Theodore Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart wanted to be a great aviator, but it was the 1920s and people still thought that women were frail and weak. She couldn't make her living as a pilot, so she took a job as a social worker. Less than five years later, she was the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. But none of that would have happened if she'd turned up her nose at the offensive offer or sat around feeling sorry for herself.