Clare Hollingworth (1911–2017)

Noted as the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II. On August 31, 1939, Clare Hollingworth had been working as a journalist for less than a week for the The Daily Telegraph when she was sent to Poland to report on worsening tensions in Europe. Hollingworth convinced the British Consul-General in Katowice to lend her his chauffeured car for a fact-finding mission into Germany. While driving along the German-Polish border, Hollingworth chanced upon a massive build-up of Nazi German troops, tanks and armoured cars facing Poland. The following morning Hollingworth called the British embassy in Warsaw to report the German invasion of Poland. To convince doubtful embassy officials, Hollingworth held a telephone out of her room window to capture the sounds of German forces. Hollingworth's eyewitness account was the first report the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office had about the invasion of Poland. During the following decades, Hollingworth reported on conflicts in Palestine, Algeria, China, Aden and Vietnam. In 1946, she was among the survivors of the infamous King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem, which killed 91 people.