the bad a** women thread......lets bring the noise

My all time favourite though...

Mary Read

Mary Read was illegitimately born in England, in the late 17th century, to the widow of a sea captain.

Read's mother began to disguise illegitimately born Mary as a boy after the death of Mary's older, legitimate brother Mark. This was done in order to continue to receive financial support from his paternal grandmother. The grandmother was apparently fooled, and Read and her mother lived on the inheritance into her teenage years. Still dressed as a boy, Read then found work as a footboy, and later found employment on a ship.

She later joined the British military, allied with Dutch forces against the French (this could have been during the Nine Years War or during the War of the Spanish Succession). Read, in male disguise, proved herself through battle, but she fell in love with a Flemish soldier. When they married, she used their military commission and gifts from intrigued brethren in arms as a funding source to acquire an inn named "De drie hoefijzers" (The Three Horseshoes") near Breda Castle in The Netherlands.

Upon her husband's early death, Read resumed male dress and military service in Holland. With peace, there was no room for advancement, so she quit and boarded a ship bound for the West Indies.

Read's ship was taken by pirates, who forced her to join them. She took the King's pardon c.1718-1719, and took a commission to privateer, until that ended with her joining the crew in mutiny. In 1720 she joined pirate John "Calico Jack" Rackham and his companion, the female pirate Anne Bonny.

Read remained dressed as a man at first. Nobody knew that Read was female until Bonny began to take a liking to Read thinking she was a handsome young fellow.[citation needed] That forced Read to reveal to Bonny that she was a woman. Rackham, who was Bonny's lover, became jealous of the intimacy between them and threatened to cut the throat of Bonny's new paramour. To prevent Read's death, Rackham was also let in on the secret; following, Rackham decided to break male seafaring tradition by allowing both women to remain on the crew.

en.wikipedia.org...

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820. During the Crimean War, she and a team of nurses improved the unsanitary conditions at a British base hospital, reducing the death count by two-thirds. Her writings sparked worldwide health care reform. In 1860 she established St. Thomas' Hospital and the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. She died August 13, 1910, in London.

When she arrived the British Hospital in Constantinople conditions were deplorable, soldiers were dying from secondary infections and diseases more than from war injuries.

She procured hundreds of scrub brushes and asked the least infirm patients to scrub the inside of the hospital from floor to ceiling. Nightingale herself spent every waking minute caring for the soldiers. In the evenings she moved through the dark hallways carrying a lamp while making her rounds, ministering to patient after patient. The soldiers, who were both moved and comforted by her endless supply of compassion, took to calling her "the Lady with the Lamp." Others simply called her "the Angel of the Crimea." Her work reduced the hospital’s death rate by two-thirds.

She pioneered many of the sanitation practices that are still used today, she took Nursing a profession at the time of ill repute and made it honorable. She was tireless and self sacrificing. She was compassionate and treated the whole patient, not just their disease or wounds. She was a pioneer in creating special meals for those who needed them, and laundry services so patients could have clean linens. Many of the things we have come to expect and take for granted were instituted by her.

www.biography.com...

Wonderful thread idea,

originally posted by: CardiffGiant
just saying...i hear ya man....
our wives are awesome

I don't know where I'd be without her

a reply to: Iamschist

yeah, florence was the jam.

thanks everyone for posting in this thread

Lyudmila Pavlichenko

Born in 1916 in what is now Ukraine, Pavlichenko volunteered for the Red Army upon Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. Given the option to become a nurse she refused instead choosing to become a sniper. It was a very bad decision...for the Nazis. Pavlichenko, in a shade under a year, achieved 309 confirmed enemy kills including 36 enemy snipers a feat no other female has accomplished.

After being wounded by mortar shrapnel and due also to her growing infamy among the enemy she was removed from combat. A publicity tour followed and she became the first Soviet citizen to be received by a U.S. President. She then went to train future snipers of the Red Army until the end of the war.

Having attained the rank of Major she returned to Kiev University to finish her Master's Degree in History.

Shote Galica



Shote was an Albanian fighter, fought oppression alongside her husband and continued to fight after his death. She dedicated 12 years of her life to their struggle.