Women's History month / Awesome Stories: special issue/ "Those who persisted"

It's "Women's History Month."

This year's theme is

"Nevertheless...She Persisted." 

This issue highlights females who:

Blazed a path forward;

Defied the odds against them;

Disregarded their own well-being to help others;

  Rejected "no" as a standard answer for women/girls.

Who challenged this statement: "Women can't fly planes?"

Why did US flight schools reject female students?

How did Bessie Coleman "prove them wrong?"

Around the time that Bessie Coleman learned to fly, in France, another woman with the name of Coleman was helping WWI soldiers to live again.

Men who'd spent months in French trenches, during "The Great War," were at risk of sustaining massive facial injuries. People with disfiguring facial injuries are subject to psychological as well as physical trauma.

The effects of trench-related injuries caused survivors to recoil from public life. Many refused to return home because they didn't want their families to see their ravaged faces.

Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor, decided to lessen the profound psychological damage sustained by these WWI soldiers. She traveled to Paris where she opened a shop which people called the "Tin Noses Shop." Her mission in life? Take a look.

Around the time that Bessie Coleman learned to fly, in France, another woman with the name of Coleman was helping WWI soldiers to live again.

Men who'd spent months in French trenches, during "The Great War," were at risk of sustaining massive facial injuries. People with disfiguring facial injuries are subject to psychological as well as physical trauma.

The effects of trench-related injuries caused survivors to recoil from public life. Many refused to return home because they didn't want their families to see their ravaged faces.

Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor, decided to lessen the profound psychological damage sustained by these WWI soldiers. She traveled to Paris where she opened a shop which people called the "Tin Noses Shop." Her mission in life? Take a look.

How was Anna able to "give back life to them prayed for death?"

Watch a rare, 1918 video of Anna at work in her shop.

Many years later, another American woman tackled another impossibly difficult project.

When Erin Brockovich investigated why medical records were located in a real estate file, what did she find?

Erin wasn't a lawyer, but she didn't let that fact deter her investigation. With dogged focus, she kept digging. What she found "brought a small town to its feet and a huge company to its knees."

Talk about persisting ... Erin's efforts led to one of the largest-ever settlements in .S. history. The funds she and her colleagues collected were paid to individuals unknowingly exposed to dangerously high levels of a chemical known as "Chrome 6" (hexavalent chromium).

While women like Elizabeth Barrett Browning urged change with the power of their words, other women fueled change with the power of their photographs. Dorothea Lange and Marion Post Wolcott are two examples.