Anna Beth

“You don’t love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.” O.W.

In 1930, rural Virginia, a Black girl born into sharecropping poverty wasn't supposed to leave the tobacco fields. But Gladys Mae Brown had other plans.... Her hands picked crops. Her mind solved equations no one asked her to solve. Her parents, despite barely scraping by, made a choice that defied every expectation placed on them. They kept her in school. She became valedictorian at a segregated high school with torn textbooks and broken windows. She earned a scholarship to Virginia State College in an era when being Black, female, and intellectually brilliant meant the world tried to crush you three different ways. In 1956, she walked through the doors of the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren as the second Black woman they'd ever hired. Four Black employees. Hundreds of white men. Most didn't think she'd survive the week. They were catastrophically wrong. Gladys calculated weapons trajectories by hand. Complex differential equations that consumed hours of meticulous work. Her accuracy became legendary. When computers arrived, she didn't resist the future. She learned Fortran. She mastered programming languages. She transformed weeks of calculations into hours. Then came Seasat in the 1970s. The first satellite studying Earth's oceans from orbit. She became project manager. But her true contribution remained hidden in the mathematics. For GPS to function, you need Earth's exact shape. Not close. Exact. Earth isn't a smooth sphere. It's an asymmetrical, gravity-distorted, irregular mass of mountains and ocean trenches. Gladys spent years constructing mathematical models describing every deviation, every curve, every gravitational anomaly of our planet's true form. She analyzed satellite data. She built geoid models. Tedious, invisible, revolutionary work. That mathematics became the foundation of GPS. Every navigation app. Every emergency rescue. Every autonomous vehicle. Every precision farming system. Her equations make it possible. Forty-two years at Dahlgren. Retirement in 1998. GPS fully operational worldwide. Billions of users. Almost nobody knew her name. She raised three children. Earned her PhD at seventy after surviving a stroke. Lived quietly. Until 2018, when someone at a sorority event read her biography aloud. The room went silent. The story exploded. At eighty-eight, Gladys West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. The world finally learned her name. She mapped the entire planet. Then everyone forgot. Until they remembered. Gladys West worked alongside her husband Ira West, who was also a mathematician at the Naval Proving Ground. They met at Dahlgren and built both a family and parallel careers in an environment that actively discriminated against them. After retirement, she didn't stop. She earned her PhD from Virginia Tech at age 70, proving that intellectual curiosity doesn't have an expiration date. The GPS system relies on something called the geoid, a mathematical model of Earth's shape that accounts for gravitational variations. Gladys West's calculations helped create these models by analyzing millions of data points from satellite altimetry. Without accurate geoid models, GPS coordinates would be off by hundreds of meters, making the technology essentially useless. Her story remained hidden partly because classified military work doesn't generate headlines. Many pioneers of satellite and navigation technology worked in obscurity for national security reasons. The sorority member who recognized her contribution was reading through Alpha Kappa Alpha biographies when she noticed the GPS connection and brought it to public attention. © Women Stories #drthehistories

Ahead of #InternationalMineAwarenessDay, see rare @itvnews footage of Princess Diana's iconic walk through a minefield during a visit to HALO's Angola programme in 1997. Diana's visit brought the issue of landmines to the world’s attention, and the minefield where she walked is now a thriving suburb in the city of Huambo, thanks to HALO's life-saving work. #IMAD2026 itv.com/news/2026-04-0…

Space flight is great because they let the nerds take over the cable broadcasts for a few hours and it’s just so much more informative than watching people argue at a desk

@SageKnowsAll @M23PPx @SussexHenryVIII Something to remember - a couple of months before the first message, he & Chelsy had broken up - a contributing reason being media intrusion. If he had a hint that Charlotte was a reporter, there wd have been no first message. Wonder what she told him she did for work.

@M23PPx @SussexHenryVIII Ya so in 2012 there was some house party that they were at and then they claim Harry texted her the next day 3 times and then nothing after that so I think that’s when he found out she was a journo and cut contact. Bc there’s no history of messages after that day…

So in the last 24 hours we have had the rehashing of two Harry stories that are respectively 6 and 15 years old. Open mudslinging attempts because Charles and Camilla are headed into the most embarrassing visit of their royal lives.

🌹⚘️Beautiful blooms ❤️🌺 Meghan Sussex sending fresh cut garden roses to bestie Kelly McKee Zajfen.

Prince Harry’s keynote conversation with IAPP’s Joe Jones at the #IAPPSummit26 “I do feel like we’re at the cusp of something transformational” #PrinceHarry

Throwback: “Firstly I would urge you not to read tabloids because I don’t think that’s healthy for anyone, hopefully one day they come with a warning label like cigarettes do like ‘This is toxic for your mental health’”- Meghan,The Duchess of Sussex (2021)

Prince Harry pictured with J. Trevor Hughes, CEO and President at IAPP, and Joe Jones, Director of Research at IAPP. “We get some big keynotes at the IAPP. Prince Harry might be the biggest of all to date. What an honor to have him speak to our Global Summit.” - CEO IAPP

The campsites in Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe provide a more accessible way for visitors to stay in the more remote parts of the park. Current renovation works, which will be completed before the start of the peak tourist season, are focusing on improvements to ablution blocks. Where enhanced comfort meets amazing wilderness experiences, the result is the kind of feeling that only Matusadona can create. #MatusadonaNationalPark #Zimbabwe #ZimParks #Ecotourism #AfricanParks

@ZandiSussex Agree. Loved her Xmas 2019 Christmas broadcast. Trash writers screamed "H is no longer in the fam album" when a pic of H/M/A wasn't on her desk... but she did something better... a specific photo & her own words.Start at minute mark 3:50 youtube.com/watch?v=KgvZnx…

The Queen may not have been a nice woman but I do believe she had a sweet personal relationship with Harry and Meghan. The only people we ever saw her publicly snubbing are Willy & Kate Macbeth.

🆕 SUSSEX UPDATE | LEADING WITH HUMANITY IN A DIGITAL WORLD On Monday, Prince Harry joined approximately 60 young leaders studying and working toward privacy careers at a workshop hosted by Archewell Philanthropies and IAPP. 👉sussex.com/leading-with-h… #PrinceHarry #IAPP

"I have nothing to gain from taking on powerful institutions...it comes at a personal and reputational cost for me, my wife and our children. But is it worth it? Absolutely. Because this is about more than one individual." Prince Harry's IAPP Global Summit speech is superb. 👇🏾

Family of Virginia Giuffre call on King to meet with them during US state visit lbc.co.uk/article/family…

Just a reminder that We've had British journalists fly all the way from the UK to talk to random people in Montecito about Harry and Meghan. We've had them buy tickets to events Harry and Meghan are attending. We've had them stand at entrances shouting questions at the sussexes.

She lives an unbothered life, enjoying nature, her children, her husband, the dog, putting flowers together, making jam and closing the door to all nonsense Immature lies and noise. The flowers are beautiful. I can’t wait to see what I’m going to do with mine.

Leading with Humanity in a Digital World Prince Harry at IAPP Summit 26 | 30-31 Mar 2026 (video of keynote at bottom of the page) sussex.com/leading-with-h…

"What has failed isn't the technology, it's the alignment between power, incentives, and responsibility. Because power, especially at this scale, demands responsibility. And where responsibility is absent, harm becomes predictable and inevitable." - Prince Harry, #IAPP Summit 26