Jeanne Baret was born in La Comelle, France. Little is known about her early life, though she claimed that her mother had died soon after she was born and her father when she was 15. In her early 20s, Baret worked as a housekeeper to the naturalist Philibert Commerson, and the two developed an intimate relationship. In 1764, the two moved to Paris, where she gave birth and placed her child with a foster mother. In 1765, Commerson got invited to join as a botanist to the first French circumnavigation of the globe, led by the admiral and explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville. Wanting her by his side, Commerson enlisted Baret to the voyage as his valet and assistant. However, women were prohibited on French navy ships, so she disguised herself as a man. In December 1766, the ship Étoile left the port of Rochefort toward South America with Baret on board. Since Commerson had a lot of equipment to collect specimens, the ship’s captain gave up his big cabin to Commerson and his assistant, allowing Baret more privacy. Early in the voyage, Commerson suffered from seasickness, and an ulcer on his leg, so Baret spent much of the time attending him. While on shore, she did the heavy labor of carrying the equipment and collecting specimens. Along the journey, the ship stopped in Montevideo, Uruguay, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where Baret collected plants, shells, and stones; while sailing, she helped Commerson to catalog their findings. For two years, Baret managed to keep her true identity a secret, though there were rumors that she was, in fact, a woman. There are different versions of how her gender got revealed. One story claims that when reaching Tahiti in April 1768, the islanders immediately recognized that she was a woman, and they surrounded and threatened her until she had to be rescued back to the ship. Another record claims that in July 1768, while stopping in New Ireland (today part of Papua New Guinea), Baret was discovered by crew members who confronted and sexually assaulted her. Either way, when anchoring in Mauritius for supplies, Baret and Commerson decided to leave the ship and stay on the island as the governor’s guests. There, she continued to assist Commerson and went with him on collecting expeditions to Madagascar and Bourbon Island. By 1770, Baret gained independence and was granted property in Port Louis, where she ran a tavern. Commerson died in 1773, and in the following year, at 33, Baret married Jean Dubernat, a non-commissioned officer in the French Army. Soon after, they returned to France and settled in Saint-Aulaye. In 1785, the Ministry of Marine granted Baret a pension of 200 livres a year. The pension document acknowledges her achievement of circumnavigating the globe and her devotion and assistance to Commerson while recognizing she was a woman disguised as a man. She died at the age of 67. Read more...

Marie Félicie Élisabeth Marvingt was born in Aurillac, France, and grew up in Metz. When she was 14 years old, her mother died, and she took custody of the household and her younger brother. Soon after, the family moved to Nancy. Her father was an enthusiastic sports fan and encouraged her to practice various sports, including swimming, mountaineering, horse-riding, ice skating, skiing, gymnastics, tennis, fencing, football, hockey, golf, and martial arts. At the age of four, she could swim 4 kilometers, and at 15, she canoed more than 400 kilometers from Nancy to Koblenz, Germany. Throughout her teens and early 20s, she won awards for different sports, such as swimming, riflery, fencing, speed skating, and bobsledding. In 1905, at 30, Marvingt became the first Frenchwoman to swim the length of the river Seine through Paris. Two years later, she won an international military shooting competition and was awarded the Palms du Premier Tireur by a French Minister of War, the only woman who has ever received the honor. In 1910, at 35, she became the first woman to ascend most of the peaks in the French and Swiss Alps. In that same year, after dominating the winter sports seasons for three consecutive years, she received a gold medal “for all sports” from the French Academy of Sports, the only multi-sport medal ever awarded in France. In 1901, 26 years old Marvingt took her first balloon ride and loved it. In 1907, she became the first French woman to obtain a balloon pilot license, and after two years, she became the first woman to pilot a balloon from the Continent to England over the English Channel. She participated in ballooning competitions, often taking first place. Her next challenge was to obtain a pilot license, and on June 10, 1910, she once again made history as the third woman to earn a fixed-wing pilot license and the only one to do so in less than a year. Less than six months later, she insisted on being measured and including women in the official record books. Then she became the first woman officially holding a flying record. When WW1 started, Marvingt disguised herself as a man and fought with the French infantry on the front lines. After a few months, she was discovered and sent home but returned to the battle when Marshall Foch asked her to join the alpine regiment in the Italian Dolomites. Later, she served as a Red Cross Nurse and a war correspondent. In 1915, her aviator skills were in need, and she was asked to fly in aerial bombing missions over German-held territory, becoming the first woman in the world to fly combat missions. For her actions during the war, she received the Croix de Guerre. After the war, Marvingt worked as a journalist and a medical officer with the French Forces in North Africa. She spent most of her time and effort developing an idea she had before the war – using airplanes for aerial ambulance services. She even had a practical design and donations to execute the initiative, but WW1 happened, and the factory that was supposed to build the plain went into bankruptcy, interrupting her idea execution. She continued to improve her original design for the airplane ambulance and advocated for its production. She gave about 3000 seminars and conferences on the subject, co-founded the Les Amies De L’Aviation Sanitaire (Friends of Medical Aviation), headed the First International Congress on Medical Aviation, and in 1934, she established civil air ambulances in Morocco, for which she received the Medal of Peace of Morocco. Marvingt recognized the need for nurses to serve in the airplane ambulance, so she helped to create the first training program for aerial medical personnel and became the first certified Flight Nurse. The new occupation allured many young women, and when WW2 erupted, more than 500 nurses joined the corps of flying nurses. During the war, Marvingt was in her 60s. She fought with the French Resistance and volunteered as a nurse for the Red Cross. In her last decades, she continued promoting airplane ambulances and wrote poetry. At the age of 80, she earned a helicopter pilot license and became the only woman to simultaneously hold four pilot’s licenses – balloon, airplane, hydroplane, helicopter. She died at the age of 88. Read more...