One of the great tragedies of history is not so much that the winners write it: it's that it's written by the literate and leisurely: that is, people with enough time to sit around writing it all down and enough education to be able to do so. Until the last 100 to 200 years, that meant men overwhelmingly wrote it. And since men have historically had more power than women that means that men have tended not to have to relay the stories of women's deeds as much as the other way around, or as they do to the tales of those who look like them. The upshot of all this is that many thousands upon thousands of women lived great lives, starting businesses, standing up to oppressors, inventing new things, and writing splendid literature: and we only ever hear about a small fraction of the greatness achieved by only a small fraction of these women.

Fortunately, we're doing more to learn about them these days, and that means little girls and boys will soon be able to grow up knowing more about who came before them, irrespective of their gender. Let's see which of these unsung or perhaps, under-sung titans of industry, literature, science, and politics you resemble the most.