Emily Warren Roebling

Hey there all you Brooklyn hipsters! Did you know that the Brooklyn Bridge is not only useful when one wishes to imply quirkiness (I'm talking to you, Gossip Girl), its completion was also overseen by the first ever woman field engineer?

Emily Warren Roebling was born in New York state in 1843, and became the chief engineer on the Brooklyn Bridge by default when her husband, Washington Roebling (the first chief engineer on the project) became ill. Hey, sometimes it takes a man contracting an exotic and fatal illness (Caisson disease, in this case) in order for a talented woman to get an opportunity to do her thing (sorry dudes, but it's true).