10 most powerful women in history

Throughout different periods of our history, women have always played influential role and contributed to some of the biggest achievements of human kind.With celebrating International Women’s day, Yelaket.am presents 10 most powerful and influential women of our history.

1. Cleopatra

Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt, known for her superior intelligence and improving its country’s standing and economy. She is also famous in popular culture for her love affairs with Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony.

2. Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc (1412-1431) was a French heroine and a saint to Roman Catholics. She claimed to have mystical visions and rallied French troops to defeat the English in the Battle of Orleans among others. She was eventually betrayed to the English and burned at the stake. Her unflinching faith and role in liberating the French from the English invasion has accorded Joan of Arc mythic status.

3. Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the Queen of the United Kingdom, ruling over a vast British Empire that stretched across six continents for 63 years, the second longest reign in its country’s history (the longest belonging to the current Queen Elizabeth II). Her rule was so definitive that the period has come to be known as the “Victorian Era”. Under her rule, slavery was abolished throughout all British colonies and voting rights granted to most British men. She also made reforms in labor conditions and presided over significant cultural, political, and military changes in her Empire.

4. Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was one of most powerful English monarchs ever. Never married and called the “Virgin Queen,” the intellectual Elizabeth I defeated the Spanish Armada and ruled successfully for so long that her reign from 1558 until 1603 is known as the “Elizabethan Era”. As a monarch, the last of the Tudor dynasty, she encouraged major cultural changes like the Renaissance and the transformation of England into a Protestant country.

5. Hedy Lamaar

Hedy Lamarr In the 1940s, few Hollywood actresses were more famous and more famously beautiful than Hedy Lamarr. Yet despite starring in dozens of films and gracing the cover of every Hollywood celebrity magazine, few people knew Hedy was also a gifted inventor. In fact, one of the technologies she co-invented laid a key foundation for future communication systems, including GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi.

6. Marie Curie

Marie Curie Curie was scientist whose research on radioactivity led her to discover two new elements. She also researched the atom, and her findings have been integral in scientific advancements related to atomic bombs and medicine, according to Scientific American. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, as well as the first person and only woman to win two Nobel Prizes. She won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1911.

7. Anne Frank

Annelies Marie “Anne” Frank was born June 12, 1929, in Frankfurt, Germany. Anne was a Jewish child who wrote a diary during the Holocaust, describing her experiences during that time. The Frank family hid from July 9, 1942, to August 4, 1944, with four other Jews, and were kept alive by Dutch office workers. Eventually, the office workers betrayed them, and the family was deported to Westerbork camp, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1944 Anne arrived with her sister in Bergen-Belson, where she fell ill and died of Typhus in March of 1945. Her diary has been translated into many languages and describes the experiences of the Holocaust experienced by Anne along with her family and friends in the annex. The diary also features her hopes and dreams for the future.

8. Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thetcher (1925-2013) was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1979 and 1990, the first woman to hold this office. She was the longest-serving British PM of the 20th century, dubbed the “Iron Lady” by the Soviets for her hardheadedness. She won a popular victory over Argentina in the 1982 Falklands War, but her economic policies had mixed support, as she promoted a free market economy and confronted the power of the labor unions.

9. Angela Merkel

Merkel was the first female chancellor of Germany. During her chancellorship, Merkel was frequently referred to as the de facto leader of the European Union (EU) and the most powerful woman in the world. Beginning in 2016, she was often described as the leader of the free world. Despite strong opposition, she opened Germany's doors to migrants during the Syrian refugee crisis.

10. Diana Hovhannes Abgar

Diana Hovhannes Abgar (Abgaryan) - Armenian writer, publicist and diplomat, author of nine books on the Armenian Genocide. Being appointed as the diplomatic representative and Consul General of Armenia in Japan on July 21, 1920, she became the first woman ambassador in the world.