It fits the guidelines by gratifying intellectual curiosity. Your idea of what counts as on topic for HN may be a bit too narrow. Historical material has always been welcome here! What's interesting in this case is not "a woman", but the remarkable Martha Gellhorn.

Of course, it may not gratify your intellectual curiosity specifically, but no post is interesting to everybody. The goal is more to have a front page with a good probability distribution of interestingness over a wide range of smart readers. If you don't like this post, there are 29 others on the front page, and if you run out of interesting stories there, I recommend the 'past' link in the top bar, which will show you the front pages of previous 24 hour periods, going all the way back.