Nazo Dharejo is known as 'Pakistan's toughest woman' after she defended her family's land several times from gangs of attackers. Her life story has now been made into a film called My Pure Land.

Photo credit: ASIF HASSAN, AFP, Getty Images.

Hussain al-Shahristani refused to build an atomic bomb for the former President of Iraq. (Photo credit: William West/AFP/Getty Images.)

Margaret Boemer from the United States was 16 weeks pregnant when she went for a routine scan and realised that something wasn't right. Doctors found a huge tumour on her unborn child. Margaret was facing losing her daughter when she was told that doctors could perform fetal surgery - which would involve delivering the baby, operating, and putting her back in the womb. We hear from Margaret and from Dr Oluyinka Olutoye, the Nigerian doctor who performed the surgery. (Photo: Jeff and Margaret Boemer with their daughter Lynlee Hope and Dr Oluyinka Olutoye. Photo credit: Texas Children's Hospital.)

Sherry Johnson grew up in Florida, one of the 25 US states where a child of any age can be married with their parents' consent. She's 58 now and she told Jo Fidgen what happened to her as a child. In a distressing account, she describes having her first child when she was only 10 and marrying the man who raped her, when she was 11. She's now campaigning against child marriage.

Ayik Chut first met Anyang Reng in a prison camp run by children on the border of what is now South Sudan. Both were child soldiers in the 1980s in Sudan's civil war. The younger of them, Ayik Chut, was just 13 when he took up arms and was harshly punished by Anyang while in prison. Eventually each of the men ended up in Australia where, by chance, they met again.

Image: Lonely Teddy Bear sitting in a dark room

Credit: Getty Images

Dwayne Fields is a Jamaican-born British explorer who became the first black man in more than 100 years to walk to the North Pole. Growing up in London, he was inspired to go to the Arctic after surviving nearly being shot and a knife attack.

Image and credit: Dwayne Fields

Arthur Mitchell is the pioneering African-American ballet dancer who grew up in poverty in New York City, then danced his way onto the most prestigious stages in the world. After the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968, he returned to his roots to found the Dance Theatre of Harlem and train a new generation of black dancers.

Image: Arthur Mitchell at the White House in 2006 with some of his dancers from the Dance Theatre of Harlem

Credit: Ron Sachs-POOL/Getty Images

When Nice Leng'ete was eight years old, she was to be circumcised. Then, according to Maasai tradition, she would be a woman and ready for marriage. But she begged her grandfather to postpone and set about persuading the village elders to drop the practice.

Image: Nice Leng'ete

Credit: Amref Health Africa

British mum Sally Evans had been worried about her teenage son, Thomas, as he was getting involved in petty crime. So when he converted to Islam and cleaned up his act she was relieved. However as she and her other son Micheal recount, they didn't realise he was getting radicalised until it was way too late. We hear how Sally and Micheal coped when they found out Thomas had joined Islamist militant group al-Shabab.

Image: from left to right: Thomas Evans, Sally Evans and Micheal Evans

Credit: Micheal Evans

Pauline Dakin is a Canadian journalist, broadcaster and a professor of journalism. Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, her childhood was marked by many mysterious incidents and unexplained getaways - where her family suddenly had to flee at a moment's notice and she couldn't talk to anyone about what was going on. Pauline tells Jo Fidgen how she managed to uncover her family's extraordinary secret - including a hidden community called the 'weird world'.

Image: Parallel universe

Credit: manjik/Getty Images

Peta Clarke is one of Australia's top animal trainers for films and stage shows. She has worked with creatures of all shapes and sizes, from a goldfish and a chiuhahua to an orca whale. She got into this work after a traumatic experience.

Image and credit: Peta Clarke with a feathered friend