47 Rare Photos Of Women Who Changed History Forever

By | August 19, 2015

These strong women fought for their dreams, lived bravely, saved lives and influenced history forever.

We hope you get inspired by these incredible women in history. Enjoy!

1. Photograph of a samurai warrior (c. 1800s)

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2. A woman hitting a neo-Nazi protester with her handbag. The woman was later identified as a concentration camp survivor, 1985.

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3. Sarla Thakral, 21, the first Indian woman to earn a pilot license, 1936

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4. A suffrage activist protesting after "The Night of Terror", 1917

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5. Kathrine Switzer becomes the first woman to compete in the Boston Marathon, despite attempts by the organizers to stop her, 1967

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6. Annette Kellerman posing in a swimsuit. She was later arrested for indecency (c. 1907)

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7. The very first women’s basketball team from Smith College, 1902

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8. Filipino guerilla, Captain Nieves Fernandez, showing a US soldier how she killed Japanese soldiers during the occupation, 1944

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9. Two women show uncovered legs in public for the first time ever in Toronto, 1937

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10. American nurses landing in Normandy, 1944

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11. Women's league roller derby skaters in NY, USA, March 10, 1950

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12. Voting activist Annie Lumpkins at the Little Rock city jail, 1961

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13. Members of the Hell's Angels gang, 1973

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14. Girls delivering blocks of ice after male workers were enlisted, 1918

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15. Komako Kimura, a well-known Japanese suffragist at a march in New York, October 23, 1917

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16. Marina Ginesta, a 17-year-old communist militant, in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, 1936

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17. Anna Fisher, "the first mother in space", 1980s

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18. 18-year-old French Résistance activist, Simone Segouin, during the liberation of Paris, August 19, 1944

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19. Photographer Margaret Bourke-White, climbing the Chrysler Building, 1934

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20. Maud Wagner, the first well-known female tattoo artist in the United States, 1907

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21. Elspeth Beard, attempts to become the very first Englishwoman to circumnavigate the world by motorcycle, 1980s

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22. 106-year old Armenian woman protecting her home with an AK-47, 1990

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23. A Muslim woman covering the yellow star of her Jewish neighbor with her veil to protect her from prosecution, Sarajevo, 1941

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24. Winnie the Welder, 1943

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25. Jeanne Manford marching with her gay son during a Pride Parade, 1972

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26. Sabiha Gökçen of Turkey, the first female fighter pilot in history, poses with her plane, 1937

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27. Volunteers learning how to fight fires at Pearl Harbor (c. 1941 - 1945)

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28. A captured Soviet soldier is given a drink of water by a Ukrainian woman, 1941

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29. A mason high above Berlin (c. 1900)

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30. Railroad workers at lunch. Most of them were the wives or mothers of the men who left for war, 1943

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31. Some of the first women sworn into US Marine Corps, August 1918

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32. Ellen O’Neal, one of the first professional female skaters, 1976

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33. Parisian mothers shielding their children against German sniper fire, 1944

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34. Erika, a 15-year-old Hungarian girl who fought for freedom against the Soviet Union, October 1956

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35. A Dutch woman refused to leave her German soldier husband after Allied soldiers captured him. She followed him into captivity, 1944

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36. Gertrude Ederle becomes the very first woman to swim across the English Channel, 1926

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37. Aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean, 1928

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38. Afghan women studying medicine, 1962

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39. A British sergeant training members of the ‘mum’s army’ Women's Home Defence Corps during the Battle of Britain, 1940

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40. The iconic photo of a concerned pea-picker and mother of seven children during the Dust Bowl, 1936

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41. Women's Liberation Coalition March, Detroit, Michigan, 1970

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42. A Los Angeles Police looks after an abandoned baby in the drawer of her desk, 1971

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43. Female snipers of the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, May 4, 1945

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44. A Lockheed employee working on a P-38 Lightning in Burbank, California, 1944

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45. Leola N. King, America's very first female traffic cop, Washington D.C., 1918

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46. Female pilots leaving their B-17, "Pistol Packin' Mama" (c. 1941 - 1945)

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47. A Red Cross nurse taking down the last words of a British soldier (c. 1917)

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