Badass Women History Class Totally Failed To Mention

5

La Maupin Was An Opera-Singing, Swashbuckling, Bisexual Badass

Julie d'Aubigny was taught from a young age by her sword master dad how to ride a horse like a man, fence like a man, and dress up like a man (so as not to raise suspicion). Easily the best of her class, d'Aubigny quickly figured out what she wanted to become when she grew up: a dashing rogue.

Her "lover and a fighter" streak started at 14 with an affair with her dad's boss, the Count d'Armagnac. She then married a knight named Sieur de Maupin before deciding the only thing he was good for was the name she took from him, "La Maupin." She abandoned him to elope with her fencing instructor and swashbuckle her way to Paris, earning a living performing amazing fencing demonstrations. Her skill led to rumors that she was secretly a man (as in, pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man), a rumor she dispelled by tearing off her blouse and flashing her audiences at live shows -- a move that sometimes turned her enemies into lovers.

Aubrey Beardsley/Library of CongressFrankly, tearing open that shirt is a pretty impressive feat in itself.

La Maupin was also proudly and openly bisexual -- a pretty bold move in the late 1600s, when women could get into deep shit for deviances like showing their ankles or knowing how to read. In fact, her first real love was a wealthy merchant's daughter, but their relationship was so scandalous that the girl's family shipped her off to become a nun. Undeterred, La Maupin simply infiltrated the convent, dragged a corpse into her girlfriend's bedchamber, and then burned the convent down to create the illusion that they were both killed in the fire. They lived happily ever after ... until La Maupin got bored and dumped her.

La Maupin quickly became famous throughout France, not just because of the swashbuckling, but also her opera performances. She was so talented that she was even invited to perform for King Louis XIV, who was such a fan that he didn't even mind that she dueled three men in a row at his court, even though he had outlawed dueling. She was just that good.

Perhaps the most impressive feat of all is that La Maupin did all this in her early 20s. In her twilight years (by which we mean her 30s), she fell in love with the equally infamous Madame la Marquise de Florensac, a wealthy noblewoman and one of the most beautiful women in France. They were happy for two years before la Marquise died of a fever. After all that fighting, this was a blow La Maupin would never recover from. She retired from the opera and joined a convent for real. She died at 33, having done more in half of a lifetime than most of us ever could with our full lives.

Related: 5 True Stories Behind Iconic Pictures Of Badass Women

4

Lillian May Armfield Was Sydney's First Female Cop (And Took Down Two Major Crime Bosses)

Lillian Armfield was the perfect nurse -- kind, smart, and always with a hard candy in her pocket. Which was why everyone was surprised when she quit nursing to become part of Australia's first women's police squad as a "special constable." She was "special" in that unlike male constables, she wasn't allowed to have handcuffs, a gun, or even a uniform. It was like being a less formal Paul Blart. So when a crazed drug dealer tried to kill her with a red-hot iron, all she had to beat him back was her trusty handbag. Which worked.

3

Hypatia Of Alexandria, The Catholic Church's Most Feared Intellectual

If you were a smart kid in the 4th century, there was no place better than Alexandria, and Hypatia was easily the smartest person around. At an age when many of us were still figuring out how to BS our way through college applications, she took over from her father as the head of the famous Platonic School. There she used her incredible (at the time) knowledge of mathematics, physics, and astronomy to do the toughest job a scholar can do: make all this gibberish make sense to students. She wrote ingenious commentaries on mathematics, furthered the understanding of several geometric principles and helped perfect the use of the astrolabe (the GPS of the time). She even figured out a more efficient method for doing long division, and everyone who's ever passed the fourth grade owes her a thank-you note and a fruit basket.

2

Janet Guthrie, The Aerospace Engineer Who Became The First Female NASCAR Driver

Ricky Bobby could learn a thing or two about goin' fast from a gal like Janet Guthrie -- it's all she wanted to do from the time she was young. While most 13-year-olds have a hard time keeping their car un-flipped in Grand Theft Auto, by that age, Guthrie was already flying planes. By the time she was 17, she had earned her pilot's license and was an experienced skydiver.

Luckily for her, she had the smarts to match her guts, and after earning a degree in physics from the University of Michigan in 1960, Guthrie went to work as an aerospace engineer on the precursor to the Apollo program. She then became one of only four women who aced the first NASA trials for astronauts, but she was barred from becoming one because she didn't have a lousy PhD.

If she couldn't jet through space, Guthrie was just going to have to go at high speeds down here on planet Earth. She spent all her money on a Jaguar XK 140 race car (which she slept in to make ends meet) and immediately fell in love with racing, dividing her time between building race car engines at night and studying for a master's degree during the day.

By 1972, Guthrie had graduated to being a full-time driver, having taken two class wins in the infamously hard 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race. It was at that point that she decided she was going to race for NASCAR -- as a woman, in the 1970s. Bear in mind, this is an organization that didn't see any use for women outside of popping champagne bottles until 1971.

1

Madame Ching Was The Most Powerful Pirate In History

Most salty dogs believed that having a woman on your ship meant ill fortune would befall you, and nobody made a better case for that Madame Ching, the Pirate Queen of the Chinese. She'd take your fortune and more if she got anywhere near your ship. Born in 1775, Shih Jang came from a long line of honest, hard-working pirates. While working as a madam on a floating brothel, she drew the attention of Cheng I, dread pirate admiral of the Red Flag Fleet. They soon married, with the newly minted Ching Shih (that's "Madame Ching" to us vermin) coming in as a full partner, running 50% of the fleet. Unsurprisingly, that number soon rose to 100% when her husband went the way of most pirates, sailing directly into a storm and drowning.