Awesome Women in History

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HoopyFrood

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With all the talk about gritty and medieval fantasy lately it was mentioned that stories set in that time seem to be about men doing manly things.

So here's a thread dedicated to all the Awesome Women in History. Because there were lots, doing very interesting things.

This was inspired by Greg Jenner's twitter feed today (anyone who watches Horrible Histories will recognise his face). In honour of International Women's Day, he's been tweeting about some brilliant women and their stories throughout history.

So I put them together into a Storify. Click to take a look, they're so good! He's still going on his Twitter feed, so I'm likely to edit that Storify and add them later on.

This one is definitely my favourite:

women_zps1cd9be8d.png


Although I also love the flinging honey one, too.

And absolutely great inspiration for some kickass women in our own pieces of work, no?

Anyway, if you have any stories about Awesome Women in History, please add!
 
Nancy Grace Augusta Wake AC GM. And all the other woman that were part of SOE.

These would, for me, knock the socks off any of the so called, "kickass woman", that litter fiction today.
 
Ok, here goes. Without any explanations:

Elizabeth I of England. Amelia Earhardt (sp?) and Amy Johnson. Marie Curie. Margaret Thatcher. Boudicca. Jeanne D'Arc. Jocelyn Bell. (Who? you might well ask!) Ada Lovelace. Mary Shelley (who ought to be practically sacred to SF forum visitors!). Queen Cleopatra. Florence Nightingale.
 
Mary Magdalene - amazing lady and so misrepresented.
Deborah the prophetess from the bible.
Cartimandua the Brigante Queen who's sexual intrigue and game playing could make for wonderful stories.
Empress Matilda/Maude - she fought for her throne.
Cornelia - Roman Matriach, mother of the Grachii
Aphra Behn - first novelist
Charlotte Bronte
Sylvia Pankhurst and Millicent Fawcett - suffragettes/suffragists
Nell Gwyn
Annie Besant (her article sparked the Matchgirls Strike)
Ethelflaed/Lady of the Mercians - Anglo Saxon war leader/pirate
Ching Shih - Chinese prostitute turned pirate.
Katharine Parr - little is known of her but she left behind some books and seems scholarly.
Isabella Beaton - her life story is amazing.
Aung San Suu Kyi - still alive but inspirational.
Harper Lee - for writing To Kill a Mockingbird
Rosa Parks
Again still alive: Joan Armatrading - her music is amazing her life story what little of it that is known is again inspiring.
 
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Following on from SJAB's post, Noor Khan and Violet Szabo. Also, the rather obscure WW2 character Ursula Graham Bower: anthropologist, explorer and guerilla leader of a tribe of headhunters. According to Wikipedia, she managed to wear out two machine guns through use and was the subject of an American comic book. Quite a life!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Graham_Bower
 
Mirannan said:
Mary Shelley (who ought to be practically sacred to SF forum visitors!).
Click to expand...
And, never forget her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, a writer, philosopher and proto-feminist.

There is also Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen and at times Regent of England, but ruler in her own right in her birth lands; fierce fighter for her people and her family.

On a less violent note:
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - the first woman to hold a medical licence in Britain, and she set up a medical school to help more women do the same; helping future generations.
In the US, a similar figure, and born in the same decade, was Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler, the first female African American physician, who also wrote medical books.

Pauline Gower, and all the women she commanded, in the Air Transport Auxiliary in the Second World War, ferrying planes and people. I know the US had a similar organisation, the WASPs. They proved their worth as vital pilots.

On a personal note, there's Jane Goodall, primatologist and campaigner - still alive, she inspired me many years ago, and still does.
 
I've always admired local historical figure Agnes Randolph (aka Black Agnes).

As Countess of Dunbar and March, she held the castle for six months with a few servants and a handful of guards against an English army led by William Montague of Salisbury. Legend has it that she sarcastically dusted the walls after they had been pelted by catapults. Eventually, the English left with the castle still under the steadfast leadership of 'Black Aggie'.

Today, children of Dunbar still speak of her ghost wandering the town and of the (as yet) undiscovered secret passage leading to the bowels of the, now ruined, castle.
 
I would imagine that there's at least one famous historical fella who was in actual fact a woman.
 
Oh, yeah! One's mentioned in Jenner's tweets. There's another I read about, though her name is slipping my mind now...I think around the 1920s/30s...
 
paranoid marvin said:
I would imagine that there's at least one famous historical fella who was in actual fact a woman.
Click to expand...

There are several my favourite was James Barry/Margaret Ann Bulkley. She was a military surgeon in the late 1800s she rose to be the Inspector General in charge of military hospitals and the secret only discovered after his/her death.

I believe it was discovered that she had also given birth at some point.

There was also the jazz musician Billy Tipton.
 
AnyaKimlin said:
There are several my favourite was James Barry/Margaret Ann Bulkley. She was a military surgeon in the late 1800s she rose to be the Inspector General in charge of military hospitals and the secret only discovered after his/her death.

I believe it was discovered that she had also given birth at some point.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the one Jenner mentioned!

There was also the jazz musician Billy Tipton.
Click to expand...

Ah, and that may well be the other I was thinking of!
 
AnyaKimlin said:
There are several my favourite was James Barry/Margaret Ann Bulkley. She was a military surgeon in the late 1800s she rose to be the Inspector General in charge of military hospitals and the secret only discovered after his/her death.

I believe it was discovered that she had also given birth at some point.
Click to expand...

Just reading about him now. Thanks for that, Anya. Fascinating.
 
To me one of the most outstanding women of her time was Amy Johnson, I even named one of my cats after her.
In 1930 she flew from England to Australia in a De Havilland DH.60 Gipsy Moth, a small open cockpit biplane, in 1932 she broke the record flying from London to Cape Town in a DH Puss Moth.
During WW2 she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, an amazing group of pilots, mainly women, who's job were to ferry planes from factory to airfield.
What made them so amazing was the variety of aircraft they would fly from day to day, one day maybe a Tiger Moth or Harvard trainer the next a four engine Lancaster heavy bomber or a Spitfire high performance fighter, or even a massive Short Sunderland flying boat.
On the 5th of January 1941 Amy was flying an Airspeed Oxford when she was forced to bail out over the Thames Estuary, her body was never recovered.
 
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