The Historical Badasses You Loved the Most This Year
In our quest to inspire you to not be a piece of shit, we’ve been bringing you stories of people throughout history who were pretty fucking cool. From a sole survivor, trailblazing journalist, and absolutely fearless 21-year-old, here is our list of the top five badasses Vulgar Advice readers loved the most this year.
Rosalie Edge: The Indomitable Hellcat of Conservation
You know the Audubon Society? The one dedicated to protecting birds and their habitats? Well, before Rosalie Edge came along, the esteemed conservation society was behind mass killings of birds and small animals to sell their feather and pelts.
Socialite, cousin to Charles Dickens and bird lover, Edge single-handedly transformed the Audubon Society and conservation as we know it.
Hell hath no fury like a woman who deeply cares about wildlife and pays a member fee to be part of a renowned wildlife society only to find her membership fees are going toward killing the wildlife it's sworn to protect.
Edge’s pursuit of justice was all gas and no breaks. She spoke at the Society’s annual meeting, demanding answers for which the board offered none. So, she said, “fuck you, Audobon nerds. I’ll form my own conservation organization.” And so she formed the Emergency Conservation Committee with a mission to protect common birds and animals, and go toe-to-toe with Audubon.
Nellie Bly, Mama of Investigative Journalism
Nellie Bly was 23 years old when a New York City judge declared her insane. She stood before the judge, shivering, declaring she was unsure of where she was or where she had come from.
The year was 1887, and what no one knew — not the judge before her, the police officer who escorted her, the women’s home matron who accompanied her or the doctor who examined her — is that Bly was just fucking pretending. Being declared insane was exactly what she wanted. Bly had practiced her act of insanity to get herself committed to New York’s infamous insane asylum, Blackwell’s Island. Over the next ten days, she would observe the living conditions and treatment of patients and later publish an explosive expose that would transform mental health care in the city.
Her infamous stay at the asylum would mark the beginning of Bly's pioneering career as an investigative journalist, one defined by her relentless tendency to see fucked up shit going on and declare, “Not on my watch.”
Simona Kossak, Real Life Forest Witch
Polish ecologist Simona Kossak lived every woman’s dream: alone in a haunted cabin in Europe’s oldest forest with a 400-pound wild hog, a terrorist crow and a hot photographer as her lover.
Simona was born in 1943 in Krakow during the German occupation to a family of artists who were a preeettty big deal in their time. Her very birth shook the status quo: she was expected to be born a boy, to carry on the Kosak name into a new generation of Polish artists. Instead, she charted her own path. Compassionate bad bitch that she was, she would spend most of her adult life living in the woods, advocating for the protection of the wildlife that she loved so much.
Sophie Scholl, the Girl Who Said "Fuck You" to Hitler
On a bright winter day in Munich in 1943, college student Sophie Scholl was beheaded for her efforts in The White Rose, growing resistance against the Nazi party. She was 21 years old and faced her death with the uncompromising resolve she poured into creating a network of descent among German citizens horrified by the actions of their country’s leadership.
Sophie Scholl had absolute balls of steel, and her fearless actions continue to resonate today.
Ada Blackjack, Sole Survivor of a Doomed Arctic Expedition
On August 19, 1923, an expedition led by explorer Harold Noice arrived on Wrangel Island, a land mass in the Arctic Ocean, just north of Russia between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. The polar airmasses offered a bone-chilling welcome to Noice and his team as they descended onto the arctic beaches to complete their task: rescue five missing explorers who had set out to speculatively claim the island for Canada nearly two years before.
Moments later, a figure ran down to the frigid beach toward the rescue team. It was 25-year-old Iñupiaq woman Ada Blackjack, the expedition’s sole survivor.