June 11, 2018 in Modern Worthies Piera Aiello Mafia Informant Turned Politician Forced to marry a mobster, she escaped, ran for parliament and won -- while obscuring her face. But now, she's showing it freely.
May 9, 2018 in Modern Worthies Lee Meng The Malayan Mata Hari When Singaporean guerrillas tried overthrowing British rule, they turned to this gangster to run their communications. The cat-and-mouse game in which she was caught by a female police officer is riveting stuff.
March 24, 2018 in Modern Worthies Franca Viola The Survivor Who Refused to Marry Her Rapist In the 60s, an Italian woman was abducted and raped - and then pressured to marry her rapist. She instead took him to court and got him tossed into jail.
January 5, 2018 in Modern Worthies Minnie Dean The Wickedest Woman in New Zealand An unlicensed foster mom in an era desperately in need of them, she was unjustly made out to be a bloodthirsty murderer when one of the children in her care died of an accident.
October 31, 2017 in Modern Worthies Domino Harvey Model/Bounty Hunter Starting her young life as a model, she soon turned to bounty hunting - and eventually to drugs. She got a movie in 2005, but it couldn't hope to cover her complexity.
October 25, 2017 in Modern Worthies Jeannie Rousseau The Spy Who Foiled Germany's Rockets Using her photographic memory, this WW2 spy stole some of the most vital German rocket plans, and suffered a year in concentration camps for it. She died this year.
September 29, 2017 in Modern Worthies Kakenya Ntaiya The Woman Who Demanded School At the age of seven, Kakenya Ntaiya made a bargain with her father: she would undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) if he agreed to let her finish her education.
July 21, 2017 in Modern Worthies “Uncle” Olive Yang Royal turned opium warlord So here's a wild story: lesbian (possibly trans) Burmese princess becomes opium-trading warlord to escape arranged marriage.
May 22, 2017 in Modern Worthies Pili Hussein The Miner Who Posed As A Man This Tanzanian miner has a 70-person-strong company, but she built it by pretending to be a man for many years.
February 22, 2016 in Modern Worthies Nangeli The Woman Who Challenged the Oppressive Breast Tax In the 19th century, one woman's protest against an oppressive tax led to its end, as well as her own.