Amelia Earhart

When Amelia Earhart was a child in Kansas in the early 1900's, she climbed trees, hunted rats with a rifle, belly-slammed her sled down snowy hills, and even "flew" a wooden box off a ramp on a toolshed roof -- with her in it! So it was hardly a surprise to anyone that, when she grew up, she bought a leather jacket, cut off her hair and took flying lessons.

Then, in 1932, at the age of 34, Earhart became the first woman ever to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo, for which she was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross from Congress, the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor from the French Government, and the Gold Medal of the National Geographic Society from President Herbert Hoover. But this is not why she made the cut as an in-your-face woman. That came as a result of her writing to her husband-to-be on her wedding day, "I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any medieval code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly." Uh-huh!