"Although climbing mountains, documenting exotic lands and traversing some of Mother Nature’s most extreme landscapes might not be considered gender-exclusive activities today, they were once very much the endeavors of men only — well, men and a select handful of tenacious women who saw beyond their prescribed societal roles and just went out and did it." From Nelly Blye, who circumnavigated the globe in 72 days in 1889, to "Gertrude of Arabia", who drew borders, installed a monarch, and helped reorganize and stabilize a wobbly government, MNN "rounded up eight notable female adventurers of the 19th and early 20th centuries who blazed the trail, sometimes literally, for their modern counterparts."