defiance
People who were told no and heard it as a dare.
The Surgeon Who Wouldn't Give It Back
She was exchanged man-for-man for a Confederate major, and that wasn't even the strangest thing about her wedding.
The Woman Who Wouldn't Look Up
She rode on crusade, got hauled out of Antioch in the dead of night, was caught fleeing in men's clothes at fifty, ran England at sixty-seven — and then she designed her own tomb.
The Woman Who Stole the Car
Why did a woman in 1888 push an automobile down an alley at dawn while her husband slept upstairs?
The Blessing of a Good Thick Skirt
She fought a crocodile with a paddle, wore leeches like a fur collar, and insisted to her dying day that trousers were beneath her — so what, exactly, did the skirt save her from?
The Chevalier Who Wouldn't Lie Down
What kind of person enters a fencing tournament against an entire garrison while their brain is swelling inside their skull?
The Man Who Sewed Up a Heart
What happens when a former barber decides to stitch a beating heart by lamplight, twelve years after the most famous surgeon on Earth said it couldn't be done?
The Giggling Mycologist
What kind of person gets laughed out of the British scientific establishment and leaves giggling?
The Princess of Parallelograms
What happens when you raise a poet's daughter on pure mathematics and ban every verse from the house?
Matsuo Bashō
What does a man who spent four years managing pipes hear when a frog hits a pond?
Peter the Hermit and the Donkey
What kind of person gets caught deserting during a famine, weeps, is pardoned, and then gets promoted to diplomat?
The Dog Got Clean Too
What happens when a woman who holds thirty-six patents and hates cleaning drags a garden hose into her kitchen?
The Viking of Sixth Avenue
What happens when a blind composer in a Viking helmet stands on the same Manhattan corner for thirty years and becomes more famous silent than playing?