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Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

While the history books may have written in length about men, it's also meant that women who've made notable contributions to society have been overlooked.

Sure, we know about Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Earhart and Florence Nightingale, but there are just as many ladies who have fallen off the radar. As we celebrate Women's History Month, we bring you ten butt-bicking women who, once you read about them, you'll never forget. In other words: They're not history if we have anything to say about it.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

Unsung WWII Heroines: The WASP Female Fighter Pilots
Formed: 1942 Disbanded: 1944

Even though the chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps considered women "too high-strung" to fly aircraft, America's entry into WWII -- and the need for more combat pilots ­led to try-outs for select ladies. Those that made the grade became known collectively as Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP.)

The organization combined both the Women's Flying Training Detachment and the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. Over 1,800 women in all trained and worked as flight training instructors and glider two pilots, performing test flights and ferrying aircrafts. Lamentably, they worked as civil service employees without benefits, which they failed to receive even after the group disbanded in 1944.

The WASPS saw the first inkling of recognition for their service when President Carter signed a bill granting them WWII vet status in 1977. Then, in 2000, they were awarded the right to be buried in flag-draped coffins.

Unfortunately, when the WASPS were finally awarded Congressional Gold Medals in 2010, many had already been laid to rest. We salute them -- as well as the 300 venerable WASPS here to share their war stories.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

The Mother of Modern-Day Genetics: Henrietta Lacks
Lived: 1920-1951

When tobacco farmer Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of 30 in 1951, all she wanted to do was get better. Sadly, after eight months of radiation and surgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Lacks and her tumor-riddled body lost the battle with the disease.

However, unbeknownst to her and her family, her cells lived on -- right up until today. Known as HeLa cells (a combo of the first two letters of her first and last name), they have been multiplying since the sample was (secretly) taken from one of Lacks' tumors and sent to Dr. George Gey's tissue-culture research lab back in the 1950s. Not only did Lacks' cells help scientists test the polio vaccine, HeLa cells were also sent into space.

Unfortunately, Lacks' family didn't find out about the grand experiment till the early 1970s when a researcher from Johns Hopkins called them. But now Rebecca Skloot's recently released "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" will ensure history knows the unprecedented role Lacks played -- and how her body revolutionized modern science.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

A Mother to Unmothered Millions: Catherine Hershey
Lived: 1871-1915

While most associate Hershey with sweet chocolatey goodness, this famous name belonged to a woman who did more than just enjoy the fruits of her husband's labor. Since Catherine Hershey couldn't have kids of her own, she and her husband Milton used their money to establish the Hershey Industrial School--a home and school for orphaned boys--in November 1909.

Although an undiagnosed illness weakened Catherine over the years, eventually paralyzing her, she made the school her cause and ensured it stayed open over the years. In 1915, Catherine contracted pneumonia and never recovered. After her death, Milton donated his entire personal fortune to the school he had created at his wife's behest.

"The school was Kitty's idea," he said. "If we had helped a hundred children it would have all been worthwhile."

He lived to see the school expand its campus and its enrollment and continued to be involved in the operations until his death on Oct. 13, 1945. Now called the Milton Hershey School--though clearly Catherine's legacy underlies its--it's the nation's largest, cost-free, private, co-ed home and school for children from families of low income, limited resources and social need.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

She Stood Up To Joe McCarthy: Dorothy Kenyon
Lived: 1888 - 1972

Born the daughter of a wealthy patent attorney, Dorothy Kenyon might have chosen to live a very different life. After graduating from Smith College Phi Beta Kappa in 1908, she engaged in a period she now calls her "misspent" years as "a social butterfly."

Then, a year in Mexico -- spent observing abject poverty and shocking injustice -- transformed her into a social activist. She enrolled in law school, and, upon graduation, eschewed a spot at the family law firm. Instead, Kenyon went on to devote time to the New Deal, women's issues and civil rights.

A self-proclaimed feminist, she was a U.S. representative for the UN Commission on Women and on the board of the ACLU. Then, in 1950, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, labeled her a Communist. Rather than retreat, Kenyon pounced: "He's a lowdown worm and although it ought to be beneath my dignity to answer him, I'm mad enough to say that he's a liar and he can go to hell," she spat.

Her response didn't earn her another political appointment, but garnered the support of Eleanor Roosevelt, and she worked tirelessly to defend the downtrodden up until her death -- a few days shy of her 84th birthday.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

They Paved The Way To Exploring The Milky Way: Margaret Burbidge & Nancy Roman
Burbridge: 1919 - Roman: 1925 -

Watch any movie about the infamous "Space Race," and you'll see either monkeys or men dominating the air space. But astrophysicist Margaret Burbidge (left) and astronomer Nancy Roman (right), two ladies who are often overlooked, both led NASA teams during the creation and deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Burbridge was key in designing instruments for the Hubble. She's currently professor emeritus of physics at UCSD, and,
perhaps cooler yet, even has an asteroid named after her.
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With a geophysicist for a father, Nancy Roman was destined to be a science geek. Fascinated by the stars, she first did a radio astronomy program at the Naval Research Laboratory after earning a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Chicago. From 1959 to 1979, Roman worked for NASA, becoming the first female to crack the astral ceiling and attain an executive position: Chief of Astronomy in the Office of Space Science. Not only did she lobby for more funding to build the Hubble, but she also was part of its design team.

Now retired, Roman still serves as a consulting astronomer to NASA and a senior scientist for the Astronomical Data Center at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

The First Female Teamster: Regina Polk
Lived: 1950 - 1983

While she was definitely a fashionista, business agent Regina Polk also became one of the most powerful union organizers in her time with Local 743 in Chicago. Inspired by American union leader Jimmy Hoffa, this teamster organized women clerical workers at Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the University of Chicago and had a hand in many other labor causes.

Just as she was becoming a rising star in the labor movement, Polk's life was cut short: She died in a plane crash on Oct. 11, 1983, on her way to meet the Illinois Jobs Coordination Council, at the age of 33.

While not yet a household name, her sparky legacy lives on in Terry Spencer Hesser's 2008 book, "I Am a Teamster: A Short, Fiery Story of Regina V. Polk, Her Hats, Her Pets, Sweet Love, and the Modern-Day Labor Movement," as well as at the Polk Women's Labor Leadership Conference, held in Illinois every year since 1998. And we shudder to think what she¹d have to say about the fact that salary disparities still live on, in this, 2010!

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

America's Founding Mother: Clarina Nichols
Lived: 1810 - 1885

From early on in the time when there were American citizens, this smart, tough-talking woman worked to ensure females wouldn't continue to be considered second class. She married at twenty, had three kids, and when her husband left her, absconding with the children, she divorced him and found work for a local newspaper, making a name for herself writing about what would later become three life-defining passions: women's rights in child custody, married women's property rights, and equality in matters pertaining to public schools.

Teaming up with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Nichols helped organize the first-ever National Woman's Rights Conventions in 1850 and 1851 and led the movement in Vermont as well as other Eastern states. She became one of the most sought-after speakers on the circuit, stumping to standing-room only crowds in New England, and is best-known for her speech, "The Responsibilities of Woman," which would make one heck of an email forward today.

Luckily her legacy lives on: Diane Eickhoff chronicles this early pioneer's life in "Revolutionary Heart: The Life of Clarina Nichols and the Pioneering Crusade for Women's Rights."

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

She Refused To Give Up Her Seat Before Rosa: Claudette Colvin
Lived: 1939 -

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the bus in Montgomery, Ala. back in 1955, her firm "no" sparked nothing less than the Civil Rights Movement. However, Parks wasn't the first woman to do so. Nine months before, on March 2, 1955, a young lady named Claudette Colvin was riding the bus home from school when the driver ordered her to give up her seat for a middle-aged white woman--even though three other seats in the row were empty.

When she refused, Colvin was dragged off the bus in handcuffs and kicked by one of the officers. A young activist named Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King made his political debut representing Colvin, hoping to use her case to fight the system, but the local NAACP found her too "feisty" and "mouthy" to be the face of the battle, and settled on an older, unflappable Parks instead.

This past November, a book about Colvin's life by Philip Hoose -- "Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice" -- was awarded a National Book Award, upgrading the now 71-year-old woman's status once again, from what the New York Times claimed would have been "a Civil Rights footnote" to a first-class seat in the annals of history.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar

She founded the field of pediatric cardiology: Dr. Helen Taussig
Lived: 1898-1986

Dyslexia, hearing loss and the fact that she was one of the only female doctors at Johns Hopkins University in the early 1900s didn't stop her from making waves in the medical world. Since heart surgeries were unheard of back then, anoxemia or "blue baby" syndrome, a condition that prevented sufficient amounts of blood and oxygen from being pumped through the lungs -- and turned a baby's skin blue, became what doctors considered a hopeless diagnosis.

However, Dr. Taussig, already known to distinguish between normal and sickly hearts just by feeling their rhythms, knew there had to be a safe way to save the heart without hurting the child. Along with surgeon Alfred Blalock and surgical technician Vivien Thomas, she innovated a surgical procedure that would circulate oxygen back to the wee patient's lungs, and become forever known as the Blalock-Taussig shunt.

Aside from receiving the Medal of Freedom in 1964 and becoming the first female president of the American Heart Association, Dr. Taussig's remarkable life is portrayed in the 2004 HBO film, "Something the Lord Made," starring Alan Rickman, Mos Def and Mary Stuart Masterson -- who played the founder of pediatric cardiology herself.

Amazing Women Who Fell Under the Radar