Irena.

Irena Sendler (1910-2008)

She saved 2,500 children during the Holocaust from the Warsaw ghetto. Even when she was arrested and tortured, she wouldn't reveal the identities of those children or the people she was working with. Later, after her escape, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Blackbeards_Mom

Nellie. 

Nellie Bly is my personal favorite! She was a journalist in the 1890s who was given an assignment to investigate the Woman's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island due to accusations of the mistreatment of patients. She got in there by faking insanity and getting herself committed to the asylum, and when she was finally released, she ran an exposé in the New York World called "Ten Days In A Madhouse" that exposed the awful treatment of patients inside the asylum. This was considered a revolution in investigative journalism.

Plus, she read "Around The World In 80 Days," basically decided she could do better, and went around the world in 72 days. She was also an inventor, and was one of the primary journalists to cover the suffragette movement. One of my favorite historical figures who doesn't get enough attention! dragkingbaby

Grace. 

Grace Hopper. She invented the compiler which is the tool computer programmers use to turn their code into software. She was told computers were for doing calculations and not for running programs, so it couldn't be done. She figured it out anyway and changed the world forever. She might be the most important woman of all time. Nobody knows who she is. axetack

Mariya. 

Mariya Oktyabrskaya- After her husband was killed by Germans during WWII she bought herself a tank, asked Stalin permission to go to the front lines, and on her first maneuver killed 30 Nazis.

She wrote to her sister: "I've had my baptism by fire. I beat the bastards. Sometimes I'm so angry I can't even breathe." Iseeasong

Fatima.

Fatima Bint Muhammad Al-Fihriya Al-Qurashiya (phew, long name).

Founder of the oldest still running university. After her dad and her husband ate dirt, instead of sitting around and basking in her enormous wealth, she decided to start the world's first degree-giving uni.

It's been running since 800CE. detonatingorange

Bessie. 

Bessie Coleman.

Saved up money from being a manicurist and chili slinger try to go to aviation school. Was denied for being female and black, and eventually was financially backed to travel to France to earn her aviator's license, which she did in 1921.

She came back to the US as the first woman of black and Native American descent to earn an aviation license and the first person of black and NA descent to earn an international aviation license.

To make a living as a civilian aviator, she became a barnstormer and exhibition aviator. She died five years later when the plane she was flying went into a spin and she was thrown out at 2000 ft. geminiloveca

Julie. 

Julie D'aubigny had a fascinating life.

She was a duelist and opera singer in the late 1600s that dressed as a man but didn't try to hide her gender. She got in many duels with men over insults or other matters and became lovers and friends with a young noble she beat in a duel. One time, when her girlfriend's parents decided they didn't want their daughter hanging around Julie anymore, they sent her to live in a convent. So of course Julie decided to break in, fake her girlfriend's death, and run off together into the night.

Her life reads more like an action/drama film than a biography, chick was rad. Theoc9

Cleo. 

Cleopatra often gets shafted by history, portrayed as a simple femme fatale for the great men of Rome. In truth, Cleopatra was incredibly smart, able to speak nine languages, was the first member of her dynasty to even bother learning Egyptian, and she ruled effectively for 11 years before Augustus annexed Egypt. She was one of the smartest women of her day, and should be appreciated more than as a simple sex-buddy of Caesar and Antony. Herogamer555

Ida.

Ida B. Wells. This rad woman pulled a Rosa Parks 71 years earlier by refusing to move to another train car when they ordered her to.

When black people were getting lynched, she called out those racist cowards with her journalism saying truth like "Nobody in this section of the community believes that old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern men are not careful, a conclusion might be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women."

When women were trying to get the vote, they tried to tell her to march at the back but you can take a guess on whether or not she listened to them. SmartAlec105

Emmy.

It's a shame that Emmy Noether hasn't been mentioned yet. Noether's Theorem is one of the most important and fundamentally beautiful results from the 20th century in math/theoretical physics, and that's just one of the many impressive things she accomplished. Yet seemingly nobody outside of those who studied those fields in college has heard of her. Biscuit29

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