Charlotte Cooper, born in England in September of 1870, was a prominent athlete for much of her life. In addition to winning 5 Wimbledon Championships (all played in an ankle-length dress!), Charlotte was also the first woman to win an Olympic Champion title for tennis, which she accomplished in 1900, the first year women were allowed to compete in the current incarnation of the Games.

At the age of 30, she married fellow tennis champion, Alfred Sterry, and continued to balance family and sporting life until she retired from tennis in her late 50s.

Susan La Flesche Picotte, like her sister Susette (who was a writer, progressive politician, interpreter and artist), was a pioneer and woman of many 'firsts'. Born on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska in 1865 to Chief and Mary La Flesche (the family was half Native American, half French), she was encouraged from a young age to seek an education.

After completing her studies at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies, Susan came back to the reservation to teach at the local Quaker school. While there, she met ethnologist Alice Fletcher while helping her recover from a medical issue, which resulted in Alice encouraging Susan to leave the reservation to go to medical school at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania.

Inspired, Susan went on to graduate from the program one year ahead of schedule as the top student of her class. After spending a year in residency at a Philadelphia hospital, she returned home, determined to make conditions better for those she grew up with.

In addition to becoming the first Native American womanto become a licensed physician in the US, she also founded a hospital and lobbied successfully for federal aid for education.

Susan died at the age of 50 in Bancroft, Nebraska.

Iaia of Cyzicus, daughter of Marcus Varro, was born around 116 BCE, was a famous artist working out of Rome. She was a painter of the women of Rome, of religious scenes featuring Dionysus, and of herself; one of her most famous was a self-portrait that was said to be the most perfect ever made. She was also a carver, and some of her ivory and wood carvings still exist today. As a chaste, unmarried and unattached woman, she became a celebrated, dedicated artist in part because of her otherness as an upperclass female artist.

Her story was recounted by Pliny the Elder, who was born just after Iaia passed away.

The very first woman to compete in NASCAR racing -- at the very first NASCAR race on Charlotte Speedway -- was Sara Christian, whose career started in 1949 when she qualified as 13th in a Ford owned by her husband. During the race, she allowed another driver (moonshine maker Bob Flock) whose own car had overheated to take over her vehicle for the last 1/3 of the race. Despite the fact that Sara's car overheated with Flock behind the wheel, they managed to finish 14th.

Less than a month later, Christian competed at Daytona against Flock, his sister Ethel Mobley, and their friend Louise Smith (later known as the First Lady of Racing) and came in 18th, 7 places behind Ethel, who came in 11th in a race that included 28 cars.

Sara Christian spent the next year of her life as a Top-10 finisher, and  she retired from racing in 1950.

Louise Smith's career lasted longer -- she stopped in 1956 after winning 38 races -- and NASCAR remained a part of her life until her passing in 2006. 

Ethel Mobley (Flock), named after the fuel her father put in the gas tank of his taxicab, was a great driver like her brothers Bob, Fonty and Tim. They had racing -- and moonshine -- in their blood, and their courage, toughness, and pioneering spirit in the racing world brought them accolades and awards.

*photo credit: new.taringa.net

When Courtney Love's new Hole album, Nobody's Daughter, became offcially available, I was ecstatic! I've been a huge fan of her music -- and the fact that a mix of great male and female musicians have shared the stage with her for the past 20 years --  since the early 1990s, and have almost every CD, record, bootleg, mixtape and bit of flotsam her career (and that of her bandmates) has generated over the past 20 years or so.Most recently, Courtney is touring with an all-male band of mostly younger players, and while they're technically proficient and sound great, it's a little different. I miss Melissa's snarl, Patty's hard-hitting drums (and later that of Samantha Maloney), and the interplay between Eric and Courtney, which was almost always entertaining, edgy, and electric.

Though Samantha Maloney isn't with Hole anymore, Courtney has a knack for finding great female drummers, and these women have made history along with such drummers and percussionists as Maureen Tucker, Tobi Vail, Carla Azar, Kate Schellenbach, Gina Schock, Meg White, Stefanie Eulinberg, Janet Weiss, Sandy West, and multi-instrumentalists Eartha and Rachel Trachtenburg.

Too often, female drummers (and bassists, for that matter) aren't given a lot of thought, but thanks to women like Maloney (who has also played with Motley Crue and Peaches) and Eulinberg (the drummer for Kid Rock), all of that is changing. Women have always been drummers -- and damn good ones at that -- and over the past few decades, we've been taking back the sticks, one band at a time.

*photo credit: axgrinding.com

There are certainly times when NOT being just another pretty face is helpful to one's quality of life and career, and in the case of Caroline Herschel, who was scarred from smallpox and stunted by typhus as a child, this is certainly true! Caroline, whose father said she'd likely never marry due to her looks, instead went on to become one of the world's great female astronomers.

Born in Germany in 1750 to a family of musicians (her father worked for The Hanoverian Guards), Caroline was trained to become a musician herself, and she was a gifted vocalist. Because she was considered unmarryable, Caroline remained at home while the rest of her siblings left the family to build lives of their own. She remained at home to take care of her parents, and remained hidden in the family kitchen until the death of her father.

After Caroline's father died, her brother Wilhelm, an accomplished musician and amateur astronomer, invited her to move to Somerset, England with him. While there, her musical training was reinstated, and she sang professionally with her brother. However, her real love was astronomy, and she spent much of her time at night studying the stars and working as an assistant to Wilhelm.

In 1782, Wilhelm accepted a post as the King's Astronomer for George III in Buckinghamshire. Caroline went with him, continuing to work as his assistant. She was paid £50 per year by the Crown. In 1788, Wilhelm married, and his new life left him with less time for astronomical pursuits. However, Caroline continued on, and made several discoveries on her own, including the M110 (NGC 205) galaxy, eight comets, and the rediscovery of Encke. In 1797, Wilhelm asked her to update Flamesteed's Catalogue of Stars, which previously contained a number of inaccuracies. Caroline's update added another 560 stars to the list, and verified or changed others.

After the death of her brother, she continued to work in astronomy as an assistant to her nephew, John. In 1835, she was awarded the Gold Medal of Astronomy by the Royal Astronomical Society.

Caroline Herschel, First Lady of Astronomy, died in 1848.

Tenrikyo is a monotheistic sect founded in 1838 by Nakayami Miki, who was born into a wealthy family in what is now known as Nara prefecture in 1798. For much of  her young life, Miki wanted to become a Buddhist nun, but instead, she was married off in 1810, when she was just 12 years old. Rather than become another wasted life -- a casualty of her status in a patriarchal society -- Miki remained a pious and joyful person, offering healing, counsel, and assistance for friends, family and the less fortunate.

In 1838, at the age of 40, Miki had a revelatory experience during the middle of a Buddhist ceremony when a spiritual presence, called Tenri-O-no-Mikoto, entered her body. The presence told her "I am the general of Heaven. I am the true and original God. I have descended from Heaven to save all human beings, and I want Miki to be the shrine of God." After the death of her husband, Miki and her daughter Kokan worked together to found Tenrikyo. They gave much of their earnings to the poor and started a church.

Miki wrote volumes of teachings -- revelations called Ofudesaki -- which were passed down from Tenri-O-no-Mikoto or Tsuki-Hi (as the presence is also known) to her, and over the course of a couple of decades, Tenrikyo became popular to the extent that it attracted attention from the ruling sects, who eventually saw that it was folded into State Shintoism. Before this subsumption, Miki was numerous occasions for promoting her teachings.

Tenrikyo was separated from State Shinto after WW2 ended. After the separation, the sect removed many Buddhist and Christian references and practices. Today, there are millions of practicioners all over the world.

By 1933, Lise Meitner was a respected scientist in Germany and abroad, but her life changed dramatically for the worse when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Despite the fact that other Jewish friends and relatives working in Germany in the sciences had either been asked to leave or had resigned on their own, Lise continued her work at the KWI. It wasn't until 1938 that she fled, aided by Dutch physicists Dirk Coster and Adriaan Fokker, and ended up in The Netherlands. Otto Hahn gave her a diamond ring he had inherited from his mother, and it was the only thing -- aside from 10 German marks -- that Meitner took with her on her journey.

After fleeing, she was offered a position in the laboratory of Manne Siegbahn. She continued corresponding with scientists in Germany, and on occasion, she met with them secretly to discuss scientific ideas. It was during this time that the discovery of nuclear fission became known. Because Hahn and a third colleague were worried about jeapordizing their reputations (the year was 1938), they did not include Lise Meitner on reports of their findings at the time. However, her discovery that the formulas they worked on could create a bomb persuaded her to come out of hiding long enough to seek the counsel of Alfred Einstein, whom she convinced to write to American President Franklin Roosevelt. Meitner was then offered employment in the US for the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, but she turned it down, as she had no interest in building bombs.

In 1947, after working for The Nobel Institute for Physics and the Swedish Defense Research Establishment,  Lise Meitner was awarded a position (which was created especially for her) at the University College of Stokholm in Sweden. Her funding came directly from The Council for Atomic Research. After the end of WW2, Meitner's accomplishments became more widely known, and she was awarded several prizes, including the Max Planck Medal, the Enrico Fermi Award, and a National Press Club Award.

Meitner spent the remainder of her years in Stockholm, and passed away in 1968.

In ancient Greece (and later, Rome), heteara were women (mostly ex-slaves and foreigners) who worked as professional companions -- courtesans -- whose social and political lives reached far outside of the sphere of influence normally offered to women in ancient Greece. Whereas most women (especially the wealthy ones) were left out of public life, the hetaera were tax-paying citizens who participated in the symposia, women whose lives belonged to themselves alone. They could own property, control their own finances, and live openly in a time when most women did not.

As well as performing sexual favors, many of the hetaera were also talented in other ways as well. Many worked as artists, musicians, actors and/or dancers. They were known for their gracefulness, wit, charm, and  intelligence. 

Male courtesans, known as hetaeros, were also a part of ancient Greek life; most notable were the hetaeros who served in the court of Alexander the Great.