10 Great Women in History Whose Life Stories Are Simply Inspiring

They say the important thing is to be in the right place at the right time. The heroines of our today’s article, by coincidence, were not able to follow this advice. All these women with progressive views were way ahead of the times in which they lived.

O incredible.club brought together the stories of 10 strong, free-spirited women. They deserve to be praised because they had the courage to not give up on their dreams and make the world a little better. Check out!

Women were not allowed to practice medicine in Greece in the fourth century BC So what was a young woman who dreamed of becoming a doctor to do? Agnodice fled to Egypt to study. Once she was finished, she returned to Athens, her hometown, and opened a midwifery clinic. Only she had one detail: she needed to pretend to be a man.

When their secret was discovered, Agnodice was put on trial. Fortunately, her satisfied patients defended her right to work as a doctor, as well as that of all Greek women.

Urraca was nicknamed “The Reckless”. And, by the standards of the Middle Ages, there was a reason for that. After losing her first husband, brother and father, the heiress of León and Castile remarried. Her second husband was her cousin Afonso I. The marriage did not work out. Urraca couldn’t stand the way she was treated, so she decided to divorce. Afonso I returned to his homeland and started a war against his ex-wife.

Thankfully, the couple managed to formally annul their marriage and not ruin each other’s (and their people’s) lives. Urraca’s story of courage did not stop there. The queen was no longer legally married and ruled the rest of her life alone. This allowed their female descendants to remain in power without the need for a husband.

Anne Boleyn is the second and perhaps most famous of Henry VIII’s six wives. Her story, marked by political intrigues and personal tragedies, has already attracted the attention of several filmmakers.

Anne resisted Henry VIII’s attempts to make her his mistress. So she refused the king—and he relented. Whether he was in love or he was rejected, he did everything he could to divorce and marry Ana.

And they lived happily ever after, but not for long. Anne was accused of witchcraft and treason before giving birth to the Crown Prince. In the Middle Ages, there was only one punishment for such crimes — the gallows.

It seems that Émilie du Châtelet managed to live several lives at the same time. She loved to dance, played the harpsichord very well, sang in an opera and acted in amateur theater. Émilie herself also did the translations of Isaac Newton’s work. Yes, yes, it was thanks to her that the French learned about the theory of gravity.

The marquise devoted herself to mathematics, physics and philosophy. Her ideas combined the work of Newton and Leibniz and were ahead of her time. Surprisingly, her personal life hasn’t suffered from such a busy life. She even had an affair with none other than Voltaire.

The story of Catherine II is so random that one doesn’t even know where to start. It has a great novel, it has a lot of action like Pugachev’s uprising, and it also has the beginnings of feminism in the Russian Empire.

In 1764, Catherine the Great founded the Smolny Institute, the first secondary educational institution for girls in Russia. Around 200 female students aged 6 to 18 received a comprehensive education at the institute. Study time lasted 12 years, and only occasionally could the students see their parents. And all this for what? Far from their families, the girls were re-educated in the spirit of a new era in order to transmit these values ​​to future generations of women.

Marie Antoinette lived a short but lively life. She was considered by her contemporaries to be a frivolous and capricious woman, but not everything people say is true. For example, the classic phrase attributed to the Queen of France, “If there is no bread, let them eat brioches!” it was never said by her. This phrase is taken from the book Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, written in 1769. At the time, the Archduchess was living with her parents in Austria and was not even thinking about marrying the French monarch.

It is said that she even received a marriage proposal from another young man – and it was from Mozart. When the musician was 6 years old, he took part in a concert at the Habsburg summer residence. Mozart slipped on the polished floor and Marie Antoinette came to his rescue. In response, the young man, partly jokingly, but also seriously, asked for her hand and offered his savior his heart, but the future queen of France refused him. Think of a great historical coincidence.

It took Clémentine Delait 36 ​​years to transform her “defect” into something memorable. Since she was a little girl, she carefully hid the beard that grew naturally, but everything changed after making a bet. A customer at her cafe noticed that she had hair in her face and made a bet for Clémentine to grow a beard.

The “Bearded Woman” brand quickly became popular. The photos of Clémentine in dresses and suits sold like wildfire. Then her life became hectic: she performed in a circus with wild animals, ran several pubs and even owned an underwear shop. Over time, her beard started to turn gray, but Clémentine never shaved it off.

Annette Kellerman is known as the “liberator of women’s bodies”. The fact is that Annette turned uncomfortable women’s bathing suits into an elegant one-piece swimsuit that did not interfere with the movements of a professional swimmer.

Not only did the Australian manage to build a sporting career and become the first woman to swim part-way across the English Channel, she also became a hit in Hollywood, launching a line of swimwear and lecturing on healthy lifestyles and vegetarianism. Annette was a determined girl even by the standards of our time – she herself asked her future husband to marry her.

They say that after the age of 50, life really begins, and Delia Akeley is living proof of that. Of course, she was no ordinary woman. She traveled half of Africa, saved her husband’s life twice after he was bitten by a malarial mosquito and suffered an elephant attack. But in the end, she ended up getting divorced over a monkey (Akeley’s husband was totally against pets).

After 50, Delia’s life took a turn. She went to Africa alone and became the first woman to cross the continent, lived with pygmies and published several books about this incredible experience. Between expeditions, Delia remarried and lived a happy life until she was 100 years old.

Junko Tabei began her journey as a climber when in Japan women were still assigned the role of housewives. Junko admitted that some men refused to work with her and called her a “husband hunter”. But the climber ignored the prejudice. In 1969, she organized the first women’s mountaineering club in the country, the Japan Women’s Mountaineering Club.

Junko Tabei reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1975. Before her, only men had reached the top of the mountain. The trajectory of the Japanese climber does not stop there. Junko became the first woman to conquer the famous 7 summits — the highest mountains on the 5 continents. Until the last days of her life, the climber never stopped practicing mountaineering.

Did you already know the heroines of our today’s article? What other women would you add to the list? Tell us in the comments section.