
From The Guardian: “During the second world war, young women broke traditional gender barriers by working in Britain’s forests as part of the Women’s Timber Corps. As many as 15-18,000 young women left home for the first time, aged 17-24, to fell trees with an axe and saw for the war effort. The women could fell 10-tonne trees, carry logs like weight-lifters, work in dangerous sawmills, drive huge timber trucks and calculate timber production figures on which the government depended during wartime. They did exactly the same jobs as the men on less than half the pay. Britain was the largest timber importing nation in the world in 1939, bringing in 96% of its wood. When the war began, home grown timber supplies became vital. Britain needed to produce wood for the coal mines, as well as wood for railway sleepers, telegraph poles, rifle stocks, ship and aircraft construction, and packaging boxes for army supplies.”
A young girl got a life-saving liver transplant and her blood type changed

From The Sydney Morning Herald: “Doctors at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Australia called Demi-Lee Brennan a one-in-6 billion miracle. The 15-year-old liver transplant patient was the first person in the world to take on the immune system and blood type of her donor, negating the need to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life. Doctors say they have no idea how this happened. Demi-Lee was nine when she contracted a virus that destroyed her liver. She was given less than 48 hours to live when a donated liver from a 12-year-old boy became available. Demi-Lee had a 10-hour operation and was started on a cocktail of immuno-suppressant drugs. Nine months later, when her condition worsened, doctors were shocked to find that her blood type had changed. The head of hematology, Julie Curtin, said she was stunned when she realised Demi-Lee was now O-positive, rather than O-negative.”
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