50 Underrated Women You Never Learned About In History Class

13. Edith Wilson. She was, as far as practicality goes, the first female US president.

Basically Woodrow Wilson had a stroke during his presidency and so his wife, Edith, took his place. Woodrow was bedridden and while he was still given the final say, Edith still acted in his place for pretty much everything else, if I recall correctly.

14. Rita Levi-Montalcini was a Jewish-Italian neurobiologist. Her scientific career lasted from the 1930s to the 2010s. She died at 103 years of age, still doing science.

Oh, and she was named a Senator for Life in Italy because of course she was.

Once when a reporter asked her (she already in her eighties or nineties) what she would do if she was thirty years younger, her answer was, “I am doing what I would do if I was thirty years younger.”

15. Josephine Baker. Was a popular entertainer in Europe and America, and she lived in Paris when the Nazis invaded. Now, she was popular enough in Paris that the Nazis feared what kind of pushback they’d get if they did anything to her, despite the fact that she was a black woman, which were both things that the Nazis historically did not like very much, so one might forgive Baker for just shutting up and enjoying the relative comfort she had. But she did do that? No! She served as a spy for the Allies and the French Resistance, smuggling information across France during tours.

After the war, she became a civil rights icon, refusing to perform for segregated audiences and became such a powerful symbol that MLK’s wife asked her to take up her husband’s place in the movement after he was assassinated.

There are at least three awesome movie scripts in that life story, and it is a crime that none of them have been made.