Another cop-out in a way but I thought people might find this interesting. See, I didn't really like history in school. Even in college I was a slackass despite my art history minor - visual memory is a completely different thing for me. It wasn't until I didn't really have the pressure to memorize dates and names and had access to A&E and its spinoff channels that I really became interested in history. Probably the visual thing again.

Even though I was fascinated by women in history, art history in particular, it wasn't until the late nineties that I started taking it fairly seriously. That's when I started gathering information for a book about the women in American Art - African American Women Artists in particular. There is a ginormous pile of stuff I've gathered over the years. And essays I pick up and write on every once in a while. Scans and reproductions. And, as I've said before, a respectable private collection of books on the subject. Who knows if my little history book will ever be published but even if it never is I wouldn't say it was a waste of time.

So far the only time I've ever been paid for my interest in history was when I worked for a website that recreated historical houses in (ready for this?) The Sims. Yeah. How nerdy can someone be to take such a popular video game and make it not just into building digital dollhouses, but digital historic dollhouses. Hehe. How punk rock am I? Ok, so not really.

For the most part I created more modern houses in a particular style and mid-century re-creations. And some of you are already familiar with the eerily accurate re-creation I made of our house. My main job was usually to identify and document all the little downloaded doohickeys my buddy Gigi used when building her houses. This was no small feat, she had thousands upon thousands of object, wallpaper, and floor files. Several gigabytes worth. And I would have to remember who made each one and where to download it. The good news is that a person with visual memory was particularly useful for that job.

Yes, people paid to download these houses and I would provide links to all the stuff they would need to go download somewhere else to have it work properly. That might seem strange to non-gamers out there but people spend money on their hobbies and this was just another weirdo hobby. For my knitting friends: think of it as paying for a really good pattern but still needing to get the yarn and needles.

You might be asking "Noelle, what the hell does this have to do with Catherine the Great?" or maybe "Will you stfu about this history stuff and post more knitting and spinning?" For those of you with the second thought I have a great knitting post today I just have to take photos.

There was a bio about Catherine the Great on the Biography channel last night and I remembered the huge reproduction Gigi made of Alexander Palace, which Catherine built for her grandson, and Catherine Palace, which was restored and heavily redecorated during Catherine the Great's reign but had originally been built for Catherine I.

So I thought you all might find that odd architectural view of Catherine the Great's life interesting. You don't have to pay to look at the screenshots but you still have to pay to download it. So just go peek at the screenshots and check out how a couple of gals took a nerdy hobby and made it even nerdier.

We'd all wandered off to other interests by late-2003 or so. After receiving a cease and desist from the Jekyll Island historical society and then the director of the Ivy Green museum (even though the floorplans in both cases were likely in public domain) our hearts just weren't in it anymore. There was a brief migration to a free server with a more modern slant but it didn't hold our interests like the historic reproductions did. Kind of sad but we enjoyed it for a while.

In the unlikely event that you're interested in some of the houses I made that remain free to download you can still join my extremely old Yahoo Group. I actually won a few awards for those houses. I guess I should add that these are all for the original Sims games with all the expansion packs that were available up to the point the houses were created. I never installed the last expansion though.

I am in a seriously cranky mood today. So I think it would be best if you went and read about this really cool midwife in Ethiopia over here. I'm going to go take a pill and possibly a nap.

Gouyen, meaning Wise Woman, was born in Arizona into Chief Victorio's (Lozen's brother) Warm Springs Apache band in the 1850's. She was famous among her allies for never getting injured or harmed in any way during battle, even when overwhelmed by the numbers of soldiers and their bullets.

On October 15, 1880, while the group was resting near Tres Castillos, New Mexico, they were attacked by Mexicans. When the offensive was over, seventy-eight Apaches had been murdered and only seventeen had escaped, including Gouyen and her young son, Kaywaykla , later known as James, whose interviews later in life would provide a great deal of information about running with Victorio and the region. Her small daughter, however, was murdered and shortly afterwards her husband was killed in a Comanche raid while visiting the Mescalero Apaches.

A legendary tale is told about the revenge of Gouyen. One night following her husband's death, she put on her buckskin ceremony dress and left the camp carrying a water jug, dried meat, and a bone awl with sinew for repairing her moccasins. She found the Commance chief who had killed her husband engaged in a Victory Dance around a bonfire with her husband's scalp hanging from his belt. Gouyen slipped into the circle of dancers, seduced the Chief an led him off into the high grass. At first she had hoped to get the Chiefs knife, but ended up attacking his throat with her teeth. They grappled and fought but eventually she won. Gouyen scalped the Commanche, cut his beaded breechcloth from his body, tore off his moccasins, then stole his horse. When she returned to her camp she was exhausted but managed to present her in-laws with the Comanche leader's scalp, along with his clothing and footwear.

Gouyen remarried an Apache warrior named Ka-ya-ten-nae. Later, she and her family were taken prisoner by the U.S. Army and held at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where she died.

Maria Montessori was born in 1870 in Ancona, Italy, to an educated but poor lower middle class family. When she was twelve, her parents moved to Rome to enable their only daughter to receive a better education. They encouraged her to become a teacher, which was the only career open to women at that time. Maria excelled at mathematics and had originally chosen a career in engineering but she became interested in biology while attending a technical school for boys and enrolled in medical school.

n 1896, Maria Montessori became the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome Medical School, and joined the staff of the University’s Psychiatric Clinic. Through the university's free clinics and her private practice, she came into frequent contact with children and families of the working class. When she was invited to represent her country in two international women's conventions and other speaking engagements in Europe she spoke vehemently supporting peace efforts, the women's movement, and child labor law reform.

In 1901, Montessori became the Director of the University of Rome's new orthophrenic school where she began to work with the reform wave for mentally handicapped children. She was was among the first to take a scientific approach to the education of these children, following the clinical studies by Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard and Edouard Seguin., two French physicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After research and trials with a boy "raised in the wild" Itard postulated the existence of developmental periods in normal human growth. This idea later became the cornerstone of Dr. Montessori’s philosophy. From Edouard Seguin, she drew further confirmation of Itard’s work, along with a more organized and specific system for applying it to the everyday education of challenged students. Through Dr. Montessori’s study of Seguin, she came to attune herself more actively to the “normal” child, applying all that she had previously learned.

Montessori combined these studies and developed educational studies based on observation and experimentation. This approach was referred to as the Child Study School of Thought. The next few years were devoted to work based upon the careful training and objectivity she had learned as a biologist.

In 1906, Dr. Montessori was invited to head the organization and orientation of preschools in one of the model tenements in the San Lorenzo district of Rome. The first Casa dei Bambini or "Children’s House" was opened on January 6, 1907. From her experience here, Dr. Montessori developed her philosophy and observations/experimentation methods for the education of young children.

The busy schools turned out to be very hectic, however, she had the older children help out and provided some puzzles that she had invented for the handicapped children. The results were that the children began to settle themselves, played with the puzzles, and learned daily living skills. Through observational studies Montessori discovered that children teach themselves when given the proper tools and environment. They have an almost effortless ability to absorb knowledge from their surroundings, as well as a tireless interest in manipulating materials. This self-creating process of the child is the cornerstone of what has been known as the Montessori Method. Eventually she was teaching these young students to read and write - four and five year olds were working on problems originally intended for third grade students. She would continue to develop equipment, exercises, toys, and methods based on what she observed children to do "naturally," by themselves, unassisted by adults. She also built tables and chairs instead of desks so the students could interact and learn more with each other.

As Montessori schools were set up throughout Europe and in America, Dr. Montessori ended her medical career in order to devote all of her energy to advocating the intellectual potential and rights of children. A good portion of modern traditional education is based on Dr. Montessori’s philosophy and resources, including the development of personalized instruction, manipulative learning materials, educational games, programmed instruction and the developmental classroom concept.

She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times—in 1949, 1950, and 1951. Maria Montessori died in Holland in 1952, but her work lives on in teachings based on her methods and through the Association Montessori Internationale, the Amsterdam-based organization she founded in 1929 in order to continue developing and teaching the methods most conducive to children teaching themselves.

Katherine Dexter McCormick was the second woman in history to earn a degree in science from MIT. In 1904 she received her BS in biology and married an heir to the International Harvester fortune, Stanley McCormick, youngest son of Cyrus McCormick who invented the mechanical harvester. Two years after their marriage, Stanley was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Katharine built a fantastic castle, Riven Rock, in Santa Barabra, Ca, so she could live with Stanley surrounded by a peaceful atmosphere. Despite the tranquil surroundings her husband's episodes would wax and wane throughout his lifetime. Katherine earnestly believed that his illness was genetically-related so she resolved never to bear children. By 1909, Stanley was declared legally incompetent and the lawyers for the Cyrus McCormick estate battled to restrain Katharine's power to spend the money in Stanley's trust fund without court approval.

Katharine made small contributions to numerous causes, including the woman's suffrage movement and, later, Margaret Sanger's Planned Parenthood Federation. Most of her charitable spending went into neuroendocrine research. As long as her husband remained alive, her spending would be monitored by the probate court in Chicago and as long as she spent money on research into causes of and treatments for her husband's disease, her spending was easily approved. Only after his death in 1947 would she inherit the funds and be able to spend the funds at her own discretion.

By age seventy-one McCormick was wealthy in her own right and determined to develop a cheap, easy to use, safe, effective, artificial contraceptive pill. In 1951 McCormick met with Gregory Goodwin Pincus who had been working on developing a hormonal birth control method since the 1930s. McCormick agreed to fund Pincus' research into oral contraception and in 1954 she and Pincus got Dr. John Rock to conduct human trials. The FDA approved the sale of the Pill in 1960. During her lifetime and in her will, she contributed $2 million to develop the birth control pill, not a single cent of the government's money went into developing the most revolutionary pharmaceutical invention of the century. Nor did any corporation finance the development of a birth control pill: corporate executives refused to believe there was a market for a drug that prevents women from becoming pregnant. Without Katharine McCormick's funding, the birth control pill would probably not have been invented, tested, or marketed for a very long time.

She strongly believed in using her fortune only to aid unpopular causes which, in addition to controversial political movements, included the visual arts and music. She also donated money to MIT to build women's dormitories in her husband's name which are still used today. Following her death in 1967, her will provided $5 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which funded the Katharine Dexter McCormick Library in New York City.
According to Planned Parenthood, The Library serves the research and information needs of planned parentood, affiliate staff and volunteers nationwide, as well as researchers, other sexual health professionals, writers, and journalists. Last year the libaray drew from its collection of more than 6100 books, 23,000 articles, pamphlets, journals, and historic photographs and videotapes to respond to nearly 5000 requests for information and to create and publish fact sheets, white papers, bibliographics, and resource listings.

Vera Hall was an African-American woman born around the turn of the twentieth century in a small house just outside Livingston, Alabama. She grew up with a supportive family and community, but in an extremely poor area around the central Alabama-Mississippi state line. This area, also known as the Black Belt because of its rich, dark soil, was particularly impoverished even for the notably poor South and severely incongruous financial times. Her grandfather was an emancipated slave who had taken up work as a tenant farmer. His son, Hall's father, worked on his father's farm then rented his own plot after the original landowner died. Hall's mother was a stern, practical woman who had a great appreciation of song. Hall and her family took great solace and strength from their community church, Shiloh Baptist Church of Livingston.

At a young age, Vera Hall (sometimes known as Vera Hall Ward, Adel Hall, Vera Ward Hall, Vera Ward, and Adel Ward) became a respected and devout member of the church, and remained so for the rest of her life. But in her late teens, she also fell in with more worldly crowd, for whom blues, craps, and alcohol were the primary entertainment. The dichotomy of these two worlds-- that of spirituals and the church and that of blues and the juke-joint-- was a recurring theme throughout her life (as it has been for many blues singers) and a notable influence in her music. She drew upon both perspectives to cope with and overcome her life's perennial difficulties. She experienced many personal tragedies, including the death of a young brother, both parents, a daughter, a sister, and her husband by 1930. To support herself and her remaining children she was forced to take up cooking and washing for a local household. But she continued to sing.

Ruby Pickens Tartt, a local woman working for the WPA, had taken an interest in local folk music and art. She was particularly passionate about black culture and the storytelling, singing, preaching, and handicrafts that it produced. She was integral in introducing Vera Hall to John and Ruby Lomax. They would conduct extensive interviews and recordings with Hall, among other southern folk artists, throughout the late thirties and forties. There are 29 songs by her in The Library of Congress' American Folklife Center (some of which can be heard here and here).

The only time she left Alabama was in 1948 when she performed in New York in a concert organized by Alan Lomax. She died in Tuscaloosa in 1964, right before the resurgence of folk music appreciation had rediscovered her music.

Vera Hall was known in particular for the passionate moans in her songs. Her rendition of Wild Ox Moan was probably her most well known, which was later recorded by Taj Mahal. More recently her accapella Trouble So Hard was sampled by Moby for his song , Natural Blues, on the album Play. Her songs are still available, usually on Southern folk music compilations.

She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in March 2005 and celebrated by the Alabama Blues Project last October, where they launched a fundraising campaign to buy a marker for the cemetary where she's buried in an unmarked grave. There is an amazing website with a lot more information about her life called The Vera Hall Project.

You can read about more women in history in my archives and at Pesky Apostrophe.

continuing with Women in History..

Midwife, teacher, and author, Trotula di Ruggerio's treatise on gynecology, Passionibus Mulierum Curandorum (The Diseases of Women), in which she identified herself as a woman, was used in medical schools for centuries. Long regarded as one of the preeminent medieval scientists, Trotula lost her place in the history of medicine only in the beginning of the 20th century when historians became unable to accept that such a woman could exist in eleventh-century Italy.

Trotula wrote with disarming frankness about gynecology, obstetrics, cosmetics, and skin disease in a sensible and humane manner. Passionibus Mulierum was far ahead of her contemporaries' practices when discussing surgery, analgesics, and the care of the mother and child during the post-partum period. Her topics included the need for cleanliness, a balanced diet, and regular exercise, warned of the effects of emotional stress, and discussed birth control, problems of infertility, male infertility (a scandalous subject in itself), sewing (and avoiding) tears suffered in childbirth, repositioning a baby during a breech birth, and the problems of sex and celibacy.

She pioneered the use of hormonal treatments (derived from animal testicles) to cure infertility and to regulate menstruation. She also recommended the use of opiates to relieve pain during childbirth. The Catholic Church strongly opposed this, saying that women should suffer while giving birth. Trotula is perhaps most famous for finding several methods to simulate the loss of the hymen on the wedding night. One method was to apply a leech the day before the wedding and to remove it shortly before consummation.

Unlike many other works of the period, her cures rarely include prayers, incantations, astrology, or other forms of blatant superstition. She was married to a doctor named John Platearius. They had two sons, Matteo and John, who also became doctors. During her life, Trotula was referred to as Magistra Mulier Sapiens - "The wise woman teacher." Trotula's other book, De Aegritudinum Curatione, or De Ornatu Mulierum was commonly known as Trotula Minor. Despite a first hand account by Constantine of Africa describing her performance of a caesarian delivery of his son some scholars dispute that Trotula was a woman, or that she even existed.

Source: Hypatia's Heritage, A History of Women in Science from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century by Margaret Alic

for more Women in History check out Peskymac's site.

I have to admit that right now I'm using notes and articles I compiled and wrote last year and just never published. So I'm not working nearly as hard as it seems on this. Also, I'm not doing much editing so sorry if the writing's choppy.

continuing with Women in History posts..

Suffragist, historian of women, author and lecturer, painter, woman's rights activist and theorist, advocate for civil rights, and abolitionist, Matilda Joslyn Gage was a leading theorist and activist in the nineteenth century woman's rights movement. Her trademark expression, " There is a Word sweeter than Mother, Home, or Heaven. That Word is Liberty," summarized her life long struggle for the full equality of all humanity.

Although she operated a way station on the Underground Railroad and decried the brutal and unjust treatment of the American Indians, Gage focused most of her efforts on the woman's movement. Her suffrage work included helping to form, being an officer in, and co-authoring many of the major documents of local, state, and national woman's suffrage associations, editing The National Citizen and Ballot Box, the official paper of the National Woman's Suffrage Association (NWSA), and running petition campaigns. Gage is, today, perhaps best known for co-authoring the 1876 "Declaration of Rights of Women" and the first 3 volumes of The History of Woman Suffrage.

In 1880, after women were given the franchise in school board elections, Gage organized the women of her village, Fayetteville, NY to run for and vote in school board positions where an all-woman slate was elected. Yet, Gage was becoming disenchanted with the quest for suffrage. When Susan B. Anthony maneuvered the merging of the more conservative American Woman's Suffrage Association (AWSA) with the NWSA, Gage, in protest, refused to join the new NAWSA (National American Woman Suffrage Association) and she formed the formed the Woman's National Liberal Union.

Still, as an historian of women, Gage was in a class by herself. In an era when most believed that the lives of women were slowly improving, Gage believed in an ancient, prehistoric, matriarchal society and wrote about the accomplishments of women throughout history. She wrote pioneering work on the source of women's oppression, decrying the unequal treatment of the prostitute and her client, the "practice of non-conviction or of pardoning" in rape trials, unequal pay, the double standard, the incongruity of criminally prosecuting prostitutes and not their customers, wife battering, and the sexual abuse of female children, just to name a few.

Finally, Gage wrote Woman, Church, and State, an history of the church's oppression of women and an analysis of the mutually reinforcing techniques that the church together with the state use to oppress women, calling it the "bulwark of woman's slavery."

Catherine Blake, daughter of a major figure in the NWSA, said "Mrs. Gage was a tireless student, a fine research worker, thorough in all she undertook; she had a deep sense of justice and at times an appalling frankness of speech - which I loved! One was never in doubt as to where Mrs. Gage stood...She was absolutely honest in all her dealings, and I would take her word at any time as against anybody else's. I always loved and admired her greatly. I think that in some ways she was the greatest of those (suffrage leaders.) Someone should write an adequate life of this great leader."

To learn about more women in history this month check out pesky apostrophe.

I feel kind of badly that I haven't been posting about a new woman in history every day like I did last year. I don't think I'm going to be able to post many detailed articles this time. I'll probably just have a photo and a short blurb. I'm not up for much more work at the moment I'm already behind with the laundry, litter boxes, dishes, knitting projects, filing our taxes, reading that short story I was supposed to read for Cody, discovering the meaning of life, figuring out what the deal is with Scout's comment form, and discovering the solution to carbohydrates as self-medication for depression. So. Not much time for this typing crap.

However, I'm still very proud of the articles I wrote last year. And peskymac is trying to write about a woman in history daily as well. So I think that should be a good celebration. At least it's something right?

In other news I'm completely unsurprised to find out that two of the three people who've been burning the churches in Alabama turned out to be idiot asshole fratboy mutherfuckers from Birmingham Southern, a college that I went to for a while. I have a lot of family connections with that school. I watched my parents play in tennis tournaments there when I was a child, two of my childhood babysitters were theater majors there, my mother taught there, my sister and her husband went there. A lot of my friends stayed and graduated after I transferred to Santa Fe. I have a complicated love-hate feeling for the place. But honestly I'm not surprised at all. There is a definite privileged southern white maleness around the place, where "Old South" parties, permanent Bret Easton Ellis style preppieness, social bullies, bitchy comments, and alcohol related deaths and date rapes are still common. In that envirionment they probably really did think they were going to get away with it, that they should get away with it.

Just three deer huntin', beer drinkin', SUV drivin', church torchin' rednecks. Well shoot if that's not the main export of my home state I dunno what is. Thanks for reinforcing that stereotype boys!

Wu Chao (as she was originally named) was born into a rich and noble Chinese family in 625. She was taught to play music, write, and read the Chinese classics. The Tang dynasty (618-906 AD) was a time of relative freedom for women. They did not bind their feet nor lead submissive lives. It was a time in which a number of exceptional women contributed in the areas of culture and politics. By thirteen years of age Wu was known for her wit, intelligence, and beauty, and was recruited to the court of Emperor Tai Tsung. She soon became his favorite concubine. But she also had eyes for his son, Kao Tsung.

When the emperor died and Kao Tsung took over, Wu was now twenty seven years old. In time she became a favorite concubine of the new emperor, giving birth to the sons he wanted. As mother of the future emperor of China, she grew in power. She managed to eliminate Kao Tsung's wife, Empress Wang, by accusing her of killing Wu's newborn daughter. Kao Tsung believed Wu, and replaced Empress Wang to marry the up and coming Wu Zetian.

Within five years of their marriage, Emperor Kao Tsung suffered a crippling stroke. The Empress Wu took over the administrative duties of the court, a position equal to the emperor. She created a secret police force to spy on her opposition, and cruelly jailed or killed anyone who stood in her way, including the unfortunate Empress Wang. With the death of Emperor Kao Tsung, Wu managed to outflank her eldest sons and moved her youngest, and much weaker son, into power. She in effect ruled, telling him what to do.

In order to challenge Confucian beliefs against rule by women, Wu began a campaign to elevate the position of women. She had scholars write biographies of famous women, and raised the position of her mother's clan by giving her relatives high political posts. She moved her court away from the seat of traditional male power and tried to establish a new dynasty. She said that the ideal ruler was one who ruled like a mother does over her children.

In 690, Wu's youngest son removed himself from office, and Wu Zetian was declared emperor of China. In spite of her ruthless climb to power, her rule proved to be benign. She found the best people she could to run the government, and treated those she trusted fairly. She reduced the army's size and stopped the influence of aristocratic military men on government by replacing them with scholars. Everyone had to compete for government positions by taking exams, thus setting the practice of government run by scholars. Wu also was fair to peasants, lowering oppressive taxes, raising agricultural production, and strengthening public works.

During her reign, Empress Wu placed Buddhism over Daoism as the favored state religion. She invited the most gifted scholars to China and built Buddhist temples and cave sculptures. Chinese Buddhism achieved its highest development under the reign of Wu Zetian.

As she grew older, Empress Wu lessened the power of her secret police. But she become increasingly superstitious and fearful. Sorcerers and corrupt court favorites flattered her. Finally, in 705, she was pressured to give up the throne in favor of her third son, who was waiting all these years in the wings. Wu Zetian died peacefully at age eighty the same year.

To some she was an autocrat, ruthless in her desire to gain and keep power. To others she, as a woman doing a "man's job," merely did what she had to do, and acted no differently than most male emperors of her day. They also note that she managed to effectively rule China during one of its more peaceful and culturally diverse periods.

Amina was born around 1533 in a province of Nigeria now known as Zaria during the reign of Sarkin (king) Zazzau Nohir. She was probably his granddaughter. Zazzua was one of a number of Hausa city-states which dominated the trans-Saharan trade after the collapse of the Songhai empire to the west. Its wealth was due to trade of mainly leather goods, cloth, kola, salt, horses and imported metals.

At the age of sixteen, Amina became the heir apparent (Magajiya) to her mother, Bakwa of Turunku, the ruling queen of Zazzua. With the title came the responsibility for a ward in the city and daily councils with other officials. Although her mother's reign was known for peace and prosperity, Amina also chose to learn military skills from the warriors.

Queen Bakwa died around 1566 and the reign of Zazzua passed to her younger brother Karama. At this time Amina emerged as the leading warrior of Zazzua cavalry. Her military achievements brought her great wealth and power. When Karama died after a ten-year rule, Amina became queen of Zazzua.

She set off on her first military expedition three months after coming to power and continued fighting until her death. In her thirty-four year reign, she expanded the domain of Zazzua to its largest size ever, as far as Bauchi in the east, extending as far south as the Niger River and as far north as the Katsina River. Her main focus, however, was not on annexation of neighboring lands, but on forcing local rulers to accept vassal status and permit Hausa traders safe passage, enriching Zaria's economy with gold, slaves (yep), and new crops as the center of the North-South Saharan trade and the East-West Sudan trade

She never married or had children but, according to some accounts, wherever she went and conquered, she took a temporary husband but had him killed the following morning so that he did not live to tell of his experiences with the queen.

She is credited with popularizing the earthen city wall fortifications, which became characteristic of Hausa city-states since then. She ordered building of a defensive wall around each military camp that she established. Later, towns grew within these protective walls, many of which are still in existence. They're known as "ganuwar Amina", or Amina's walls.

She is mostly remembered as Amina, Yar Bakwa ta san rana, meaning "Amina, daughter of Nikatau, a woman as capable as a man."

Another female-led rebellion against an occupying army from the same period of time. Great follow-up to Boudicca!

The Trung sisters, Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, were born around 20 AD to a powerful lord in Chinese-occupied Vietnam, as it had been since 111 BCE. Vietnamese people did not actively oppose the Chinese rule until the year 39 AD when they began to feel oppressed, however, the sisters had grown up watching the occupying army's cruelties to their countrymen and spent their childhoods mastering the art of warfare and weaponry. They lived in a time when Vietnamese women enjoyed freedoms forbidden them in later centuries. Such as the ability to inherit property through their mothers' lineages and become political leaders, judges, traders, and warriors; while in China women had already lost their privileges due to the popular teachings of Confucius requiring women's subservience.

The older sister, Trung Trac, was married to Thi Sach, another powerful lord. Chinese records note that Trac had a "brave and fearless disposition." In 40 AD, to frighten the Vietnamese and bring them to submission, a Chinese commander killed Thi Sach and raped Trung Trac. In retaliation, the Trung sisters organized civil war. With the support of nearby tribal lords, they formed an army of 80,000. Thirty six of the generals were women, including their mother. According to legend, the Trung sisters committed acts of bravery, such as killing a fearful people-eating tiger - and used the tiger's skin as paper to write a proclamation urging the people to follow them against the Chinese, to garner confidence in their abilities. Within months the sisters had retaken 65 cities. They won back the territory extending from Hue into southern China and they were proclaimed co-queens.

After their victory they established royal court in Me-linh, an ancient political center in the Hong River plain and abolished the hated tribute taxes which had been imposed by the Chinese. They also attempted to restore a simpler form of government more in line with traditional Vietnamese values.

For the next three years the Trung sisters engaged in constant battles with the Chinese government in Vietnam. Out armed, their troops were badly defeated in 43 A.D. Rather than accept defeat, both Trung sisters committed suicide. Some stories say they drowned themselves in a river; others claim they disappeared into the clouds. One close comrade of the Trung sisters, a woman named Phung Thi Chinh, led one of the armies of resistance. She apparently fulfilled her mission despite being pregnant at the time. She delivered her baby at the front, hoisted the baby onto her back and continued fighting. When informed of the sisters' suicide, she either slit her own throat and that of her baby or jumped into the river with the baby in her arms rather than face defeat and cruel governmental rule.

The Trung sisters became symbols of the first Vietnamese resistance to the Chinese occupation of their land. Temples were later built in their honor and the people of Vietnam celebrate their memory every year with a national holiday: Hai-Ba-Trung Day which, coincidently, usually takes place in March.

Boudicca (also called Boadicea) was most likely to have been born into the Royal house of a powerful Celtic Iron age tribe around 30 AD. Through marriage she became queen of the Iceni, an indigenous Celtic tribe that inhabited Great Britain at the time of the Roman invasion in 43 A.D.

According to the Greek historian Dio Cassius (who wrote one of only two accounts of these battles), "She was huge of frame, terrifying of aspect, and with a harsh voice. A great mass of bright red hair fell to her knees: she wore a twisted torc, and a tunic of many colours, over which was a thick mantle, fastened by a brooch. Now she grasped a spear, to strike fear into all who watched her."

Their territory covered a large part of East Anglia near what is today the modern town of Colchester, and the Iceni watched with concern as the emperor Claudius waged a campaign that threatened their independence. In an attempt to avoid any bloody conflict, Boudicca's husband, King Prasutagus, bargained with Roman officials and agreed to submit to terms that would insure that his tribe and their culture remain untouched. The Romans were happy enough with the arrangement so long as they could collect taxes from the Iceni, but that didn't change the fact that they had always held a dismal view of the Celts, viewing them as barbarians who treated their women as equals.

Life for Celtic women was one of comparative prestige and power. Women were allowed to own land, choose their own mates, and even divorce if they made the wrong choice. So when Prasutagus died he left his kingdom to Boudicca and their two daughters after bequeathing a full half of it to the new Roman Emperor, Nero. By including Nero in his will Prasutagus thought he was buying the future tranquility of his kingdom. But under Roman law royal inheritance could not be passed to daughters and co-ownership of a kingdom with a woman was downright ridiculous. Nero sent his men to take care of the situation, which meant the public flogging of Boudicca and the rape of her daughters.

While the Roman governor, Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, was leading a campaign against the druids on the island of Anglesey in north Wales, the Iceni rebelled, along with their neighbours the Trinovantes, under Boudicca's leadership. Their first target was Camulodunum (Colchester), the former Trinovantian capital, which had been settled with Roman veterans and where a temple to the former emperor Claudius had been erected at local expense. The city was poorly defended and the rebels destroyed it, beseiging the last defenders in the temple for two days before it fell.

Boudicca's retaliation was merciless: she took no prisoners. Throats were cut, people hanged or crucified, and entire villages were burned to the ground. Her tactics included a particularly cruel assault upon Roman women: "their breasts were cut off and stuffed in their mouths, so that they seemed to be eating them, then their bodies were skewered lengthwise on sharp stakes."

When news of the rebellion reached him, Suetonius hurried to Londinium (London), an important mercantile settlement, but concluded he did not have the numbers to defend it. "Let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves!" cried Boudicca, addressing her troops as they stormed the town. Londinium was abandoned to the rebels, who burnt it down (archaeology shows extensive destruction by fire at this time), slaughtering anyone who had not evacuated with Suetonius. Verulamium (St Albans) was next to be destroyed.

Suetonius regrouped his troops and took a stand at an unidentified location, probably in the West Midlands somewhere along Watling Street, in a defile with a wood behind him. They were greatly outnumbered by the British rebels (who were 230,000 strong by now according to Dio Cassius) but superior Roman tactics and training won the day at the Battle of Watling Street. The Britons were prevented from fleeing by their own families, who they had stationed in a ring of wagons at the edge of the battlefield, and were slaughtered. (The German king Ariovistus is reported to have made the same mistake in Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars.) Tacitus reports that "According to one report almost eighty thousand Britons fell" compared with only four hundred Romans. Boudicca, according to Tacitus, poisoned herself; Dio Cassius says she fell sick and died, and was given a lavish burial.

Before the inevitable fall of her army, Boudicca outlined her cause (in this account by the Roman historian, Tacitus):

The site of Boudicca's defeat is unknown. According to London legend it was at Kings Cross in London (a nearby street is named Battle Bridge Road), and that Boudicca herself is buried under one of the platforms at Kings Cross Station (different sources list platforms eight, nine or ten as her supposed resting place) but this is unlikely. Manduessedum near the modern day town of Atherstone in Warwickshire has been suggested as the most likely place of burial.

A large bronze statue depicting Boudicca and her daughers driving a (Persian-style) chariot was commissioned by Prince Albert in 1850 and still stands next to Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament.

I could've spent the whole month just profiling women artists in history but I've been really trying to cover almost all professions. Now I feel like I haven't done nearly enough artists.

Maria Bashkirtseff was born in Gavrontsi, Pultowa, Russia, on the 11th of November, 1858, to a family of nobility. Her father was marshal of the nobility at Pultowa. When Marie was seven years old, her parents separated and she left Russia with her mother to spend the winters in Nice and Italy, and the summers in Germany. She had a significantly better education than most girls. Through private tutors she was able to read Plato and Virgil in Greek as well as read and write four other languages. A naturally gifted musician, she had hoped to be a singer, and studied in Italy but her voice was not strong enough to continue in a professional capacity.

When she lost her voice she devoted herself to painting, and in 1877 settled in Paris, where she studied at the Acad�mie Julian in Paris where she was taught by Jules Lepage and Tony Robert-Fleurys. She traveled all over Europe and exhibited in several salons. She was considered a promising painter and sculptor, mainly of portraits, but she painted several works that really captured scenes of her observed life in Paris, most notably, In The Studio and The Meeting.

Her health had always been always delicate and with the chaos from her hard work and success it quickly weakened. She died of tuberculosis on October 31, 1884.

While her paintings are notable she's most well known for the personal journals she kept from the age of thirteen. Her personal account of the struggles of women artists is documented, as well as descriptions of her interaction and correspondence with famous painters and notable personalities of the time. It was published shortly after her death and is still in print today.

Most of her artwork would end up in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, many pieces would be destroyed during the Second World War.

Since today is Purim I thought I'd profile the woman behind the holiday. She has her own book in the Old Testament - and it's the only one where the word God doesn't appear. It is also the only book of the Hebrew canon not represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls. There's been some debate as to whether or not she really existed but that could be said about a lot of people in ancient history. In any case the story about Esther has had a huge amount of influence on the concept of womanhood in Judaism but not enough coverage elsewhere for my taste. I find that most of the common Bible stories vilify women (Eve, Bathsheba, etc.) and this story to be a rare exception to that rule.

Esther was born in roughly 500 BC with the name Hadassah but was later renamed when she became Queen of the Persian Empire after marrying Ahasuerus (historically referred to as Xerxes). Interestingly, she was called some form of Ishtar or Astarte, but in Hebrew and Aramaic it was pronounced Ester.

This was right after the Babylonian Exile of the Jews when a national identity was being forged, the first Synagogue was being built, and the transition from an oral to a written tradition was taking place. It was also right before the first attempt to eradicate the Jewish people as a race.

During a wild drunken banquet for various emissaries King Ahasuerus asked his wife, Vashi, to expose herself which she promptly refused to do, for which she was exiled, giving the King a convenient excuse to do a little wife-shopping. Orphaned at a young age, Esther was a notoriously beautiful but extremely modest woman who had been raised by her cousin Mordechai in Persia. At the time of Vashi's exile, Esther had been residing in the �house of women� where she was picked for the year long purification process before being brought before the king for wifely considerations. The �keeper of women� wasn�t aware of Esther�s Jewish heritage.

The king selected Esther from the throng of beautiful virgins vying for the Mrs Persia spot. Since no one seemed to have noticed, Mordecai warned her not to reveal her Jewish heritage. Once after a visit with his niece he was lingering at the gates of the palace and overheard two guards planning to kill the king. He immediately told Esther who passed the word to the king.

Soon after the assassination scare, Assuerus appointed a man named Haman to be first minister. Mordecai was among the spectators at the palace during the celebratory procession but he refused to bow to the new minister. Haman was infuriated and plotted to kill not only Mordecai, but all the Jews in Persia.

Haman cast lots (purim) to decide in which month to murder the Jews, deciding to slay all Jews on the thirteenth day of the Hebrew month of Adar. He managed to convince the king that they were refusing to honor his laws and persuaded the king to pass an edict authorizing the wholesale massacre of the Jews and the confiscation of their property.

Mordecai promptly sent an urgent message to Esther asking her to intervene on their behalf. But She had been forbidden to approach the king uninvited, on pain of death. However, she made a brave decision that changes history. �I will go into the king � and if I perish, I perish.�

The king was pleased to see her so she quickly invited him and his minister to a banquet. At dinner she invited them for another meal the next day when she would make a request.

Emboldened by these favors, Haman had a gallows built to hang Mordecai. The morning after Esther's first banquet, the king asked him how he should honor a loyal servant. Unknown to Haman, the king has spent a sleepless night going through records where he was reminded that Mordecai once saved his life, but was never rewarded. Thinking the king was planning to honor him, Haman suggested that the man be dressed in royal robes and paraded through the city, then was devastated when he is ordered to honor Mordecai in that fashion.

At Esther�s second dinner, she revealed her Jewish origin, accusing Haman of orchestrating her murder, and the murder of her people. "If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to be annihilated." The king left the banquet room to consider the situation, and Haman threw himself at the queen's feet pleading her to have mercy on him. When the king returned, he thought that Haman was attacking his queen, and ordered his death immediately. Haman and his ten sons were hung from the gallows he had built for Mordecai.

On the exact day the original edict was appointed, the Jews were given permission to defend themselves and since many of them had been trained in the Persian army, were successful in defending themselves. Mordecai was appointed the king�s new minister. He declared the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the Hebrew month of Adar as days of rejoicing, as the feast of Purim. Esther was a beloved queen and has been regarded ever since as the savior of her people.

Nur Jahan was born Mihrunnisa in 1577 to an aristocratic Persian family, married a soldier and was widowed at an early age. She and her little girl, Ladli, were brought in 1607 to the court of Jahangir, a powerful Mughal emperor.

Around 1611 Jahangir met and fell in love with her and they were married within two months. He gave her the name Nur Jahan, meaning Light of the World.

At the time of her marriage Nur Jahan was considered middle aged. She was a widow of a man who had lost favor with the emperor, and was only one of many other wives and concubines of the emperor, with whom he had children.Yet within nine years Nur Jahan acquired all the rights of sovereignty and government normally due the emperor, becoming virtually in charge of the whole empire until the emperor died in 1627. The key to her success was Jahangir's addiction to both drugs and alcohol and his adoration of Nur Jahan above everyone else in his vast zanana (women's quarters within the court). Jahangir needed Nur to help maintain his health and help him rule.

Since women were not supposed to appear face to face with men in court, Nur Jahan ruled through trusted males. But it was she who approved all orders and grants of appointment in Jahangir's name, and controlled all promotions and demotions within the royal government. She took special interest in the affairs of women, giving them land and dowries for orphan girls. She had coins struck in her name, collected duties on goods from merchants who passed though the empire's lands, and traded with Europeans who brought luxury goods from the continent. Given her ability to obstruct or facilitate the opening up of both foreign and domestic trade, her patronage was eagerly sought, and paid for. She herself owned ships which took pilgrims as well as cargo to Mecca. Her business connections and wealth grew. Her officers were everywhere. The cosmopolitan city of Agra, the Mughal capital, grew as a crossroad of commerce.

Nur Jahan also ruled the emperor's vast zanana which housed hundreds of people including Jahangir's wives, ladies -in-waiting, concubines, servants, slaves, female guards, spies, entertainers, crafts people, visiting relatives. eunuchs, and all the children belonging to the women. Nur greatly influenced the zanana's tastes in cosmetics, fashions, food, and artistic expression. She spent money lavishly, experimenting with new perfumes, hair ointments, jewelry, silks, brocades, porcelain, and cuisine from other lands.

Fashions at court, highly influenced by Persian culture, began to blend into local styles. Women's clothing was modified to take account of the hot weather. Since Nur came from a line of poets, she naturally wrote too and encouraged this among the court women. Poetry contests were held, and favorite female poets from beyond the court were sometimes sponsored by the queen, such as the Persian poet Mehri. She also wrote her own poetry.

Both Jahangir and Nur Jahan were devotees of the elegant and sophisticated Mughal artistic style. The emperor owned an admirable collection of exquisite miniature paintings, and together with Nur constructed beautiful gardens, notably in the court's summer retreat in Kashmir. Nur used some gardens for official functions; others were opened up for the populous in general to use. Architecture, too, was an important imperial activity; some of the mosques, caravasaries and tombs Nur Jahan had built are visible today.

Nur Jahal enjoyed the height of her power when she was surrounded by loyal men which included members of her own family. Struggles between Jahangir's sons for power, however, slowly chipped away at her reign.

The ultimate winner was Jahangir's third son, Shah Jahan, who later built the beautiful Taj Mahal for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. By this time Nur Jahan's influence was weak. Shah Jahan had been allied with Nur Jahan through most of his father's reign, but when she swung her support to others he rebelled. An old and trusted general, Mahabat Khan, disgusted with the direction of court politics, and particularly the role of a Nur Jahan, joined the rebellion. "Never," he said," has there been a king so subject to the will of his wife."

Upon Shah Jahan's succession to the crown, he had her confined. Her imprisonment ended her influence at court, and she spent the last years of her life in exile in Lahore. Here she spent a quiet time living with her daughter until her own death in 1645.

Her tomb lies in Lahore next to Jahangir's. Both she had erected along with the gardens that surround them.

Yet another woman in history.

Rosa Luxemburg was born Rosalia Luxemburg on March 5, 1870 or 1871. She was the fifth child of the Jewish wood trader/timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg III and his wife Line (maiden name: L�wenstein). Rosa had a growth defect and was physically handicapped all her life.

After her family moved to Warsaw, Rosa attended a girl's school there from 1880. Even in those early days she was a member of the Proletariat, a left-wing Polish party, from 1886. The Proletariat had been founded in 1882, twenty years before the Russian workers' parties, and started off by organizing a general strike. As a result, four of its leaders were put to death and the party was broken up. Some of its members managed to meet in secret; Rosa joined one of these groups.

In 1887 Rosa passed her Abitur with flying colors then fled to Switzerland in 1889 after threats of imprisonment for her political associations. There she attended Zurich University, along with other socialist figures such as Anatoli Lunacharsky and Leo Jogiches. She studied philosophy, history, politics, economics and mathematics simultaneously. Her specialized subjects were Staatswissenschaft (the science of forms of state), the Middle Ages and economic and stock exchange crises. In 1898 she completed her doctorate with a dissertation entitled The Industrial Development of Poland. Between the years 1892 and 1919 Luxemburg produced almost 700 articles, pamphlets, speeches, and books.

While in Zurich, she met many exiled revolutionaries from Russia including Gregory Plekhanov. Luxemburg and the exiles from Russia fell out over what they believed should happen to Poland � should Poland receive self-determination or not? Luxemburg was against self-determination as she believed that a newly created state was weak and at a disadvantage to the people there as the bourgeoisie would use this national weakness to their advantage to strengthen their hold over the workers. Her view was opposed by many and as a result Luxemburg formed the Polish Social Democratic Party.

In 1898, Luxemburg left Zurich for Berlin where she joined the German Social Democratic Labour Party. Luxemburg was very keen on supporting the idea of debate and in 1900 she produced Reform or Revolution. She supported reform as a way of improving life but she did not want to stop at reforms that came from the government as she believed that governments frequently gave only what they wanted to. Luxemburg wanted a complete revolution of governmental systems.

She saw the revolution in Russia in 1905 as a very good sign of hope. She moved to Warsaw where she hoped to make more of a mark in Russia. However, she was caught by the authorities and put in prison.

When the war broke out in 1914, she was very much against it. Luxemburg was very angered by the Social Democratic Party that had fully supported Germany�s entry into the war. Luxemburg left the SDP. It was at this time that she allied with Karl Liebknecht who shared the same views and had also left the SDP. They formed the Internationale Group that was to become the Spartacists. Their main party platform during the war was for German soldiers to turn their weapons against their officers and then against the government thus overthrowing it.

Both Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested for their political activities. While in prison, Luxemburg wrote the Junius Pamphlet which was to become the foundation of the Spartacists beliefs.

In November 1918, Luxemburg was released from prison. Prince Max von Baden had introduced a general amnesty for all political prisoners though there was reluctance to let Luxemburg have her freedom. On her release, she immediately started her revolutionary activities again. In December she co-founded the German Communist Party which was essentially made up of Spartacists. At this time the so-called German Revolution was taking place and Berlin was a very dangerous place to be. The head of the government, Friedrich Ebert, had moved the government to the safety of Weimar and the right-wing Freikorps was left to deal with the communists.

On January 15th, 1919, Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck, another Spartacist leader, were arrested. What happened next is unclear but Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Pieck were taken from the Adlon Hotel in Berlin, where they were being held, to be local prison. Pieck managed to escape. After hours of torture Luxemburg was battered to death with rifle butts and thrown into a nearby river. Liebknecht was shot in the back of the head then deposited as an unknown body in a nearby mortuary.

An intriguing film was made about her life in 1986 by German feminist filmmaker, Margarethe von Trotta.

Also known as Jinga, Singa, and Zhinga, Nzinga was born around 1583 to the ruling family of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms of the Mbundu people in southwestern Africa in what is now called Angola.

This was the height of the Atlantic slave trade and the consolidation of power by the Portuguese in the region was growing rapidly. After several years of power struggles with Portugal, her brother asked Nzinga to be the envoy for Ngola in the peace negotiations. They would eventually reach an agreement, which the Portuguese proceeded to break

In retaliation she formed an abortive revolt against the Portuguese colonial government and created an alliance with the Jaga people by marrying their chief. The Jaga would eventually betray here but she would go on to form a confederacy of other tribes, allying herself with the Dutch for a while in her continuing feud with the Portuguese, a fight that would span over thirty years.

She gained notoriety during the war for personally leading her troops into battle - even into her sixties. Two of her war leaders were reputedly her sisters. Her council of advisers contained many women, and women were called to serve in her army. She forbade her subjects to call her Queen, preferring to be addressed as King.

An outstanding aspect of her political engagement was the establishment of alliances with Mbundu groups, namely the Imbangala, and even the formation of a coalition in 1635 with neighboring peoples including the Congo, Kassanje, Dembos and Kissama. A coalition that would later be used against the Dutch as well.

In 1659, weary from the long struggle, Nzinga signed a peace treaty with Portugal. She attempted to reconstruct her nation, devoting her efforts to resettling former slaves and developing an economy that did not depend upon the slave trade.

Despite numerous efforts to dethrone her, Nzinga would die a peaceful death at age eighty on December 17, 1663 in Matamba. After her death her alliances disintegrated and the Portuguese overran the area by 1671 although it would not have total control of the interior until the 20th century. Today she is remembered in Angola for her political and diplomatic acumen, great wit and intelligence, as well as her brilliant military tactics.

On June 25, 1678 at thirty-two years old, Elena Lucretia Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman in the world to earn a doctorate in any field from any university. Her doctorate was in Philosophy since the Officials in the Roman Catholic Church did not feel that the University of Padua could grant a doctorate of theology to a woman, even though she was eminently well qualified for the title.

She had not been seeking a degree, had just been enjoying school and learning, but her father insisted that she apply for a degree and her answers at the public examination surpassed anything the panel had been expecting.

In addition to speaking both Latin and Greek fluently, Elena mastered Hebrew, Spanish, French, and Arabic. A student of the sciences as well as of languages, she studied mathematics and astronomy in addition to philosophy and theology. A musician, Elena mastered the harpsichord, the clavichord, the harp, and the violin. She also composed for these instruments and lectured at her alma mater in musical composition, theology, and mathematics.

Elena withdrew from the Venetian noble society she had been born into, instead devoting her life to the Benedictine order and charitable acts. She died at age thirty-eight most likely from tuberculosis.

Continuing with my women's history month project. I still haven't installed and played Pirates so I was thinking about doing that tonight. Then I thought maybe I should profile a pirate! Talk about mystique! Women who would dress as men and grab power where they could get it - even in piracy.

Mary Read was born in London, England in the late seventeenth century to the wife of a sea captain. Some historical documents claim that Mary Read was disguised as a boy so that her father would believe that she was his son, whom had died while Mary�s father was at sea, asserting that Mary Read was supposedly the by-product of an illicit affair that her mother had engaged in with an unknown man. Other documents state that Mary�s mother was a widow, and simply wished for her daughter to have all of the advantages offered to a man. Either way, history agrees that Mary Read lived her entire childhood as a boy.

Her mothers� deception apparently paid off, for after the death of her husband she was able to secure his company and holdings as an inheritance for his �son�, Mary. The little family was able to survive nicely for some time, until Mary�s early teen years, when the money ran out. At this time Mary was forced to procure employment in order to support herself and her mother. Still disguised as a boy, Mary found a job as a footboy to a wealthy French woman living in London. Mary was not happy in her position, and soon managed to run away. Being a girl who longed for excitement, Mary found new employment aboard a Man-o-War, but life on such a ship was not what she had expected.

After a few years of grueling hardship and abuse, Mary managed to jump ship and joined the British military. At first a lowly foot soldier, Mary showed true bravery at the battle of Flanders and was soon promoted to the Horse Regiment. While in the Horse Regiment Mary became friends with another soldier, who believed her to be a man, and soon she found herself in love. Mary confessed her true gender to the man and he accepted her gladly. The two were wed, bought out their commission in the military and together opened an inn by the name of The Three Horseshoes.

Mary's husband died a few years later, and once more she donned men's clothing, and attempted a life in the Army again. She failed at this, so she shipped off to the West Indies. On her way, her ship was taken by Captain Calico Jack Rackham.

As fate would have it, another woman pirate, named Anne Bonny, was part of Calico's crew. Anne saw a young strapping sailor among the captured and decided that she would "have her way" with him. She was not a subtle woman. To Anne's surprise, when she got the man alone, he opened his blouse and he exposed to Anne that he too was a woman. Calico, knowing a good thing when he saw it, hired the two talented women to be a permanent part of his crew aboard the Curlew.

Calico was a fairly successful pirate and his crew managed to capture many different ships. Mary fell in love with a young sailor they captured. He got into a quarrel with an older pirate with more experience while at anchor one night, and as the laws decreed, a duel was to be set the following day. Mary realized that her lover wouldn't stand any chance againt the other pirate, so she started a fight with him and demanded an immediate duel.

The quartermaster rowed the two ashore, with pistols and cutlass, and the duel started. They both fired their pistols but missed, then continued the duel with the cutlasses. He had strength but Mary was more agile and cunning. The duel went on for quite a while. At one point the larger pirate slipped and stumbled when making a thrust. He would probably have managed to recover but Mary ripped her blouse open , flashing her the unsuspecting pirate. Naturally he was completely surprised and stood there in shock. Mary grabbed her cutlass and with just one swing of her blade, nearly cut the man's head off. He lay on the ground gasphing for breath, still astonished that he had been duelling with a woman. Mary's lover showed up to fight the duel but Mary had already taken care of him. They were married and continued to sail on the Curlew.

In October of 1720, their ship was attacked by an armed British sloop on orders from the Governor of Jamaica. While the rest of the pirate crew hid below deck, Read and her friend, Anne Bonny, and one other pirate took up the fight. Read shouted for the others to join them, but they refused. To scare them into action, Read fired her pistols down the hatch, killing one man and wounding others. But the pirates, including their husbands, still wouldn�t fight. Finally, the whole crew was captured and taken prisoner.

They were tried at St. Lago de la Vega in Jamaica on November 28. During the trials, Mary told the court, "As to hanging, it is no great hardship. For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the sea, that men of courage must starve." Read and the crew of the Curlew were found guilty of piracy and sentenced to hang. As Calico Jack Rackham went to the gallows, Bonnie told him, "Had you fought like a man, you need not have been hanged like a dog!"

Both Read and Bonny were pregnant, so they were given a delay in execution until their babies were born. Bonny was executed shortly after the birth of her child but Read and her baby died from a high fever soon after the trial.

This is a part of my Women's History Month project where I post about one woman in history every day for the rest of March. Feel free to request a specific woman to profile!

Lozen was born into the Chihenne, Warm Springs Apache band, during the late 1840's in a section of New Mexico/Arizona/Northern Mexico known at that time as Apacheria. She was the sister of Warm Springs Chief Victorio, and the most famous of the Apache War Women.

She learned to ride a horse at age seven and soon became one of the best riders in the band. She loved the rough games of the boys and more times than not beat them at their own games.

At her puberty ceremony, Lozen was given the power to find the enemy which she did by going alone to a deserted spot. She would stand with her arms outstretched and her open palms heavenward, chanting a prayer [to Ussen], and slowly turning around:

Upon this earth
On which we live
Ussen has Power
This Power is mine
For locating the enemy
I search for that Enemy
Which only Ussen the Great
Can show to me.

As she prayed, she turned until she felt a tingling in her palms and knew that she had found the direction of the enemy. She could tell the distance of the enemy by the intensity of the tingling.

Lozen fought beside Victorio when he and his followers rampaged against US Federal troops, who had appropriated their homeland in west central New Mexico�s Black Mountains and had tried to confine her people, first, to Arizona�s San Carlos Reservation then to New Mexico�s Mescalero Apache Reservation.

As the band fled U S forces, Lozen inspired women and children, frozen in fear, to cross a surging Rio Grande. "I saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful horse�Lozen, sister of Victorio. Lozen the woman warrior!" said James Kaywaykla, a child at the time, riding behind his grandmother. "High above her head she held her rifle. There was a glitter as her right foot lifted and struck the shoulder of her horse. He reared, then plunged into the torrent. She turned his head upstream, and he began swimming." Immediately, the other women and the children followed her into the torrent. When they reached the far bank of the river, cold and wet, but alive, Lozen came to Kaywaykla�s grandmother. "You take charge, now," she said. "I must return to the warriors," who stood between their women and children and the onrushing cavalry. Lozen drove her horse back across the wild river and returned to her comrades.

One of the most important objectives of the Apache raids was to steal the horses of the enemy, and Lozen was a master at stampeding and capturing the panicked animals during the heat of battle. In addition to her considerable skill as a warrior, Lozen was also a skilled reconnaissance scout and clever battle strategist. She took part in warrior's ceremonies, sang war songs, and directed the dances of the war parties before going into battle

According to accounts, she fell in love with a Confederate deserter who had been sheltered by the Apaches. When a wagon train came along headed for California�s gold fields, he left, breaking Lozen�s heart. She never married, devoting herself instead to using her unusual powers to sense danger and heal her people. She never married, and devoted her life to the service of her people. She was the only Apcahe woman allowed to ride in a war as a warrior without a husband at her side.

Victorio is quoted as saying, "Lozen is my right hand . . . strong as a man , braver than most, and cunning in strategy, Lozen is a shield to her people."

Legend has it that Lozen powers helped each Band that she accompanied to successfully avoid capture. No Band was ever caught unguarded when Lozen was riding with them. Lozen was not with Victorio's band when Mexican army trapped them in the Tres Castillos Mountains, she had left to escort a mother and her newborn infant across the Chihuahuan Desert from Mexico to the Mescalero Apache Reservation and many believed the band would not have been ambushed if Lozen had been with them.

After Victorio's death, Lozen continued to ride with Chief Nana, and eventually joined forces with Geronimo's band, eluding capture until she finally surrendered with this last group of free Apaches in 1886. The group was taken to Florida then transported to Mount Vernon Barracks outside Mobile, Alabama, where she died of tuberculosis at the approximate age of 50.

Born into wealth and nobility (daughter of the 1st Duke of Kingston), Lady Mary (1689-1762) was given a minimal education by her parents. Whatever learning she eventually posessed, she acquired by her own efforts. She read many of the works in her parents' libraries and she learned Latin by secretly studying a Latin dictionary. In her day, the parents of the bride and groom chose their children's spouses based on social position and wealth (his inheritance for the groom, her dowry for the bride). As was typical, her parents chose the man she was to marry, made the financial arrangements for the new couple, and drew up a marriage contract for her. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, in 1712, Lady Mary eloped to become the wife of the extremely wealthy politician, Edward Wortley Montagu. Despite the romantic beginning, their marriage was not a happy one, even the birth of their son in May 1713 could not resolve their differences.

In 1714, Queen Anne died, bringing the Elector of Hanover to the throne. Her husband was rewarded by being appointed Ambassador to Turkey and the young couple set off for Constantinople. A perceptive spectator, an adventurous tourist, and a fascinated amateur ethnographer, Lady Mary immersed herself in all things Turkish, even learning the language. She visited the zenanas, meeting the upper class women secluded there, in order to learn more about Turkish customs. Her record of her travels, Turkish Embassy Letters, are still considered among the finest specimens of the epistolary genre.

Upon returning home to England, Lady Mary introduced into England the Turkish practice of inoculating healthy children with a weakened strain of smallpox to confer immunity from the more virulent strains of the disease. The dreaded smallpox, which left Lady Mary herself scarred from her 1715 bout with the disease and which killed her brother, often killed its victims or left them scarred or deformed for life.

It was well known that one only got smallpox once. In the Islamic world in Turkey it became the habit to "engraft" people with the dried pustule from smallpox and that this provided protection. Upon learning of the Turkish practice, Lady Mary immediately had her son inoculated. After returning home to England, she introduced the custom to the nobility by having her daughter inoculated, too.

It was safe- but was it effective? One of the women was made to share a bed with a ten-year-old boy with smallpox and she survived with no ill effects thus confirming protection. Queen Caroline then had it tested on orphans and again it was safe. At last the Royal children were inoculated. However inoculation never became common for too often a full-blown case of smallpox was produced.

Edward Jenner (1749-1823) would eventually be given credit for the smallpox vaccine, but it was really Lady Mary who pioneered the approach in western Europe and made it acceptable to the influential, the rich and the powerful. Eventually, the practice of inoculation would filter down to the middle and working classes and would be extended to inoculation against a variety of infectious diseases..

As time passed, more and more people were vaccinated against smallpox, until in 1979, the UN World Health Organization declared that smallpox, that perennial killer, had been eradicated throughout the world. Following in the footsteps pioneered by the health professionals fighting smallpox, vaccines for a host of deadly and deforming diseases including mumps, measles, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, and polio were developed and distributed making so many of the infectious diseases which were early childhood killers a thing of the past, at least in the developed and developing world. Millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of people owe their lives or their health or the lifes or health of someone close to them to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

She was also a prolific writer of diaries, essays and poems and translated plays from French and Latin. She had a variety of lovers and boyfriends during her travels. But when famed poet and essayist, Alexander Pope, professed his love in a flowery series of letters, Lady Mary did not conceal her derision. Thus was born a public feud that eventually led to financial scandal and Mary leaving England to live in Italy and France until 1761 when her daughter (now wife to the Prime Minister) finally persuaded her to return to London where she died August 21, 1762.

I ran across a small article about this woman in a really interesting newsletter highlighting women in Islamic history. Considering the world climate I thought I'd highlight a woman from a historic and religious background most of us have a lot to learn about.

Walladah was born in 1011 to a politically powerful family during the tail-end of the seven hundred year Moorish rule in Spain, when provinces were divided into small Caliph-ruled states.

Her father was Caliph of Cordova from 1023 and 1131, her mother was an Ethiopian Christian slave whom her father had impregnated and married. Andalusia was a fairly advanced and tolerant region compared to the rest of the western world at the time; where Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived together in daily life in relative peace. Literacy and art were regarded over religious beliefs, and modern city services, such as streetlights and cobble-paved roads, were implemented long before they were in Paris and London.

Walladah's father was illiterate and disliked by many, despite his direct descent from Abd Al-Rahman Al-Nasir, who was one of the most famous Caliphs in Andalusia. In the midst of a rebellion in 1131, he was poisoned and her family lost control of the government. When she turned 30, Walladah inherited a great deal of family wealth.

With her newfound financial independence she cast off the veil and opened a literary salon, where she entertained writers and artists, hosting many discussions, poetry readings and musical evenings. She had a unique reputation for wit, eloquence and intelligence. A contemporary biographer purportedly said �Her presence encouraged the old to behave like the young.� Famed for beauty as well as independence, Walladah inspired verses from other poets, such as her famous lover, fellow poet and vizir Ibn Zaydan, who wrote:

�being beguiled by Walladah�s promises
Is like a fleeting mirage or a lightning flash

She is like water, difficult to hold in hand:
Its seething foam prevents getting it easily

In addition to inspiring poetry she wrote her own as well. This is one of the many poems she wrote for Ibn Zaydan:

Can't we find some way
to meet again
and speak of our love?