And why should we know about them?
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Minna Canth. She was a unique and strong woman in mens world. Faught for womens rights and her play actually launched events that led to Finnish women legally have rights to their own money and property.
Just learned, she did all this while raising 7 children as a widow. This lady was hard-core. FYI, the play the OP is referring to is called "Työmiehen vaimo" or "The Worker's Wife" in English. Trying to find an English translation, I'd be interested to read it if someone has a link.
Franz Stigler - German fighter pilot in WW2 who instead of shooting down a crippled B17 bomber plane, escorted it out of Europe and out into the English Channel. He let them go. He and the bomber pilot (called Charlie Brown) met up later in life and became friends until they died.
The book “A Higher Call” by Adam Makos is about the two of them, and it’s a great book. Sabaton’s song “No bullets fly” is about them.
Ibn al-Haytham (known as Alhazen in the West), was a 10th Century Mathematician, Astronomer, Philosopher, and Theologian born in modern day Iraq. He is also considered the father of modern optics, was the first to discover that what we see is caused by the light reflecting off of objects, and entering the eye. He also demonstrated that vision is processed in the brain, not the eyes themselves. Additionally, he was a pioneer in the links between algebra and geometry, using geometric principles to create mathematical proofs, and in early work in Calculus, discovering the sum formula for the fourth power, which could be used to determine the sum for any integral power, and used that formula to calculate the volume of a paraboloid. Finally, he made huge strides on what we know now as the scientific method. He was the first to use the process of running multiple experiments while varying them in a constant and uniform manner. He also used mathematical proofs to explain experimental observation. All around, a super important guy for the advancement of vision, mathematics and the scientific method, 600 years before Isaac Newton.
Maybe not so well known outside of Brazil. Ganga Zumba, was the first recorded King of Palmares. This was the largest of the Quilombos, which were communities of Africans who had escaped the Portuguese slavers and settled in the mountains of northeastern Brazil. Founded in 1605, by the mid century Palmares was a fortified city of 5000-6000, surrounded by smaller villages. I'll keep this part short as possible. Portugal went to war with Palmares that lasted 67 years. The history here is complicated, but Ganga Zumba was deposed by one of his commanders, Zumbi, in 1679 over a disagreement with a proposed peace treaty which involved returning slaves not born in the kingdom. Now king of Palmares (called Angola Janga by the people who lived there), the war with Portugal continued. Zumbi was captured and killed by Portuguese in November 20 1695. Today, Palmares, Ganga Zumba, and Zumbi are great heros in my country. November 20th is a national day of celebration of the Black Consciousness. This is part of the ugly history of my country, but also one that fills us all with honor for these people who for nearly 100 years had freedom.
Wendell Scott, was an African American born in 1920s Virginia. He made his living as a moonshine runner (smuggler of illegal alcohol), and was recruited as a gimmick, to race as the first black racer in the Dixie Circuit in 1951. Then on a shoe-string budget started racing regularly in the Dixie Circuit, where he became highly respected by other drivers for his skill. Some of those drivers would act as his bodyguard to keep the all-white fans from lynching him. He was regularly denied the right to race in NASCAR events, but in 1954, he got a license to race from a part-time employee of NASCAR, and became the first black NASCAR driver. He ended up have a very successful career winning races and championships, despite never getting a commercial sponsorship (wonder why not). Eventually he retired from racing in 1973 after a bad accident. In 1977 a movie Greased Lightning starring Richard Prior, was loosely based on Scott's life. I learned about him from a podcast (not a NASCAR fan myself), but he had an interesting life.
Mary Anning. She discovered many fossils on the Jurassic coast but wasn’t allowed to join any society’s because she was a woman. Read her Wikipedia, she was a badass.
Valentina Vassilyev and her husband Feodor Vassilyev are alleged to hold the record for the most children a couple has produced. She gave birth to a total of 69 children – sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets – between 1725 and 1765, a total of 27 births.
All of the evidence for this was a single report by a monastery to the government in Moscow that a man named Feodor Vassilyev and an unnamed woman had 69 children, and that 67 of those children survived past infancy, posted in the mid 1780s. Consider the feasibility that a woman nearly 300 years ago would have survived this, and that her offspring would also have survived. Infant and maternal mortality rates of the 18th century countryside in Russia were extremely high, to the point where this more than strains credulity. This case was first reported to Europe in 1783 (in a tabloid), but when the French Academy of Sciences attempted to verify this claim, the Russian government refused to provide proof, but instead sent them a "Trust Us" message. The photo often associated with this case is actually a 1904 picture of Joseph Smith in Utah with his multitude of wives and children. Also the first permanent photo image wasn't created until 1825. At best, this is a highly dubious claim
