Ching Shih was a prominent pirate in Qing China who terrorised the South China Sea in the early 19th century by controlling the infamous Red Flag Fleet. Ching Shih was working as a prostitute on a floating Canton brothel in 1801 when the Pirate Cheng I either proposed they marry, or he sent pirates to …
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani Children’s Activist and Women’s Rights Activist. She is the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. Yousafzai became an advocate for the education of girls as a child after the Taliban took control and tried to ban girls from education, going so far as to attack girls’ schools in Swat. She began speaking …
Virginia E Johnson
Virginia E. Johnson was an American sexologist, she pioneered research into the human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction as part of a sexuality research team with William H. Masters. Johnson was risking a lot to be part of the research into sex, ladies of her generation were brought up with …
Nefertiti
Neferneferuaten Nefertiti was an Egyptian queen. Nefertiti ruled alongside her husband, Pharaoh Akhenaten from 1353 to 1336 B.C. She may have ruled the New Kingdom on her own after her husband’s death. Nefertiti and her husband were responsible for replacing Egypt’s chief god Amon with Aten, the sun god and the only god worthy of …
Helen Keller
Helen Keller was an American author, political activist and campaigner for deaf and blind charities. Keller became deaf and blind at 19 months old after an illness, thought to be scarlet fever or meningitis. Keller’s inability to communicate lead to the belief that she was badly behaved. When she was 7 she was sent to …
Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a Polish and naturalised-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research into radioactivity. Marie Skłodowska was a top student in her her secondary school, but was unable to attend Warsaw University as it was men-only. She attended the “floating university,” a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. She could not …
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was an African-American Civil Rights activist. She became the catalyst for the Civil Rights movement when she refused to move from her seat on the segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks was brought up in a family that bore the scars of slavery, her grandparents were former slaves and advocates for racial equality. …
Claudette Colvin
Claudette Colvin was a pioneer of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first to refuse to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Nine months before Rosa Parks. Colvin was 15 years old when riding the bus home from school when the conductor ordered her to give …
Irena Sendlerowa
Irena Sendler (or Irena Sendlerowa in Poland) was a Polish nurse and social worker. She served in the Polish underground (Polish resistance movement) during WWII and was head of the children’s section of Żegota, a clandestine Polish rescue organisation. Sendler was influenced by her father, who was one of the first Polish socialists. He was …
Millicent Garett Fawcett
Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett, GBE was an English feminist and suffragist. She is the founder of the Fawcett Society who carry on her fight for equal rights for women. Fawcett’s interest in politics began at an early age encouraged by her enterprising family. In 1865 Fawcett’s sister Louise took her to a speech on Women’s …