Great Women In History

Mary Robinson was born in Ireland, in County Mayo in 1944. She was the first female president of the Republic of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997. She was an incredibly popular president among the Irish public. Four months before the end of her term as president, she resigned from the position to take up a new role within the United Nations. She took the important and inspiring role of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which she continued until 2002.

Mary has secured her position as a fantastic advocate for human rights and the fair treatment of all people. She is passionate about ensuring that everyone is treated fairly and decently and continues to work with world leaders on all kinds of issues, whether they’re environmental, humanitarian or political.
 
My great Grand Mothers. They suffered through the worst times in recent memory the great depression the world wars bring up their families with husbands serving overseas with no idea where they were or when they would come home (one grandfather was gone over 5 years at war).

All accounts of my Great Grand Parents is they were tough resilient and kind people.
 
If you want to talk about Great Women In History, let's talk about our mothers, their mothers, their mothers mothers and so on. Women have made this world work since the beginning and always will. If it weren't for us, this Earth would be nothing. It's a shame there are those that think it untrue or that things need to go back 200 years so we can't voice our own opinions or make up our own minds. Keep rocking it girls. Keep reaching for the stars, you can get there. Keep doing what our great-great-great grandmothers could only dream of. Rule the World! And keep smiling.
 
Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross in 1822.

Born enslaved in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child. Early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy metal weight intending to hit another slave, but hit her instead. The injury caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams, which she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences, combined with her Methodist upbringing, led her to become devoutly religious.

In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, only to return to Maryland to rescue her family soon after. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger".[3] After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed, she helped guide fugitives farther north into British North America (Canada), and helped newly freed slaves find work. Tubman met John Brown in 1858, and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home on property she had purchased in 1859 in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her, and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier. She became an icon of courage and freedom.
 
Victoria Claflin Woodhull was one of the 19th century’s most colorful characters. She was a women’s rights and suffrage advocate, a popular public speaker, a newspaper publisher who introduced American audiences to the works of Karl Marx, the first woman to operate a Wall Street brokerage firm. She was also the first female presidential candidate in 1872. Victoria’s political party was the Equal Rights Party, and her campaign platforms included universal gender and racial equality under the law, civil service and taxation reform, and opposition to land grants given to railroads and other corporations. Woodhull’s name did not appear on any ballots, and an absence of records has left no evidence of how many votes she received, and since she had supporters both female and male, she would have indeed received some votes, (not too bad considering women didn't get the right to vote until 1920). Victoria helped break ground for the women who would run for president after her.

Former president of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was Africa’s first democratically-elected female head of state.
She was elected two years after Liberia’s decade-long civil war came to an end, and promoted democracy, peace, justice, and women’s empowerment. She went on to lead Liberia through reconciliation and recovery after the war, as well as the country’s most recent Ebola outbreak.
Sirleaf is one of just two African women to have won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in reconciliation and rebuilding the country.
 
Emilia Casanova de Villaverde is known as a patriot in Cuba, but lived most of her life in New York City. An ardent abolitionist and activist leader, she supported Cuba’s independence from Spain during the last half of the 19th century. As the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878) raged in Cuba, she formed the first women’s club, La Liga de las Hijas de Cuba, to raise funds and sustain the elderly, the widows and orphans who took refuge from the war in New York. She addressed the Congress of the United States about Cuba’s situation, and on several occasions personally sought the aid of President Ulysses S. Grant.

From her baronial coastal mansion in the South Bronx, where a network of vaults concealed the crates of munitions Emilia collected for the liberation army, she organized numerous clandestine expeditions to Cuba. Denounced in the conservative press, ridiculed in political cartoons, and burned in effigy in her hometown, she continued to form women’s clubs for the cause until her death in 1897 — the year before the Spanish-Cuban-American War would change the course of history for Cuba and Puerto Rico.

Born in Liu Ho, China in 1912, Chien-Shiung Wu was recruited to Columbia University as part of the Manhattan Project. Working as senior scientist on the atom bomb in 1943, she conducted research on radiation detection and uranium enrichment.

In the mid-1950s, Wu was approached by two theoretical physicists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang. They wanted help disproving the law of conservation of parity (which stated that two mirrored physical systems, such as atoms, behave in identical ways and do not differentiate between left and right).

Using the chemical isotope cobalt-60, Wu showed that the laws of nature were not always symmetrical, disproving the law that had been accepted for more than 30 years. Despite Wu's key contribution to the finding, only Yang and Lee received the Nobel Prize in 1957 for the discovery.
 
Time Capsule said:
Budica. ****** and bow in awe
Click to expand...
I believe you are referring to Boudicca. See Page 2.

Fela Warschau, a familiar name in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, (U.S.A.), was born in Poland in 1926. When she was about 13, the German Army occupied her city and three years later she and the rest of her family were forced into the infamous Lodz Ghetto, and then to Auschwitz. Fela and her sister Helen were separated from the rest of the family, and only the sisters survived. Eventually they were sent to Hamburg, Germany to pick up debris from Allied bomb strikes and then they were taken to Bergen-Belsen, where they nearly died from starvation and exhaustion. They were liberated by British troops in 1945.
Fela met her husband, Anschel, in a resettlement camp, and in 1951 they immigrated to Sheboygan, where they raised their daughters, Martha and Sally. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Fela traveled to schools and organizations to talk about her experiences during the war and took special interest in talking to kids.
In 1995, she made a videotaped history for the U.S. Holocaust Museum. A special room at Mead Public Library in Sheboygan, the Fela and Anschel Warschau Room, is a collection of artifacts and memorabilia contributed by Holocaust survivers who lived in Sheboygan.
“Remembering the Holocaust is for everyone – those who care and those who should care.”
 
Sybil Ludington, married name Sybil Ogden, (born April 5, 1761, Fredericksburg [now Ludingtonville], New York [U.S.]—died February 26, 1839, Unadilla, New York, U.S.), American Revolutionary War heroine, remembered for her valiant role in defense against British attack.
Ludington was the daughter of Henry Ludington, a New York militia officer and later an aide to Gen. George Washington. According to accounts generally attributed to the Ludington family and first published more than 100 years later, on April 26, 1777, a messenger reached the Ludington house with news of Gov. William Tryon’s attack on Danbury, Connecticut, some 15 miles (25 km) to the southeast, where the munitions and stores for the militia of the entire region were stored. Colonel Ludington began immediately to organize the local militia. Whether Sybil volunteered (as is often recounted) or was directed by her father to bear the order for muster and to rouse the countryside is a matter of uncertainty. (The classic account of the event, an article written in 1907 by Ludington’s great-nephew Connecticut historian Louis S. Patrick, says her father “bade her to take a horse, ride for the men, and tell them to be at his house by daybreak.”) In either case, through the night the 16-year-old girl rode her horse nearly 40 miles (65 km) on unfamiliar roads around Putnam county, spreading the alarm. She ranged south to Mahopac and north to Stormville before returning home. In October 1784 Sybil married Edward Ogden, a lawyer, and she lived in Unadilla until her death.
 
Mary, Queen of Scots is one of the most famous figures in history.

It was initially arranged for Mary to marry the English King Henry VIII's son Prince Edward; however the Scots refused to ratify the agreement. None too pleased by this, Henry sought to change their mind through a show of force, a war between Scotland and England… the so called 'Rough Wooing'. In the middle of this, Mary was sent to France in 1548 to be the bride of the Dauphin, the young French prince, in order to secure a Catholic alliance against Protestant England. In 1561, after the Dauphin, still in his teens, died, Mary reluctantly returned to Scotland, a young and beautiful widow.

Scotland at this time was in the throes of the Reformation and a widening Protestant – Catholic split. A Protestant husband for Mary seemed the best chance for stability. Mary fell passionately in love with Henry, Lord Darnley, but it was not a success. Darnley was a weak man and soon became a drunkard as Mary ruled entirely alone and gave him no real authority in the country.

Darnley became jealous of Mary’s secretary and favorite, David Riccio. He, together with others, murdered Riccio in front of Mary in Holyrood House. She was six months pregnant at the time.

Her son, the future King James VI of Scotland and I of England, was baptized in the Catholic faith in Stirling Castle. This caused alarm amongst the Protestants.

Lord Darnley, Mary’s husband, later died in mysterious circumstances in Edinburgh, when the house he was lodging in was blown up one night in February 1567. His body was found in the garden of the house after the explosion, but he had been strangled!

Mary had now become attracted to James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and rumors abounded at Court that she was pregnant by him. Bothwell was accused of Darnley’s murder but was found not guilty. Shortly after he was acquitted, Mary and Bothwell were married. The Lords of Congregation did not approve of Mary’s liaison with Bothwell and she was imprisoned in Leven Castle where she gave birth to still-born twins.

Bothwell meanwhile had bid Mary goodbye and fled to Dunbar. She never saw him again. He died in Denmark, insane, in 1578.

In May 1568 Mary escaped from Leven Castle. She gathered together a small army but was defeated at Langside by the Protestant faction. Mary then fled to England.

In England she became a political pawn in the hands of Queen Elizabeth I and was imprisoned for 19 years in various castles in England. Mary was found to be plotting against Elizabeth; letters in code, from her to others, were found and she was deemed guilty of treason.

She was taken to Fotheringhay Castle and executed in 1587. It is said that after her execution, when the executioner raised the head for the crowd to see, it fell and he was left holding only Mary’s wig. Mary was initially buried at nearby Peterborough Cathedral.

Mary’s son became James I of England and VI of Scotland after Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Although James would have had no personal memories of his mother, in 1612 he had Mary’s body exhumed from Peterborough and reburied in a place of honor at Westminster Abbey. At the same time he rehoused Queen Elizabeth to a rather less prominent tomb nearby.

Every British monarch since can trace their blood back to Mary.
 
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Althea Neale Gibson (August 25, 1927 – September 28, 2003) was an American tennis player and professional golfer, and one of the first Black athletes to cross the color line of international tennis. In 1956, she became the first African American to win a Grand Slam title (the French Championships). The following year she won both Wimbledon and the US Nationals (precursor of the US Open), then won both again in 1958 and was voted Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in both years. In all, she won 11 Grand Slam tournaments: five singles titles, five doubles titles, and one mixed doubles title.[4] Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame and the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. "She is one of the greatest players who ever lived", said Bob Ryland, a tennis contemporary and former coach of Venus and Serena Williams. "Martina [Navratilova] couldn't touch her. I think she'd beat the Williams sisters."[5] In the early 1960s she also became the first Black player to compete on the Women's Professional Golf Tour.
At a time when racism and prejudice were widespread in sports and in society, Gibson was often compared to Jackie Robinson. "Her road to success was a challenging one", said Billie Jean King, "but I never saw her back down."[6] "To anyone, she was an inspiration, because of what she was able to do at a time when it was enormously difficult to play tennis at all if you were Black", said former New York City Mayor David Dinkins.[7] "I am honored to have followed in such great footsteps", wrote Venus Williams. "Her accomplishments set the stage for my success, and through players like myself and Serena and many others to come, her legacy will live on."[
 
On September 16, 1910, Bessica Raiche made the first accredited solo flight by a woman in the United States. Raiche was considered a "new" woman of the 20th century because she drove an automobile and wore bloomers. In addition to being an accomplished musician, painter, and linguist, she also participated in typically “masculine” activities as swimming and shooting. While studying music in Paris, Raiche became intrigued by the flying of the Baroness Raymonde de Laroche.

Settling in Mineola, New York, she and her husband, Francois, built their first plane—a Wright type—in their living room. It was in this frail craft of bamboo and silk that she made her solo flight. In October 1910, the Aeronautical Society honored her with a dinner and a gold medal as America's first woman aviator.

The Raiches expanded their home-based silk, wire, and bamboo aircraft industry into a profitable company, the French-American Aeroplane Company. Eventually, when Raiche gave up flying for health reasons, she embarked on another demanding career as a doctor of medicine. She became one of the nation's first woman specialists with a practice in obstetrics and gynecology.
 
Judith Ellen Heumann (December 18, 1947 – March 4, 2023) was an American disability rights activist. She was recognized internationally as a leader in the disability community. Heumann was a lifelong civil rights advocate for people with disabilities. Her work with governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profits, and various other disability interest groups, produced significant contributions since the 1970s to the development of human rights legislation and policies benefiting children and adults with disabilities. Through her work in the World Bank and the State Department, Heumann led the mainstreaming of disability rights into international development. Her contributions extended the international reach of the independent livingmovement.
Heumann contracted polio at the age of 18 months, and used a wheelchair most of her life. She rejected cliches about disability as a tragic experience, saying, "Disability only becomes a tragedy for me when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives––job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example. It is not a tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair."

Bessie Coleman (January 26, 1892 – April 30, 1926)[2] was an early American civil aviator. She was the first African-American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot license.[3][4][5][6]She earned her license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale on June 15, 1921,[4][5][7] and was the first Black person to earn an international pilot's license.[8]

Born to a family of sharecroppers in Texas, Coleman worked in the cotton fields at a young age while also studying in a small segregated school. She attended one term of college at Langston University. Coleman developed an early interest in flying, but African Americans, Native Americans, and women had no flight training opportunities in the United States, so she saved and obtained sponsorships in Chicago to go to Francefor flight school.

She then became a high-profile pilot in notoriously dangerous air shows in the United States. She was popularly known as Queen Bess and Brave Bessie,[9] and hoped to start a school for African-American fliers. Coleman died in a plane crash in 1926. Her pioneering role was an inspiration to early pilots and to the African-American and Native American communities.
 
Artemisia Gentileschi, (born July 8, 1593), learned to paint at a very young age and was taught by her father. She is the most celebrated female painter of the 17th century. She worked in Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London, for the highest echelons of European society, including the Grand Duke of Tuscany and Philip IV of Spain. She was one of the first female artists to stand up for women's rights and to pave the way for future feminist authors. She was one of the most talented and adaptable Baroque painters of her time. Not only was she excellent at painting emotional scenes, but she was also the first woman accepted into the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton Born November 12, 1815, Johnstown, New York – Died October 26, 1902, New York City, New York

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a social activist, well educated, one of the originators of the women’s movement in the United States, and an author, wife, and mother. With her good friend Susan B. Anthony, she campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights, particularly for the right to vote. Although Anthony figures perhaps more prominently in popular memory, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was as an important force in the 19th-century women’s movement.
 
Cruella de Vil a hero of mine for many years now. Completely misunderstood at times a bit like myself. I have modelled alot of my ambitions on this fine fashion magnate who took power with both hands from the weak. So I think as a strong independent woman who succeeded in a cut throat business getting to the top we must salute her .
 
Marie Stopes, advocate of birth control and sex educator, was born in Edinburgh but studied for a science degree at University College, London. In 1918, she published the highly popular Married Love, a second book titled Wise Parenthood – which dealt explicitly with contraception – appearing shortly after. A controversial figure, especially for her views on eugenics, Stopes nonetheless was a key figure in publicizing her cause (a first birth control clinic was set up in a poor working-class area of north London in 1921) and in bringing to women worldwide the opportunity of planned pregnancies.
 
Jane Austen started putting pen to paper when she was just a teenager and went on to write six major novels which revealed what life was like in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Four of them were released within just four years of each other! That's some seriously rapid writing.

These were Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published after she died - and they are loved all over the world. There was actually a seventh and final novel, but sadly she never got to complete it.

While she was alive, she actually published her books anonymously, so nobody knew her as a writer. It is widely accepted that she never got the credit she deserved until after her death.

Now, just over 200 years since she died, millions of people carry Jane around in their pockets every single day. That's because her face was on the £10 note as a way of marking just what an enormous impact her work has centuries later.
 
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