5. Juliane Koepcke

A day after Juliane Koepcke’s senior prom, she went into a plane to visit her father. The plane crashed somewhere in the Amazon Rain Forest. Most of the passengers died. Juliane woke up strapped into her seatbelt with a broken collarbone, a severe concussion, deep cuts in her arms and legs, and one of her eyes had been swollen shut.
Juliane realized that all she had with her were corpses, million pieces of the once a upon a time commercial airplane and empty seats in the middle of Amazon. She had no food, no tools, no gear, no means to make fire, no maps, and no compass. She doesn’t even have one of her shoes.

Juliane pressed through the underbrush until she found a small creek, and she just started following it downstream. When the creek ran into a larger body of water, she followed that. For two weeks, Juliane walked with no food or gear, until she finds civilization.

4. Caterina Sforza

Caterina Sforza had a bad start. She was an illegitimate child. Being born in 1462, that sucked. Young Caterina was engaged to the Pope’s nephew when she was just 10 years old. She got married at 14 but her husband was murdered. A widow during that time. That sucked even more. She moved into the Vatican for a while and became the wife of a wealthy, powerful, and well-connected man
Girolamo Riario. Sadly for Caterina, Giovanni died of an illness in 1498. Again, she’s alone in the midst of the new Pope’s desire to control central Italy.

She learned that Cesare had 15,000 troops and 17 cannons. Still Caterina refused to flee and give up her cities. She announced her determination to withstand Cesare Borgia’s siege. Annoyed at being defied by a woman, Cesare offered 10,000 ducats for Caterina, dead or alive.

Caterina fought like a tiger in steroids. She put on armor herself and commanded her men to charge and defend her city. Unfortunately, they lost the battle and she was taken as prisoner. Fortunately a French general fell in love with her and the French code of chivalry said that women could not be considered prisoners of war. She was eventually released but not before she was brutally raped her and then locked her in a filthy cell in Castel Sant Angelo, the same Roman fortress she had once captured. To gain her freedom, Caterina was forced at last to give up her claims to Forlì and Imola.

She, however, gave birth to a son whom she trained to become a brilliant soldier and a national hero. Her grandson, became Cosimo the First, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

3. Anna Yegorova

Senior Lieutenant Anna Timofeyeva-Yegorova of the Soviet Union’s 805th Ground Attack Regiment flew one of the most successful and strategic attack of the Second World War and survived almost 250 combat missions. Timofeyeva-Yegorova also survived the most brutal secret police organizations this side of the Inquisition.

2. Flora Sandes

In August 1914 Flora Sandes and 36 other nurses arrived at a small town just 50 miles from Belgrade, Serbia. Arter almost a year, went into every engagement fighting alongside the men as a soldier all the while administering first aid and field dressings, to save testosterone field regimen. She was eventually promoted from Private to Corporal to Sergeant.

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