For International Women's Day on March 8 These women changed world history - and you probably don't know them

Did you know that the flat-bottomed paper bag was invented by a woman? Probably not. These ten pioneering women have achieved great things.

Many women have left their mark on world history. With their ideas, deeds or discoveries. But their names are often forgotten. These ten women have achieved great things and changed the world a little:

Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973), born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, was an American singer and guitarist. She is also known as "the godmother of rock'n'roll" and "the original soul sister".

She was the first big star of gospel music and was one of the first gospel musicians to appeal to the rhythm and blues and rock'n'roll audience.

The daughter of a preacher and mandolin player, she began playing guitar as a little girl and was already performing in churches at the age of six.

Her career was shaped by recordings such as "Rock Me" (1938) and "Strange Things Happening Every Day" (1944), which are considered to be the first rock'n'roll records.

She combined gospel with jazz, blues and rhythm and blues, inspiring Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Eric Clapton and Tina Turner. She also performed with artists such as Cab Calloway and Muddy Waters.

Tharpe married three times, including the Reverend Thomas A. Thorpe, whose name she used, slightly modified, as her stage name. She was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.

Although she had to retire after a stroke in 1970, she continued to work as a musician until her death on October 9, 1973 in Philadelphia.

US-American Margaret Hamilton (88) made her mark on the history of space travel as a software engineer.

After studying mathematics, she began working on the Sage system, an early air defense system for the US armed forces, in 1961.

Her greatest success came in the Apollo program: she developed the software for the lunar module, which was necessary for navigation and landing. And she was only 30 years old. Her codes made it possible to control priorities and correct errors in real time, enabling Neil Armstrong to make history in 1969. She also coined the term "software engineering".

She received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2016) and the Nasa Exceptional Space Act Award (2003) for her work.

After the Apollo program, she founded software companies and campaigned for quality management in IT. Her legacy: She revolutionized software development and continues to inspire women in the technology industry today.

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), born Augusta Ada Byron, was a British mathematician and is considered the first person to create computer programs.

Her father, George Gordon Byron, known as Lord Byron, was one of England's most important Romantic poets. She grew up in good circumstances.

During Lovelace's lifetime, women were not allowed to study in England. However, as her mother was interested in mathematics, geometry and astronomy and had been taught these subjects herself in her youth, she also gave Lovelace a scientific education.

Throughout her life, Lovelace was interested in scientific developments, including questions about the possibility of flying or describing the workings of the brain mathematically.

At the age of 17, she met the inventor Charles Babbage, who was working on a calculating machine called the Analytical Engine. Lovelace translated an article about this machine and added her own ideas. She developed a calculation manual for the machine - now recognized as the first computer program. She discovered that the machine could not only calculate numbers, but also compose music or recognize patterns.

Despite her visionary ideas, the calculating machine was never built. Her work was forgotten until she was rediscovered in the 20th century as a pioneer of computer science.

Ada Lovelace died of cancer at the age of 36. The Ada programming language and the Ada Lovelace Day were named after her.

Stephanie Kwolek (1923-2014), daughter of Polish immigrants, revolutionized materials research with the invention of Kevlar - a heat-resistant superfiber five times stronger than steel.

She studied chemistry at Margaret Morrison Carnegie College and worked at DuPont, one of the world's largest chemical companies, for over 40 years from 1946.

In 1965, she discovered that aromatic polyamides - synthetic fibers - have liquid crystalline properties. These properties made it possible to produce very stable shapes during spinning.

Today, the fiber is used in bulletproof vests, aircraft parts and high-performance composites.

Kwolek applied for over 25 patents, but did not benefit financially. She received numerous awards, including being the first woman to receive the Lavoisier Medal, the National Medal of Technology and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Until her death, she was committed to the advancement of women in science.

Marthe Gautier (1925-2022) was a French pediatrician and researcher whose work in discovering the genetic cause of Down syndrome was long underappreciated.

Gautier had joined Raymond Turpin's research group in Paris in the 1950s. Turpin had the idea of counting the chromosomes in the cells of affected children under a microscope. Gautier had already learned the technique during her studies in the USA and was thus able to prove that children with Down's syndrome have an extra chromosome.

Although she carried out the laboratory work, Jérôme Lejeune was named as the first author of the publication article. He concealed the fact that it was she who had produced the laboratory results. Gautier fought for recognition for decades - it was not until 2014 that her role was officially confirmed.

Disappointed, she switched to hepatology in 1966, founded a pediatric hepatology department and became director of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).

Gautier died in 2022 at the age of 96.

Madam C. J. Walker, real name Sarah Breedlove (1867-1919), was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist and activist. Her parents and older siblings were slaves and she was the first child to be born free.

Walker is considered one of the first female self-made millionaires in the USA, as well as one of the most successful African-American business leaders of all time.

She was motivated by her own hair loss to develop hair care for black women and founded the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company in 1910.

One reason for her success: the network of saleswomen she trained and made financially independent. The company claims to have trained almost 20,000 women by 1917. They wore uniforms - white tops and black skirts as well as a black shoulder bag. They visited homes in the USA and the Caribbean, where they offered Walker's hair pomade and other of their products in tin containers with their picture on them.

In addition to training them in sales and grooming, Walker showed other black women how to budget and start their own businesses, encouraging them to become financially independent.

Walker was also known for her activism. She campaigned for the rights of African Americans. She also supported various educational institutions. She donated generously to scholarships, retirement homes and community projects. Her Villa Lewaro in New York served as a meeting place for artists and activists.

Walker died in 1919 as one of the richest women of her time. In 2020, the film "Self Made: The Life of Madam C.J. Walker" about her life was released on Netflix.

Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) was an American aviation pioneer and women's rights activist who made history with her record-breaking flights and her commitment to equal rights.

Before becoming a pilot, she worked as a nurse and social worker. She made her first flight in 1920 and bought her own plane a year later. In 1922, she set the world altitude record for women at 4267 meters.

In 1928, she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic as a passenger. However, she became internationally famous four years later when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. Due to weather problems, however, she had to land in Ireland. For this achievement, she was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, an award given for heroic and extraordinary achievements during a flight.

She used her fame to fight for women's rights. She also campaigned for women in technical professions, founded the Ninety Nines pilot organization and promoted young women in aviation.

In 1937, Earhart finally wanted to be the first person to fly around the world - in an Easterly direction and in stages. However, on the last leg over the Pacific Ocean towards North America, the plane crashed. Neither the plane nor the pilot were ever found.

Alfonsina Strada (1891-1959) was an Italian cycling pioneer who was the only woman ever to take part in the Giro d'Italia in 1924. This is one of the most important stage races in men's road cycling.

She loved cycling even as a young girl. She initially rode her father's bike until he bought her her own in exchange for chickens when she was ten years old. As her enthusiasm for cycling grew, her family tried to dissuade her - and her mother forced her to become a seamstress.

At the age of 13, Strada rode her first race and won a live pig. She won almost all the girls' races and many of the boys' races.

At the age of 24, she married the cyclist and engraver Luigi Strada. Her family hoped that she would now lead a "normal life". However, her husband gave her a new bike as a wedding present and looked after her from then on.

She started the Giro under the male pseudonym "Alfonsin" - the organization only recognized her gender shortly before the race, but allowed her to continue for publicity reasons.

Despite many setbacks, such as a broken handlebar, which she repaired with a broomstick, and time overruns, she fought her way through the various stages. Because of the latter, she was initially excluded from the race. However, as she attracted the public and the journalists wrote about her, the organizer allowed her to continue.

After the tenth stage from Bologna to Fiume, she was lifted off her bike and carried by a crowd after she had finished the stage in tears due to pain and exhaustion and had exceeded the time limit by another 25 minutes. This motivated Strada to ride to the finish.

Only 38 riders finished this Giro. Although Strada no longer officially took part in the race, she was 20 hours faster than the official last rider, Telesforo Benaglia, and 28 hours slower than the winner, Giuseppe Enrici. She won 50,000 lire. After that, Alfonsina Strada was never allowed to compete in the Giro again.

Her cycling career lasted 26 years. She broke several records. In 1959, she rode a motorcycle to a race. When she came home, she crashed together with the bike while jacking up and suffered a heart attack.

Margaret Eloise Knight (1838-1914) was an American inventor who developed a machine for making paper bags with bottoms in 1870.

From the age of eight, she worked in a cotton mill. At the age of twelve, after an accident in the spinning mill, she invented an emergency stop for the machines.

In 1868, she worked for the Columbia Paper Bag Company. There she realized that the paper bags shaped like envelopes were impractical. She therefore began to develop a machine that formed and glued paper bags with a flat bottom. She spent a year designing a wooden model.

In the company that then built a metal model, Charles Annan, a machinist, stole the design and wanted to patent it himself. After a successful patent dispute, she was granted the patent in 1871 and eventually founded the Eastern Paper Bag Company.

Her legacy: the flat paper bag continues to shape the retail industry today, and she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006.

Elizabeth Jane Cochran (1864-1922), better known by her pseudonym Nellie Bly, was an American journalist and world traveler.

She was a pioneer of investigative journalism and embodied the new tone of the time with her reports and first-hand accounts.

In 1884, Cochran responded to a misogynistic column in the "Pittsburgh Dispatch" with a spirited letter to the editor. The editor of the newspaper, George Madden, was so impressed by the quality of the letter that he offered her a job as a reporter. She was also given her pseudonym on the editorial staff after the main character of a popular song by Stephen Foster.

Nellie Bly wrote several investigative reports for the newspaper before being transferred to the "women's issues" desk. Not content with this, she left the newspaper in 1887 and moved to New York. There she wrote investigative reports for several newspapers.

In 1887, at the age of 23, she infiltrated a New York psychiatric ward undercover to uncover abuses - her report "Ten Days in a Mad-House" made her internationally famous. This type of research became the hallmark of her work.

In 1889 and 1890, she broke the world record by traveling around the world in 72 days, inspired by Jules Verne's novel "Around the World in 80 Days". She was one of the first women to undertake such a journey unaccompanied by a man, making her a role model for many women.

After her career as a journalist, she married steel millionaire Robert Seaman, 40 years her senior, in 1895 and took over the management of his company after his death in 1904. After the company went bankrupt, she returned to journalism and in 1914 became the first woman to report from the Eastern Front during the First World War.

Her courageous reports on soldiers' lives and military hospitals shaped her late career. Cochran died of pneumonia in 1922 and remains an icon of investigative journalism to this day.

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