When her philandering husband went missing in the mid-1700s, Hannah Snell, a British woman, didn’t sit back and wait for his return. Instead, she disguised herself as a man and set off for Portsmouth, Great Britain, to join a regiment of marines that would see many adventures. At one point, Snell’s regiment made its way to India, where she fought valiantly, killing French soldiers and getting wounded in the process. The respect she earned from her peers during combat helped her later efforts to obtain a military pension and honorable discharge, despite her grand subterfuge.

When we imagine women from a hundred years ago, we often mentally dress up a Downton Abbey extra — lacy pinafore, ponderous hat, maybe a racy pair of bloomers. Flora Sandes, however, was something entirely different. She may not have been a suffragette, but Sandes deserves recognition for having been the only British woman to fight as a soldier in World War I. Many of the world’s armies still believe women aren’t fit to march, fight, kill and lead men – but Sandes was proving them wrong a hundred years ago.

Schwob and Malherbe, who went by the names Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, respectively, had only recently moved to the Channel Islands from France when their new home fell under German occupation in 1940. These two cross-dressing lesbian activists became thorns in the Nazis’ side, dropping leaflets into forced-labor camps, vandalizing Nazi graves and leaving subversive notes (written in German) that sought to confuse the Nazis and lower their morale. The two were imprisoned but escaped death and were freed when the island was liberated.

Dihya, the seventh century warrior queen of the Berbers, laid waste to her homeland rather than let outside marauders take control. She set fire to large swathes of land, razed villages and towns, and melted precious metals. Just five years into her rule, however, she was killed by invaders; still, her defiant legacy lives on in the lore of modern-day Algeria.

Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar was known as “the cruel” — and for good reason. She was notorious for using any means necessary — poison, torture, murder — to stamp out Christianity in her 19th century kingdom. One preferred method of hers involved feeding poisoned chicken to suspected traitors; if they vomited but survived, she figured they were innocent, and if they died, well, I guess we’ll never know. Thousands succumbed to her poisoned chickens. She was also fond of subjecting perceived enemies to amputation and crucifixion. While her methods may have been savage, she managed to protect her kingdom from colonial intruders and live to the ripe old age of 83.

Hell hath no fury like a woman bent on avenging her husband’s murder. Princess Olga of Kiev retaliated against the Drevlians, who orchestrated Prince Igor of Kiev’s death in order to secure her as a bride for their own leader. First, she killed the men who murdered her husband by burying them alive in a pit. Next, she trapped and burned alive a group of representatives sent by the Drevlian prince. Finally, she destroyed the entire Drevlian city, taking down 5,000 men along with it. Then, after fulfilling her revenge campaign, she converted to Christianity.

She was an activist, a choir singer and a political worker. But to many in South Africa, Charlotte Maxeke was first and foremost the “mother of African freedom.” Born in 1871 in South Africa, she attended college in Ohio, where she formed her political beliefs. She toured the U.S. and the U.K., but her heart was always back home. Maxeke returned to South Africa, where she campaigned against the racist policies of a white government that predated the formal imposition of apartheid.

You are surely familiar with the famed civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, but you might not know much about his second wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, a writer of operas and biographer of Black historical figures. The couple fled racist persecution by moving to Ghana, where her husband died in 1963. She remained an activist until her death at age 80.

She started as a concubine and transformed herself into one of the key political players of her time. Kidnapped from the Kingdom of Poland as a teen, Roxelana, better known as Hurrem Sultan, used her charm and eloquence to become the favorite concubine and trusted adviser of the 16th century Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. She eventually married him and served as his diplomat, political adviser and watchdog while he was away.

on The Carlos Watson Show, season 4!

Ching Shih — also known as Cheng I Sao — terrorized merchants across the China Sea in the early 19th century. Clever and cunning, she went from being a prostitute to commanding the famous “Red Flag Fleet” and sending hundreds of thousands of men into battle. At the height of her success, Ching Shih’s pirate armada boasted 1,600 ships, and she commanded more than 70,000 male and female pirates, spies and suppliers.

Despite being young and pregnant, Lumina Sophie dite Surprise – a revolutionary leader on the French-controlled Caribbean island of Martinique – organized a movement against oppressors of the Black population. For her role in an 1870 uprising, she was sentenced to life in prison, where she died eight years later at the age of 31. Almost entirely neglected for more than a century after her death, she has since begun to receive some recognition.

An early-16th century queen of Tétouan in Morocco, Sayyida al-Hurra wasn’t just royalty; she was also a badass pirate. Both feared and respected, she was hell-bent on thwarting the European quest to dominate the Mediterranean. Her position as leader of pirates earned her a place in Moroccan history books. She’s also remembered as a free and independent noblewoman who made a Moroccan king come to her to marry — this is the only recorded instance of a Moroccan king married outside his capital.

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