four days before dying from internal injuries and a fractured skull. Her funeral was memorialized by the movement.