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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O PQ R S T U V W XYZ

" men should only be accessories of the strong woman "

Maria Bashkirtseff

in Siena in Italy, a law forbids a woman with this name to work as a prostitute

Her Name is Maria

* Maria Aldridge

..... in 1976 she was the FIRST person in Britain to be given an injection against rabies in her arm when she was bitten by a rabid dog whilst on holiday in Valencia. Injections were previously given in the stomach

* Maria Bashir

..... FIRST female prosecutor in Afghanistan

* Maria Luisa Bemberg

born 1940

..... FIRST commercially successful Argentine female film director and one of the few Argentine directors whose films are regularly distributed internationally. Her films and screenplays have always dealt with women and the obstacles they face within traditional patriarchal societies and she used her own money to finance her first two productions

* Maria Berberi

born 1855

..... Italian who was the FIRST woman scheduled to die in the new electric chair in 1885 for the murder of her lover but she was acquitted through the efforts of the female reporters of the day

* Maria Bochkareva

..... in 1914, when war broke out, she petitioned Tsar Nicholas 11 to be allowed to join the army. Her exploits have been all but forgotten and her name removed from the history books by the Communists but from 1914-17 she was a national heroine, known as the Russian Joan of Arc, and was seen by many as a figurehead who could revive Russia's flagging war effort and save the country from the Bolsheviks. She rose to the rank of sergeant, was wounded and decorated several times and was the only woman soldier, excluding nurses, in the front line. She taught herself to read and write whilst in the trenches. By 1917, when the Tsar had been overthrown and the front was collapsing, she formed a 300-strong "women's death battalion" with the aim of shaming the men into fighting. The women had their hair cut off, were dressed in the rough uniforms of the Russian army and were blessed on Red Square by the Orthodox patriarch, Nikon. Although the women broke through two German lines, the push itself was a failure. The war effort collapsed in October 1917 when Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power and she refused to join either side in the ensuing civil war. She travelled abroad but in 1920 the Bolsheviks caught up with her in Tomsk, but because of her fame they dared not execute her on the spot. However, after a few months of detention, an emissary came from Moscow and in May wrote an order " Death by firing squad". She died the following day at the age of 31 years, Russia's FIRST feminist

* Maria Del Carmen Gutierrez Chamberlain de Chittenden

..... FIRST woman Ambassador to the Court of St James - august 1962 to June 1966 representing Costa Rica

* Maria Deraismes

born 1828 died 1894

.....  founder of the FIRST women's rights organisation in France

* Maria Dalle Donne

..... 1799 - Bologna, Italy - FIRST woman to graduate with a degree in philosophy and medicine

* Maria de Ia Fayette

neé Marie Madeleine Poche de la Vergne

born 1634 died 1693

..... author of the FIRST European novel clearly based on personal experience - La Princesse de Clèves (1678) . She wrote under the name of J.R de Segrais and her first novel La Princesse de Montpensier was published in 1662. In 1655 she married the Comte de La Fayette but he deserted her in 1660 leaving her with two sons and she returned to Paris where she fell in love with La Rochefoucauld and lived with him until his death in 1680

* Maria Teresa de Filippis

 ..... in 1958 she was the FIRST ever woman F1 driver and achieved a 10th place at the Belgium Grand Prix

* Maria Theresa - Empress

Archduchess of Austria & Queen of Hungary & Bohemia

born 1717 died 1780

..... in 1713, her father, anticipating that there would be no male heirs had executed a deed known as the Pragmatic Sanction by which his own daughter was to succeed him in preference to the daughter of his elder brother, Emperor Joseph 1. This document was guaranteed by the principal powers of Europe. In 1736 she married Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine and in 1740 she succeeded to the sovereignty of Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. The following year she was crowned Queen of Hungary taking the disused oath of King Andrew 11. The Austrian treasury was exhausted, the army disorganised and the possibility of a disputed succession made the young Queen an easy prey to her neighbours, few of whom had some claim on the coveted inheritance. Many troubles followed and she found no peace until 1748 when a treaty was signed by all the belligerent powers. The seven years of peace that followed were the best period of her life and allowed her to govern her subjects and distinguish herself by many benevolent acts. However she could not forgive King Frederick for his capture of Silesia and so the Seven Years War was silently prepared. By 1763 her allies had fallen away from her, her husband died the following year and she was grief stricken. She was sick of war but found no peace until her death in 1780 having earned from her subjects the grateful title of "Mother of her Country. Of her sixteen children, most of her daughters were married in a purely dynastic interest, the most famous one being Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. She established the FIRST ever military academy in 1752 and an academy of engineering science in 1754

* Maria Garcia

..... FIRST armed policewoman on the streets of Seville, Spain

* Maria "Marita" Fernandez Lado

..... founder of the detective agency Metodo 3 she was the FIRST private detective to provide video evidence used in court to unmask an insurance fraudster when she filmed a man reading who had claimed to be blind

* Maria Mednyanszky

born 1901 died 1974

..... Hungarian who was the FIRST official women's world champion at table-tennis which she won five times in succession and won a further 18 world records. For this she was awarded the Golden Order of the Hungarian People's Republic, her country's highest sporting honour

* Maria Mitchell

born 1st August 1818- died June 28th 1889

..... role model for women scientists and the FIRST woman member of the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1847 when she became the FIRST woman to find a comet on 3rd October. She was the FIRST distinguished American woman astronomer to receive international acclaim and FIRST Professor of Astronomy at Vassar in 1865 and held the chair for 23 years. During this time she trained many women astronomers which included Mary Whitney and Caroline Furness who between them published 104 astronomical papers in 20 years and collaborated with astronomers all over the world in a project to map variable stars. In Nantucket in America the Mitchell Centre has a small observatory, a resource centre and the Quaker House in which she lived as a girl

* Maria Montessori

born 31st August 1870 died 6th My 1952

..... FIRST Italian woman to study medicine and in 1894 became the FIRST woman in Italy to qualify as a doctor. She believed that children learned first with their hands and so invented a whole selection of toys with which to teach i.e jig saws, alphabets, puzzles etc. Her method of teaching is recognized throughout the world and is still in use

* Maria de Lurdes Pintassilgo

..... on July 19th 1979 she became the FIRST woman Prime Minister in Portugal. She was a staunch Roman Catholic, insisted on being called an "engineer" and was believed to have Socialist sympathies

* Maria José Pons

..... Spanish woman who was the FIRST European winner of the British women's amateur stroke-play golf championship. Aged 18 years, the Spanish international from Valencia won with a one-over-par total of 289 at Prince's, Sandwich in August 1995

* Maria Eliza Rundell

..... the FIRST known printed recipe for scotch eggs (a hard-boiled egg covered in sausage meat and then fried) can be found in her book A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806)

* Maria Jose Garcia Sanchez

..... FIRST plain clothes policewoman to die on duty in Spain. Aged 23, she was killed near San Sebastian when police stormed a house used as a shelter by Basque terrorists in the 1980s

* Maria Sautuola

..... in 1879, while exploring the Altamira caves in Spain where her father was the FIRST known person to discover Cro-Magnon cave paintings, she became the FIRST person in 10,000 years to see the bison's painted on the ceiling of the cave. As she was much smaller than her father she could stand upright in places where he had to crawl and so could manage to see the paintings above her head

* Maria Sharapova

..... in 2004 she became the FIRST Russian to win the Wimbledon title when she beat Serena Williams

* Maria Suplicy

..... FIRST woman to speak on Brazilian television about orgasms and abortion

* Maria Taglioni

born 1804 died 1884

..... Italian who was the FIRST dancer to raise herself on her toes thus enlarging the vocabulary of ballet and creating a wider field of artistic impression. She was born in Stockholm, the daughter of a famous dancer, teacher and ballet master Philippe Taglioni and she became an almost legendary figure herself. Her most famous ballet was "La Sylphide"  which was staged for her by her father in 1832. In the same year she married Count Gilbert de Voisin and in 1838 went to London with a large fortune and bought palaces in Vienna and a villa on Lake Como. She retired from dancing in 1847 and in the war between France and Germany lost all her property and returned to London where she opened a school to teach young ladies dancing and deportment

* Maria Unsworth

..... community police officer on duty at the FIRST police station to open in a shop when Sainsbury's supermarket in Fallowfield, Manchester (U.K) was chosen. Up to fourteen community officers start and finish their tours of duty from there and also use it as a place to take breaks without having to return to the main station in Fallowfield - December 2007

* Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega

..... Spain's FIRST female Vice President, who graduated from law school in the 1970s but Spanish law barred her and any other woman from becoming a judge, serving as a witness in court or opening a bank account

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