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Unbelievable Facts About The Most Incredible People In History

BY MATHEW BURKE | FEBRUARY 8, 2017


Someone once said that you’ll never achieve greatness by playing it safe. That certainly holds true for the men and women of this list. Enjoy these awesome facts about some awesome people in history.


Most Incredible People In History Facts

1. First!

The first woman ever to receive a Nobel Prize was Marie Curie, in 1903. Curie was also the first person to receive the award twice and is still the only woman to have accomplished this feat.

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She is also the only person to receive the Nobel Prize in two different sciences.

What else did Marie Curie do first? Well, she was the first woman Professor at the University of Paris and the first woman to become entombed at the Panthéon in Paris on her own merits. She developed the theory of radioactivity.

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While coining its name, she discovered both polonium and radium, developed mobile radiography to aide field hospitals to be able to do X-rays during the war, and figured out how to isolate isotopes.

2. Oof

Life is a roller coaster.

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Though Marie Curie was on the heels of having won her second Nobel Prize in 1911, she was publicly scorned. Europe was developing a fever pitch of xenophobia and sexism during this time, and Curie was subsequently refused admittance into the French Academy of Sciences.

She was also wearing a scarlet letter, as she had a brief relationship with one of Pierre’s former students. Due to all of this, the Nobel committee encouraged her not to attend the ceremony.

While Marie Curie was enduring this backlash, a recent acquaintance by the name of Albert Einstein was so outraged by the public scorn that he wrote Curie a personal letter imploring her to maintain her spirits, works, and confidence.

This helped her to boost her confidence, and after some time she recovered and showed up in Stockholm to accept her award, despite all of the trolls.

3. The Proxy President

For the last year and a half of US President Woodrow Wilson’s term, his First Lady Edith Wilson essentially acted as the defacto President.

After suffering a stroke, the President was left bedridden.

Edith took charge of all his meetings and controlled what issues were important enough to get his attention. So, unofficially, Edith Wilson was the first female President of the United States.

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