When we imagine the Middle Ages, our minds almost immediately summon a specific image: a heavily armored man astride a warhorse, charging into battle to defend a kingdom or rescue a damsel in distress. Centuries of popular culture, literature, and romanticized history have taught us that chivalry was exclusively a man’s game. Yet history tells […]
Queen Manduhai the Wise: The Warrior Empress Who Reunited the Mongols
Queen Manduhai the Wise (1449–1510), also known as Mandukhai Sechen Khatun, was a legendary Mongolian Empress who single-handedly reunited the fractured Mongol Empire. At a time when female leadership was extraordinarily rare on the Eurasian steppe, Manduhai proved that brilliant military strategy and political resolve knew no gender. The title “Khatun” served as the female […]
The Spy Who Wore Red: Josephine Baker
When the marvelous Josephine Baker stepped onto the stage of Paris’s Folies Bergere in the 1920s, her sequined costumes and electric performances hypnotized all of Europe, leaving her audiences in an unbreakable trance. But behind the glitz and glamour was a fearless woman who would soon wield her fame not just for entertainment, but for […]
Helicopter Heroine: Valerie Andre, Surgeon, Rescue Pilot And Her Courage Under Fire
“Valérie André is one of the great military aviators of the twentieth century. She was the first woman to fly a helicopter in combat and one of the first three helicopter medevac pilots. Flying more than 150 helicopter rescue missions during the French war in Indochina (including at Dien Bien Phu), and parachuting into the […]
Mary Richards, Civil War Spy: She Never Surrendered
Mary Richards was born into slavery in Richmond, Virginia. Freed by the Van Lew family who owned her, she was sent to school in the North, in order to become a missionary. At age 15, she was sent to teach in Liberia, West Africa. But after four years, ill and miserable, she wrote to her […]
Buffalo Calf Road, Heroic Cheyenne Warrior Woman
The remarkable story of a young Cheyenne warrior woman in her early twenties, Buffalo Calf Road, spans a period of 3 years from 1876 until her death in 1879. During this time the Cheyenne were caught in the westward expansion of pioneers, miners and the army, all determined to colonize the land on the great […]
Lin Siniang: Marshalling Spear and Sword
Lin Siniang was a Ming Dynasty warrior who trained up an army of women and sacrificed her life to save her king, dying at the young age of 15.
Admiral “Amazing Grace” Hopper, pioneering computer programmer
United States Navy Admiral Grace Hopper (1906–1992) was one of the first programmers in the history of computers. Her belief that programming languages should be as easily understood as English was highly influential on the development of one of the first programming languages called COBOL. It is largely due to Grace Hopper’s influence that programmers […]
Cathay Williams, AKA William Cathay, American Civil War soldier
Cathay Williams (1844 – 1892), a.k.a. William Cathay, was the first known African American woman to enlist in the United States Army, and the only black woman documented to serve in the US army in the 19th century. Born a slave in Independence, Missouri in 1844, Cathay worked as a house servant on a nearby […]
Trieu Thi Trinh, the Vietnamese Joan of Arc
In the year 43, Vietnam came under the rule of the Chinese Han dynasty. This foreign domination was to last for hundreds of years, with the Chinese campaigning to “civilize” and assimilate the native people. Though the Chinese ruled Vietnam for hundreds of years, their rule was not accepted by the Vietnamese and there were […]