Courage comes in many forms, be it peacefully resistance against an oppressor, bearing pain for a greater cause, or fighting for something good. The following 10 people showed remarkable courage, all for causes they fervently believed in.

These are 10 of the most courageous people in history who may have acted in long gone eras, but their acts of courage stand through to today.

1. Thich Quang Duc’s Self-Immolation

The Vietnam war was one of the first international conflicts in the era of television news, and the images beamed back to the United States helped galvanize the national protests seen against the war. One of the key moments in shifting public opinion was the suicide protest of Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk.

In a square in Saigon he denounced the south Vietnamese government for their persecution of Buddhists, and then sat calmly as his fellow monks doused him with petrol and set him alight. The horror prompted within Vietnam and internationally by this act helped to speed regime change and the end of the war.

2. Odette Sansom survives imprisonment in World War 2

Odette Samson was a British spy working in occupied France during the second world war. She was a radio operator – one of the riskiest intelligence roles, as the Germans were constantly surveying the airwaves for enemy transmissions. Betrayed by a double agent a year later, Sansom was captured and tortured in a Paris jail.

Despite the inhuman treatment she was put through, she did not divulge the identity of any colleagues. She was eventually sentenced to death and sent to a concentration camp, but her execution was never carried out and she survived the war. Rather than seeking vengeance for what she had suffered, she spent the years following her release working for charities which aimed to lessen the pain of war, and was awarded the George Cross for her service.

3. Joan of Arc leads an army for her beliefs

Saint Joan was born into a poor family in the 15th Century in a region of France ravaged by war with England. A religious child, he faith was strengthened by visions of God commanding her to lead the French nation to victory. She gained an audience with the French leader and impressed him with her fervor, and he gave her control of an army. She inspired devotion in her troops and won several important battles before being captured and sold to the English. Later tried and convicted of witchcraft, she refused to confess and was burnt at the stake.

4. Socrates accepts death rather than recant his views

Socrates was a prominent philosopher in ancient Athens, whose criticisms of the rich and powerful gained him some powerful enemies. Arrested and sentenced to death for offending the Gods and corrupting the youth, Socrates was offered the chance to apologize for his crimes and escape death. He refused to do so, and according to myth willingly drank hemlock showing that he accepted the judgment of his government.

5. Galileo Galilei puts science before faith

Italian scientist Galileo was a devout Catholic, but when his scientific discoveries put him at odds with the church he accepted imprisonment rather than deny his views. Galileo’s work provided evidence for the idea that the earth moves around the sun, which was considered heretical at the time. He spend time in jail, and lived the last years of his life under house arrest. He also risked excommunication from the church and eternal damnation (according to the Catholic church at the time).

6. Nelson Mandela’s fight against apartheid

Nelson Mandela was a senior figure in the South African resistance to racial segregation when he was arrested for treason in 1963. He had been an active member of both the political and armed opposition movements, and was initially sentenced to death for plotting to overthrow the government. His trial attracted significant international coverage and condemnation of the South African government.

Mandela’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and despite spending nearly 20 years in jail he went on to be the first black president in South Africa’s history.

7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer standing up to Nazism

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor in Germany who loudly and, despite threats to his personal safety, publicly criticized the Nazi regime. The regime saw him as a threat and he fled the country to seek asylum in the USA. However, after 2 years he returned to his native Germany to continue to promote opposition to the persecution of Jews and other minority groups. He became an important symbol of opposition, and was arrested and executed by the Nazis a month before the end of the Second World War.

8. The Unknown Rebel at the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests

The white-shirted protester facing down a column of Chinese tanks alone has become one of the most iconic images of rebellion and courage. In 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square had attracted thousands of people and the People’s Liberation Army had been sent in to quell the protests.

As the column of tanks rolled in to the square, a lone figure blocked their path. The protester was eventually pulled back into the crowd and his or her identity is still unknown, but the photograph of a single person standing up to power has taken on a life of its own.

9. Rosa Parks Sits Down for Civil Rights

When does sitting on a bus become an act of revolution and great bravery? In pre civil rights era USA it could be exactly that, as buses along with all other public amenities were segregated by race.

Rosa Parks, a black political activist and secretary of her local chapter of the NAACP, effectively triggered the wave of protests that eventually led to desegregation by calmly and politely refusing to give up her seat at the front of a segregated bus. Risking arrest and violence for what was right earns her a place on the list.

10. Emmeline Pankhurst imprisoned for the Suffragette movement

Pankhurst was a militant campaigner for women’s right to vote, who along with many other suffragettes was imprisoned because of her protesting. Her philosophy was that the need to extend voting rights to women was so urgent that breaking the law in order to draw attention to the cause was completely justified. She was imprisoned several times, but saw her goals realized when women were allowed to vote for the first time in 1918.

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New Delhi: Today when Google is celebrating the 93rd birthday of the British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, we bring you some interesting incidents from Rosalind Franklin's life. Jenifer Glynn in her book 'My Sister Rosalind Franklin' describes Rosalind's life, including her education, relations with family and achievements. And the book has helped us in understanding more about Rosalind Franklin. Here are some interesting things to know about her:

1. Some have mentioned that Rosalind Franklin was totally committed to science - with no outside interests - and prepared to give up all ideas of marriage and family, but this was not the case. Glynn tells in her book that she had a great understanding of children and saw plenty of married women who managed to combine careers and families. "She would have been more happy to do the same herself but never found anyone she wanted to marry," mentions Glynn in her book.

2. She loved travelling, and had a great love for mountains.

3. She was waspish, and never used to make friends easily. But when she did, she was outgoing and loyal, tells Glynn in her book .

4. There are a host of websites for Rosalind Franklin on the Internet. Glynn clearly states in her book that some of these website are highly inaccurate, like the those which claim Rosalind Franklin was the only girl in a family of four, and my father was opposed to her going to university or studying science.

5. To know about Rosalind Franklin, the best website to visit is the site produced by the National Library of Medicine, USA, for their 'Profiles in Science collection'. We got to know about this while going through Glynn's 'My Sister Rosalind Franklin'.

6. Rosalind had a good ear for languages, learning some German, as scientists did in those days, because important scientific papers in those days we written in German.

7. But in case of Rosalind Franklin, an ear for music was a different matter, and here she admitted defeat. Poor Gustav Holst, the school music director, asked our mother to come to see him, hoping Rosalind might have some problems with her hearing or her tonsils. Later, Rosalind tried to analyse her feeling about music.

8. Rosalind Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA which in turn led to the discovery of the DNA double helix.

9. She was never a feminist. She had always thought of herself simply as a scientist whose achievements should be judged on their own terms, not as a woman scientist striking a blow for the rights of women.

10. She was from an affluent British Jewish family. Rosalind Franklin died in 1958 of ovarian cancer. She was 37.

Cross pendants to depict an individual's religious background and at the same time, they are the perfect way to showcase personality and style. As such, the next time you are weighing your options about getting a present for a loved one, why not consider looking for cross pendants for women? These are availed in different designs, shapes and sizes and as such, it is easy to find that matches up to the tastes and preference of the person you are buying them for. While this might be the case, there are several factors that you need to look into before making your purchase.

Another important thing that you have to consider when buying cross pendants for women is your budget. In this case, it is important to note that you budget is what determines the design and size of the pendant you buy. While gold and diamond pendants sell more and are preferred by most women, it is advisable to ensure that you pick something that falls within your budget. This is attributed to the fact that these are known to be slightly more expensive compared to others such as silver cross pendant for women.

The cross pendant is easily found in yellow gold, white gold, titanium, platinum, stainless steel, and sterling silver. White metal cross and chains look wonderful worn with blue jeans or kakis, or any other casual wardrobe. That said don't underestimate the power of white gold or other white metals for a more formal wardrobe. White gold is very nice on a cool skin tone, whereas yellow gold is much nicer on warm skin tones.

Make no mistake: Warner Bros has pulled off a huge coup with its announcement at this weekend's Comic-Con that the next Man of Steel movie will feature Superman battling Batman. Even with rival studio Marvel using San Diego's annual fanboy Mecca to reveal the title (and antagonist) of the next Avengers film, it is the news that Kal-El and the caped crusader will be squaring off that has caught the imagination of public and media alike. That's some feat when you consider that Marvel's comic book ensemble was by far the biggest film of 2012 at the global box office, while Man of Steel hasn't yet passed the haul taken by the fourth Spider-Man movie and got a lukewarm thumbs up from critics.

Director Zack Snyder and screenwriter David S Goyer now face the daunting task of transforming what on paper sounds like a dream superhero smackdown into a movie that not only continues telling the story of the new Superman but delivers a fresh Batman capable of spinning off into his own adventures AND joining Warner's promised Justice League movie (which will unite the pair with Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern).

Any Superman v Batman story must be handled extremely carefully, not least because of the disparity between the two superheroes' abilities. The Dark Knight might be the more popular cinematic superhero in these more cynical times, but Bruce Wayne cannot hold a candle to the last son of Krypton when it comes to actual superpowers. While Batman has all the wealth of Wayne's billions to help him fight crime, Superman is a godlike creature from another planet whose physical stature is exaggerated a thousand times in Earth's environment. He can fly, is virtually invulnerable, has powerful heat vision and can move faster than sound. A straight fight between the pair would be like a face-off between and elephant and a gnat.

In the comic books where the two characters have battled it out, writers have often imagined a scenario where Wayne used his fortune to get hold of some Kryptonite, Superman's only real weakness. In perhaps the pair's most famous battle, in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, Superman even gets blown up with a nuclear weapon – yet still somehow comes out just about on top.

Snyder has hinted that he will use the antipathy between the pair in Miller's comic as the basis for his new film. The potential problem here is that the Batman of The Dark Knight Returns veers into antihero territory in a way that Christopher Nolan's big screen iteration never did. In his 1986 limited series, Miller brilliantly contrasts a shallow and self-centred, increasingly wrinkly and jaded caped crusader with a Kal-El who remains youthful, noble and good-hearted – yet as boring as dry toast for dinner. Snyder and his team will need to tread a more considered path, giving the spat between the pair enough spiky venom to make for fun viewing without belittling either. Batman, in particular, needs to maintain the vital humanity with which Nolan imbued Christian Bale's version if audiences are to care about his future battles to save Gotham. Moreover, these two are going to have to kiss and make up if Warner's plan for a Justice League movie in 2017 is to come to fruition.

Nevertheless, the studio's decision to start its drive towards an Avengers-like ensemble superhero movie by introducing a new Batman into the Man of Steel universe makes a lot of sense. The other members of the Justice League remain superpowered twinkles in the studio's eye (bar The Green Lantern, who's more of an unattractive snot-like stain after the debacle of Martin Campbell's 2011 non-event). Warner needs at least one film to begin introducing its lineup of masked crime fighters – and doing it this way avoids any accusation that the studio has simply purloined Marvel's hugely successful blueprint (which involved giving each hero his own movie before teaming them up in The Avengers).

Might we also hear rumblings of other members of the team? There are rumours of a Flash film sometime before Justice League arrives, and Superman is in the perfect position to investigate the appearance of other super-powered types via his alter ego Clark Kent's new position as a Daily Planet reporter. Imagine if Wonder Woman et al began popping up on his journalistic radar one by one …

It looks like Nolan will have very little involvement in Man of Steel 2, which is probably a good thing bearing in mind his attachment to the most recent screen incarnation of Batman. But Warner will be throwing everything else in its coffers at the new movie. This weekend's Comic-Con proved that superhero flicks are here to stay, and yet the stakes rise all the time. Superman v Batman has the chance to be the genre's most successful film yet, and might even challenge the likes of Avatar for box office "pow" if Snyder gets it right. In many ways it is too big to fail. In years to come we could be talking about this film as the moment the genre went truly stratospheric – or faced its very own Kryptonite.