Biography notes:

Her Quotes:

There is no other means to do it but ourselves, so that we are not devalued and humiliated by the strangers who surround us.

Mexican children in Texas need an education. There is no other means to do it but ourselves, so that we are not devalued and humiliated by the strangers who surround us.

Working women know their rights and proudly rise to face the struggle. The hour of their degradation is past. Women are no longer servants but rather the equals of men, companions to them.

Educate a woman and you educate a family.

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Passion Fruit Black Tea – Passionate Readers Iced Tea

The post Jovita Idár : Passion Fruit Black Tea – Passionate Readers Iced Tea appeared first on Tea and Strumpets.

Daughter of a County Mayo Chieftain and Sea Captain, she was discouraged from going to sea, so she cut her hair and dressed as a boy. 

Legend says she saved her Father from an English intruder by leaping onto his back. 

Married at 16 to the son of another Irish Chieftain, she took control of his fleet with considerable skill. 

Donal-an-Chogaidh O’Flaherty was always feuding to expand his territory and was killed in 1560, leaving Grace with 3 kids. 

⚓️ Grace took to pirating, commanding anywhere from 5 to 20 vessels and employing up to 200 men. 

She married her second husband Richard Bourke in 1567 for political gain. It lasted only a year, although they remained married until Bourke died 17 years later.  He was knighted in 1581 and she took the title Lady Bourke. 

She and Bourke had one child, a son born on one of her galleys. 

Legend says the ship was attacked just after his birth, and she rose from the labor bed to fend off the attack successfully. 

Grace was arrested for plundering the Irish Kingdom of Desmond in 1577, and served two years.  She was released in the hope she could tame her rebel husband – a false hope. 

After Bourke’s death from natural causes in1583, Grace settled at Rockfleet with 1000 cows and mares and uncounted followers. 

The English Governor still saw her as trouble, and his brother killed her eldest son, which cemented her position as a rebel to the English crown. 

She was arrested a second time, and got the death penalty, but her son in law volunteered to act as a hostage to guarantee her good behaviour. 

Grace continued to fight for her rights against both England and Spain, joining with one or the other for her own benefit, recorded as leading men until at least 1601. 

🕊 Grace died in 1603, a proud and brave adventurer who defended her family to the end, in spite of the spra of English rule throughout her life.

Source: Bad Girls From History by Dee Gordon 9781473862821

Biography notes:

📍1530 – 6/18/1603 Ireland

• Grace was captured twice, negotiated her own release twice, married twice and divorced once.
• She had at least two sons, having given birth to the youngest on board her ship.
• She famously stormed the castle of another son when he aligned with her enemies.
• The youngest, captured by the British, caused her to travel to London to meet with Queen Elizabeth I. She refused to bow to the virgin queen, as Grace did not see her as the Queen of Ireland.
• Grace still managed to negotiate her son’s release, payment from the Queen for lands stolen from her, and the return of the lands. She got the money and her son, and was able to leave London with her head still firmly attached to her neck.

She has a dozen names … in Irish Folklore she is Gráinne Mhaol, but she was a real person.
Granuille, Gráinne O’Maly, Graney O’Mally, Granny ni Maille, Grany O’Mally, Grayn Ny Mayle, Grane ne Male, Grainy O’Maly, and Granee O’Maillie. All are versions of her actual name, Gráinne Ní Mháille.

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Irish Breakfast Tea – Irish Mists (a breakfast tea)

The post Grace O’Malley: Irish Mists appeared first on Tea and Strumpets.

Manikarnika Tambe was born in November, 1928 in Varanasi India.

🕊She was only 4 when her mother died, and her father, a court advisor, was left to raise his children alone.

🏹 She learned horsemanship, archery, self defense and shooting – unusual skills for an Indian girl.

She was married at 14 to Gangadhar Rao Newwalker, the Maharaja of Jhansi. Known after her marriage as the Rani Lakshmibai, Manikarnika had one son in 1851 but the boy was weak and did not survive four months.

The couple adopted a cousin’s son, to secure the ruling line, and called him Damodar.

Two years later, the East India Company took advantage of the Maharaja’s death and applied the Doctrine of Lapse.

► The Doctrine of Lapse was an annexation policy followed widely by Lord Dalhousie when he was India’s Governor-General from 1848 to 1856. According to this, any princely state under the direct or indirect (as a vassal) control of the East India Company where the ruler did not have a legal male heir would be annexed by the company

As per this, any adopted son of the Indian ruler could not be proclaimed as heir to the kingdom. So, due to the Doctrine of Lapse, Britishers did not accept Damodar Rao as the legal heir.

👑 This challenged the Indian ruler’s long-held authority to appoint an heir of their choice.

She was determined to not give up on the Dominion of Jhansi and hence started assembling an army of rebellions, including women.

⚔️ Lakshmibai gave a great fight to the British as the siege of Jhansi lasted for about two weeks. After a fierce war, when the British army entered Jhansi, Rani Lakshmibai, tied her son Damodar Rao to her back and fought bravely using two swords in both her hands.

She escaped to Kalpi and was accompanied by other rebellions. She then departed to Gwalior and a fierce battle was fought between the British and Lakshmibai’s army.

She died on June 17, 1858, martyring her life for India’s freedom.

She is now known as a national hero, with statues in her honor in Jhansi and Gwailior.

Biography notes:

📍11/19/1828 – 6/18/1858 India Rani Lakshmibai

In their words:

“The Rani is remarkable for her bravery, cleverness, and perseverance; her generosity to her subordinates was unbounded. These qualities, combined with her rank, rendered her the most dangerous of all the rebel leaders.” — Sir Hugh Rose on reporting her death to the Duke of Cumberland

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

 Rani Chai Tea

The post Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi: Rani Chai appeared first on Tea and Strumpets.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.

🎨🔬She was literally the daughter of art and science.

👾 Although her father, the poet Lord Byron, may be the more well-known of the pair, it was Ada Lovelace’s mother, Annabella Milbanke, who acted as the role model for her daughter’s iconoclastic and pioneering contributions to the field of computer science.

When Ada was twelve, she began studying what she called flyology – the mechanics of flight.

🔭 Lady Byron encouraged Ada’s interest and aptitude in science and mathematics and shared her own love of astronomy and geometry, raising a young woman who came to be called “the Enchantress of Numbers” by her colleague and friend, British inventor Charles Babbage.

Babbage created the Analytical Engine, the first mechanical computer and Ada saw the machine’s potential: that it could eventually go beyond number crunching to process text, images and music.

⭐️🔢 Ada, already a mathematician wrote the earliest known algorithm made to be carried out by The Analytical Engine.

Ada Lovelace became then widely recognized as the first computer programmer - the "Mother of Computer Programming".

Biography notes:

📍12/10/1815-11/27/1852 London UK
Self described poetical scientist, mother scientist, visionary, first ever computer program,  lady fairy, technology, computing, programming — for her Math is poetry.

Her Quotes:

“Understand well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand.”

If you can’t give me poetry, can’t you give me poetical science?

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal; as time will show.

The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole.

Imagination is the discovering faculty, pre-eminently. It is that which penetrates into the seen worlds around us, the worlds of science.

Forget this world and all its troubles and if possible its multitudinous Charlatans– everything in short but the Enchantress of Numbers.

The iconic tea flavor “Earl Grey” was invented during the Countess of Lovelace’s lifetime, and its heady aroma reminds us of her highly cerebral character.

When we decided to create a tea based upon her personality, the strong yet poetic blend of bergamot oil with black tea was ideally suited.

🍵 Tea inspired by this remarkable woman:

Enchantress of Numbers Tea

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