Santa Anna labelled himself Napoleon of the West,

But was he an idiot, as some have confessed?

He led the Mexican Army in its fight against Spain,

Bloody and brutal, independence their aim.

He lost his leg in a battle against the French,

And had it buried it with full honours in its very own trench.

He then used a prosthetic till “captured” by the USA,

Where it resides in Springfield to this very day!

The Mexican Government repeatedly request it’s return,

But it’s a museum exhibit from which we can learn?!

*Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, or Santa Anna

Dick Turpin was a butcher, but that’s not for what he’s known,
He was a killer, thief and highwayman -a legend overblown.
He started life in Essex, but then he moved to York,
Early on, he took to crime and really walked the walk.
He earned his keep nefariously, on his horse, Black Bess,
And began to regard a human life less and less and less.
When he was finally captured, they put him on public trial,
And even he could not escape by dint of bribe or guile.
He was sentenced to be hung, and was in ’39,
A blaggard and a rascal and a philistine.

Let me introduce you to “Amazing Grace”,
Please don’t ever forget this face
A computer programmer, US Navy Commodore,
She’d a hunger for knowledge, a thirst to explore.
She was a teacher at Vassar, but joined the Naval Reserve,
During World War II, she thought it her duty to serve.
One of the first programmers in computer history,
She was determined to make them less of a mystery,
She introduced the computer term ‘de-bugging’,
When a moth tried to give her computer a mugging.
She set her clock backwards, which some might find strange,
But this was to challenge her students being allergic to change.
During her lifetime she was awarded 40 global degrees,
To honour her brilliance and her expertise.
She tried to retire twice and finally did so at eighty,
At the end of a career that was stellar and weighty.
United States Navy Admiral Grace Hopper (1906–1992) was one of the first programmers in the history of computers. Grace tried to retire twice, in 1966 and 1971, but both times she was recalled to active duty indefinitely. She was promoted to commodore in 1983, a title that was later renamed to “rear admiral, lower half”, and finally retired for the last time in 1986 at the age of 80. In the course of her lifetime, Grace Hopper was awarded 40 honorary degrees from universities around the world, along with numerous awards and honors including:

• First winner of “Computer Science Man of the Year” award from the Data Processing Management Association in 1969
• First person from the United States and the first woman from any country to be made Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society in 1973
• First woman to receive the National Medal of Technology as an individual in 1991
•  At her retirement she was awarded the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the highest non-combat award possible by the Department of Defense.

Gettysburg was fought 1-3 July 1863,
The Confederates under General Robert E Lee,
The Unionists led by George Gordon Meade.

After success in Virginia, Lee began this new campaign,
And drove at the Unionists again and again,
The number killed or wounded was frankly profane.

The total casualties were 57,225,
Only a third of Lee’s officers remained free or alive,
Ginnie Wade the only civilian that didn’t thrive.

This battle’s considered the turning point of the war,
Meade’s Potomac Army knew what it was fighting for,
It decided the future of slavery, that it should be no more,

Out of this battle came the Ghettysburg Address,
A speech seen as America’s finest by both soldiers and press,
In which the principles of human equality are clearly expressed.

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Edmonia Lewis has a singular claim to fame,
She was the first black sculptress to get a name,
She was born in New York but worked in Rome,
And from 1865, Italy is where she called home.
Her work sold for $50,000 or more,
She was feted by museums and socialites by the score,
She even sculpted Ulysses S. Grant,
Till the 1880s, her work continued to enchant.
Lewis died childless, a sculptor of note,
As the first black woman to do this, she gets my vote.

December 10th, 1768,

Is a somewhat infamous date,

It was the date they founded the Royal Academy,

Yet in an act of Victorian misogyny,

They excluded two founders because they were female,

And besides Joshua Reynolds their reputations were pale,

So instead of being painted in a studio shot,

They were shown on background portraits behind the “eminent lot”,

So Angelika Kauffmann and Mary Moser today,

Your contributions are not just swept away!

Jerrie Cobb was born March 5th 1931,

And soon started outstripping everyone,

At 19 she was teaching men to fly,

At 21, delivering four-engined bombers to air forces world-wide.

A 3 year romance with Jack Ford proved terrific,

‘Till his plane exploded over the Pacific.

She set 3 world records for aviation,*

Life Magazine named her one of the 9 most influential women in the nation.

Although she had twice as many flight miles as the famous John Glen,

She could not go into space because women didn’t back then.

For 30 years she flew a humanitarian South American route,

And was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize to boot.

Honoured by Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru and France,

This extraordinary woman, defeated only by circumstance,

I think she deserves a huzzah and hooray,

This living heroine from the USA.

*For speed, distance and absolute altitude.

Awards:

• Amelia Earhart Gold Medal of Achievement
• Named Woman of the Year in Aviation
• Amelia Earhart Memorial Award {cn}
• Named Pilot of the Year by the National Pilots Association
• Fourth American to be awarded Gold Wings of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, Paris, France
• Named Captain of Achievement by International Academy of Achievement
• Served five years as a consultant to the Federal Aviation Administration
• Honored by the government of Ecuador for pioneering new air routes over the Andes Mountains and Andes jungle
• 1973 Awarded Harmon International Trophy^[9][10] for “The Worlds Best Woman Pilot” by President Richard Nixon at a White House ceremony.
• Inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame as “the Most Outstanding Aviatrix in the US
• Received Pioneer Woman Award for her “courageous frontier spirit” flying all over the Amazon jungle serving primitive Indian tribes
• 1979 Bishop Wright Air Industry Award for her “humanitarian contributions to modern aviation”.^[11]
• 2000 Inducted into “Women in Aviation International Pioneer Hall of Fame”.^[12]
• 2007 Honorary Doctor of Science degree from University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.^[13]

Agnodice was an astonishing girl,
She trained as a doctor in a masculine world,
In order to be one she pretended to be male,
So she could treat any starting to fall sick or ail.
She was a physician in 4th Century BC, a difficult time,
When being a female physician was a capital crime.
In order to reassure a patient she revealed her real sex one day,
And the male physicians in Athens were set on making her pay,
They thought she was seducing female patients but,
They simply felt she was better, the case was clear cut.
They took her to court and when they found her female and skilled,
They all tried their hardest to get Agnodice killed.
Her female patients all leapt to her staunch defence,
Ensuring female physicians no longer had to so by pretence.

Queen Vishpala – 7000 BC,
Has a stellar place in history,
In the Rig Veda it tells that she,
Whilst fighting lost a leg below the knee.

She takes centre stage because it’s a fact,
They gave her an iron leg, to be exact,
The first person to have an artificial limb,
And it is recorded in this Indian ‘hymn’.

With her iron leg on, she returned to the fight,
And continued regardless, with all her might,
It must have been quite an astonishing sight,
She’s an Iron Lady by actual right!

Let’s hear it for Catherine Littlefield Greene,
Whose name is largely unknown and almost unseen,
For whilst Eli Whitney’s credited with inventing the thing,
It was her brains that thought up the cotton gin,
Just at that time a woman could not put her name,
To a patent, ’twas socially unacceptable – what a shame.
Yet she was so highly thought of, this widowed mistress,
That President Washington attended her wedding as a witness.