149 Fun Facts About Womens History

Which amendment, ratified in 1920, gave American women the vote?

The 19th Amendment. Tennessee became the decisive 36th state on 18 August 1920 when Harry Burn, its youngest legislator, voted yes after a letter from his mother urged him to.

Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?

Marie Curie shared the 1903 physics prize only after her husband Pierre objected: the nomination had named just him and Henri Becquerel until a Swedish mathematician tipped him off.

Who was the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?

Margaret Thatcher took office in 1979. Three years earlier the Soviet army paper Red Star had dubbed her the 'Iron Lady' as a jibe, and within days she was using the name of herself.

Which American poet and author wrote the acclaimed autobiography 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'?

Maya Angelou began the book while grieving Martin Luther King's assassination, urged on by her friend James Baldwin; its title comes from Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem 'Sympathy'.

Who co-founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889, one of America's first settlement houses?

Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr modelled Hull House on London's Toynbee Hall, which they had visited, and opened it among Chicago's immigrant poor; Addams later shared the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize.

Who was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon with a numbered entry?

Kathrine Switzer ran the 1967 Boston Marathon as registered entrant number 261; official Jock Semple tried to pull her off the course, but she finished.

Which American aviation pioneer was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean?

Amelia Earhart set out for Paris in May 1932, but icy weather and mechanical trouble forced her down in a pasture near Derry, Northern Ireland, after about 15 hours in the air.

Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat in 1955 sparked a year-long boycott in which Alabama city?

Montgomery. Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955, and Black residents stayed off the city's buses for 381 days, until the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional.

Which author wrote 'Frankenstein', often considered one of the earliest works of science fiction?

Mary Shelley began it at 18, in the summer of 1816 by Lake Geneva, when Lord Byron challenged his guests to each write a ghost story; it was published anonymously in 1818.

Who was the last pharaoh of Egypt, famous for her ties to Julius Caesar and Mark Antony?

Cleopatra VII was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, renowned for her political acumen and her alliances with Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

Who is considered the first computer programmer for her work on Babbage's Analytical Engine?

Ada Lovelace saw what Babbage himself had not: a machine that works on numbers could handle any symbols, even compose music. Her 1843 notes hold what is often called the first published program.

Who in 1988 became the first woman elected to head the government of a Muslim-majority country?

Benazir Bhutto won the election held after the military ruler Zia-ul-Haq died in a 1988 plane crash; his regime had overthrown and hanged her father, the former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Which Mexican painter is known for self-portraits steeped in Mexico's nature and artifacts?

Frida Kahlo taught herself to paint while bedridden after a bus crash at 18, with a mirror set above her easel so that she could be her own model.

Which American nurse founded the American Red Cross in 1881, after her Civil War work?

Clara Barton learned of the Geneva-based Red Cross, founded in 1863, while in Europe, and launched the American branch on May 21, 1881.

Who was the first American woman in space?

Sally Ride flew on Challenger in June 1983 and worked the shuttle's robotic arm to release a satellite and catch it again, the first time a crew had done so.

Which author won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel 'The Color Purple'?

Alice Walker was the first Black woman to win the fiction Pulitzer, in 1983; two years later Steven Spielberg filmed the novel, giving Whoopi Goldberg her breakthrough role and an Oscar nomination.

Who in 1849 became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, graduating from Geneva Medical College?

Elizabeth Blackwell got in almost by accident: Geneva's faculty put her application to the all-male students, who voted yes as a joke. She graduated in January 1849.

Who was the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives?

Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker in 2007, lost the gavel when Republicans took the House four years later, and won it back in 2019.

Which Nobel laureate survived a 2012 Taliban shooting after campaigning for girls' education?

Malala Yousafzai had blogged for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban from the age of 11; shot on her way home from school at 15, she shared the Nobel Peace Prize two years later.

Which singer had hits in 1967 with 'Respect' and '(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman'?

Aretha Franklin, the 'Queen of Soul'. 'Respect' was written and first recorded by Otis Redding; her 1967 remake, with its spelled-out chorus, became an anthem and her signature song.

Which scientist's King's College London lab produced Photo 51, the X-ray image key to the DNA double helix?

Rosalind Franklin and her student Raymond Gosling produced Photo 51 in May 1952, and Maurice Wilkins later showed it to James Watson; she died in 1958, four years before Watson, Francis Crick and Wilkins shared a Nobel Prize.

Which NASA mathematician did John Glenn insist re-check the computer's numbers before his 1962 flight?

Katherine Johnson checked the new machine's orbital figures by hand; Glenn said that if she called them good, he was ready to go. She went on to work out rendezvous paths for the Apollo Moon landings.

Which Hollywood star co-invented a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system with George Antheil in WWII?

Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil patented their frequency-hopping system in 1942; the idea underlies spread-spectrum communications, and both were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.

Which US Navy rear admiral devised machine-independent programming languages, leading to COBOL?

Grace Hopper built one of the first compilers, A-0, in 1952. Told that programs written in words would never work, she produced FLOW-MATIC, the English-like language that helped shape COBOL.

Who in 1975 became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest?

Junko Tabei of Japan reached the summit on 16 May 1975, twelve days after surviving an avalanche at Camp II; in 1992 she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits.

The female pharaoh Hatshepsut sent a celebrated trading expedition to which land?

Hatshepsut's expedition to Punt, recorded in reliefs at Deir el-Bahari, brought back living myrrh trees that were planted in front of her mortuary temple.

Elizabeth I was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and which of his wives?

Anne Boleyn was beheaded when her daughter was two, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate; she still came to the throne in 1558 and reigned for 44 years as the last Tudor monarch.

Catherine the Great was born Princess Sophie in Stettin, then part of which kingdom?

Prussia. Sophie was born in 1729 in Stettin, now Szczecin in Poland; married to the heir to the Russian throne, she seized it from her husband Peter III in a coup in 1762.

Wu Zetian, China's only female emperor, replaced which dynasty with her own in 690?

The Tang. Wu had been an emperor's consort and then regent for her sons before she took the throne in 690 and renamed the state Zhou; she was forced out in 705 and the Tang restored.

Queen Victoria's nine children married into royal houses across the continent, earning her which nickname?

Grandmother of Europe: her grandchildren included Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II and Britain's George V, first cousins whose countries fought each other in the First World War.

What was the first name of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha cousin Queen Victoria married in 1840?

Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on 10 February 1840; the marriage produced nine children, and she wore mourning black for the rest of her life after his death in 1861.

Which formerly enslaved abolitionist gave the 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech at an 1851 Ohio convention?

Sojourner Truth spoke in Akron on 29 May 1851. The famous refrain comes from a version Frances Gage published 12 years later; the report printed weeks after the speech does not contain it.

Which queen of the Iceni led a revolt against Roman rule in Britain around AD 60, burning Londinium?

Boudica rose after, by Tacitus's account, Roman officials flogged her and assaulted her daughters; her rebels also destroyed Camulodunum and Verulamium before the governor Suetonius Paulinus crushed them.

In 1972 Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Project at which organization?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project in 1972 and went on to argue six gender-discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, winning five.

Which president nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993?

Bill Clinton's nominee was confirmed 96 to 3 in August 1993. On the Court, Ginsburg's friendship with the conservative Antonin Scalia, built on a shared love of opera, inspired a comic opera about the pair.

Which president nominated Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981?

Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor in July 1981, keeping a campaign pledge to name a woman to the Court; the Senate confirmed her 99-0 and she served until January 2006.

In the 1973 "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match, Billie Jean King defeated which former champion?

Bobby Riggs, 55, had beaten the top-ranked Margaret Court that May in the 'Mother's Day Massacre'; King took up his challenge and won in straight sets before a vast television audience.

Which American sprinter, who wore a leg brace as a child after polio, won three gold medals at the 1960 Rome Olympics?

Wilma Rudolph refused to attend the segregated homecoming planned for her in Clarksville, Tennessee, so the parade in her honour became the first integrated event in the town's history.

In which state did Georgia O'Keeffe make her permanent home in 1949, after two decades of summer visits?

New Mexico. O'Keeffe moved there for good three years after her husband Alfred Stieglitz died; when her eyesight failed in the 1970s she kept working with assistants, and she died in Santa Fe at 98.

Which Austen novel opens 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune...'?

'Pride and Prejudice' opens with that line; Austen published it in January 1813 anonymously, credited only as 'the author of Sense and Sensibility'.

Toni Morrison won the 1988 Pulitzer for which novel, loosely based on the life of Margaret Garner?

Beloved draws on Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in Kentucky in 1856 and killed her young daughter rather than see her taken back; Morrison found the story in an old newspaper report.

Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman to earn a pilot's license, had to train in which country to get it?

Bessie Coleman earned her license in France on 15 June 1921 from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale after no American school would train her; she had studied French at a Berlitz school in Chicago.

Madam C. J. Walker, America's first self-made female millionaire per Guinness, built her fortune selling what?

Hair care products. Sarah Breedlove spent more than a decade as a washerwoman before a scalp ailment that was costing her her hair set her experimenting; she sold the results as Madam C. J. Walker.

Which Kenyan founder of the tree-planting Green Belt Movement became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize?

Wangari Maathai started the movement in 1977 by encouraging rural women to plant trees; it went on to plant more than 30 million across Africa and won her the prize in 2004.

Which American-born entertainer spied for the Resistance during the Second World War and was honoured in the Panthéon in 2021?

Josephine Baker used her fame as cover: travelling as a performer, she carried secret intelligence across borders, written in invisible ink on her sheet music.

Before becoming vice president in 2021, Kamala Harris served as a senator from which state?

California, where Harris had been San Francisco's district attorney and the state's attorney general. In 2024 she became the Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden withdrew, and lost to Donald Trump.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the world's first woman prime minister, led which country?

Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon. Bandaranaike entered politics after her husband, the prime minister, was assassinated in 1959, and won the 1960 election; her third term began in 1994, when her daughter became president.

Which physicist first explained nuclear fission with Otto Frisch, yet missed the 1944 Nobel Prize?

Lise Meitner, who had fled Nazi Germany in 1938, worked out the physics that winter with her nephew Otto Frisch. The prize went to Otto Hahn alone, but element 109, meitnerium, bears her name.

Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman in space in 1992 aboard which shuttle, built to replace Challenger?

Endeavour, then NASA's newest orbiter, on its second flight. Jemison, a doctor who had served with the Peace Corps in West Africa, later became the first real astronaut to appear in Star Trek.

In which month is Women's History Month celebrated in the United States?

It lines up with International Women's Day on 8 March; Canada instead marks it in October.

Where was the week-long 1978 celebration held that grew into America's Women's History Month?

A local school district built the week around 8 March; historians at a Sarah Lawrence conference the next year took the idea national.

Which US president proclaimed the first National Women's History Week in 1980?

Jimmy Carter's message said women's contributions too often went unnoticed, and he used it to urge ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which in the end fell three states short.

In which year did Congress first designate the whole of March as Women's History Month?

Congress passed Public Law 100-9 in March 1987, designating the whole month as Women's History Month; fourteen states had already declared a month by 1986.

Which senator and congresswoman co-sponsored the first Women's History Week resolution in 1981?

Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, and Representative Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, co-sponsored the 1981 joint resolution for National Women's History Week, making it bipartisan from the start.

Which labor leader co-founded the union that became the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez and coined 'Sí, se puede'?

Dolores Huerta. Barack Obama, whose 'Yes, we can' echoed her slogan, admitted when he gave her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 that he had stolen it.

Which historian founded the first master's programme in women's history, at Sarah Lawrence College?

Gerda Lerner, jailed for six weeks by the Nazis as a teenager in Vienna, reached New York in 1939; in 1963 she taught what is considered the first college course in women's history.

Canada's 1929 Persons Case, won by five women known as the Famous Five, opened which body to women?

The Senate. Canada's Supreme Court had ruled women were not 'qualified persons'; the Privy Council in London reversed it on 18 October 1929, which is why Canada keeps Women's History Month in October.

Who were the 'Famous Five' behind Canada's Persons Case?

Henrietta Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Emily Murphy and Irene Parlby took the fight all the way to London.

The earliest 'Woman's Day' was organised in New York City in 1909 by which political party?

The Socialist Party of America held the first Woman's Day in New York on 28 February 1909 at Theresa Malkiel's suggestion; in 1910 Clara Zetkin proposed an international day in Copenhagen.

Women textile workers marching on International Women's Day in 1917 touched off the February Revolution in which city?

Women textile workers in Petrograd marched for 'Bread and Peace' on 23 February in Russia's old calendar; the strikes spread across the city, and a week later Nicholas II abdicated.

Which body began marking International Women's Day during its International Women's Year?

The United Nations. The day had begun with labour movements in America and Europe before the First World War; the UN adopted it in 1975 and two years later invited every member state to observe it.

Where was the first women's rights convention held in July 1848?

Seneca Falls, New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott had met in London in 1840, where an anti-slavery convention would not seat women; eight years later they called their own.

For what was Susan B. Anthony arrested in Rochester in 1872?

Susan B. Anthony was arrested for voting illegally in the 1872 presidential election in Rochester; tried in 1873, she was fined $100 and never paid. Her portrait went on the 1979 dollar coin.

Harriet Tubman's rescues on the Underground Railroad earned her the nickname of which biblical figure?

Moses. Tubman escaped slavery in 1849, then went back to Maryland about 13 times to lead some 70 people north, and said she never lost a passenger.

Who in 1968 became the first Black woman elected to the US Congress?

Shirley Chisholm won a Brooklyn seat in 1968. Assigned to the Agriculture Committee, of little use to her city district, she protested and was moved to Veterans' Affairs.

Who was the first woman in space, flying solo aboard Vostok 6 in 1963?

Valentina Tereshkova, a textile worker, was picked for her hobby: Vostok pilots had to eject and parachute to the ground, and she was a keen skydiver. She circled Earth 48 times in under three days.

Which journalist's 1890s lynching investigations earned a posthumous Pulitzer citation in 2020?

Ida B. Wells began her crusade after a friend and two of his colleagues were lynched in Memphis in 1892; a mob wrecked her newspaper office and she carried on from the North, later helping to found the NAACP.

Which country was the first self-governing nation to grant women the right to vote in national elections?

New Zealand's Electoral Act of September 1893 followed a petition bearing nearly 32,000 signatures, yet women could not stand for Parliament there until 1919.

Who in 2014 became the first woman to win the Fields Medal in mathematics?

Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian-born Stanford professor, worked by doodling on huge sheets of paper, which her small daughter called painting; she died of cancer in 2017, aged 40.

Which author wrote the influential feminist work 'A Room of One's Own'?

Virginia Woolf argued in 1929 that a woman needs money and a room of her own to write; she invents Judith, a sister as gifted as Shakespeare, who is denied every chance he had.

Women first competed at the modern Olympics in 1900, in which host city?

Paris. The first modern Games, four years earlier, had been for men only; in 1900 women played croquet and sailed, and Britain's Charlotte Cooper won the tennis to become the first individual female champion.

Who founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, forerunner of Planned Parenthood?

Margaret Sanger had opened America's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916, and served 30 days in jail for it. Her league became part of Planned Parenthood in 1942.

Which contralto gave a 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert after the DAR barred her from Constitution Hall?

Marian Anderson sang to about 75,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial on 9 April 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused her Constitution Hall; Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR in protest.

Which campaigner founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903 under the motto 'deeds, not words'?

Emmeline Pankhurst's union smashed windows and went on hunger strike in prison; she died in June 1928, a few weeks before British women won the vote on the same terms as men.

Which 1792 Wollstonecraft work argued women seem inferior only for lack of education?

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was her answer to Talleyrand, whose plan for French schools left girls with only a domestic education; she dedicated the book to him and asked him to think again.

Which French playwright wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen?

Olympe de Gouges wrote it in 1791 as a reply to the Declaration of the Rights of Man; she sided with the Girondins, and after their fall she was arrested and guillotined in November 1793.

Who was the first woman to serve in a US presidential cabinet, as Secretary of Labor from 1933?

Frances Perkins had watched the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911, which turned her to workplace safety; as Secretary of Labor until 1945 she helped draft the Social Security Act.

Journalist Nellie Bly circled the globe in 72 days, emulating which fictional character?

Phileas Fogg. Bly set out in November 1889 to beat his 80 days from Jules Verne's novel, called on Verne himself along the way, and was home in 72 days.

Which congresswoman voted against US entry into both world wars?

Jeannette Rankin, the first woman in Congress, won her House seat in 1916, before women could vote nationwide. She opposed entering the First World War, and in 1941 hers was the only vote in Congress against war with Japan.

Who in 1966 became India's first female prime minister?

Indira Gandhi won the Congress party's leadership vote against Morarji Desai after Lal Bahadur Shastri's sudden death, and went on to serve two separate stints as prime minister.

Which 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe novel sold some 300,000 copies in America in its first year?

Uncle Tom's Cabin, written in anger at the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, was taken up eagerly by abolitionists in the North and furiously denounced in the South.

Rachel Carson's 1962 book that helped launch the environmental movement was titled what?

'Silent Spring' (1962) attacked the misuse of pesticides and helped bring about the 1972 US ban on DDT; Carson, a marine biologist, was already a bestselling author for her sea trilogy.

Which queen of Castile, alongside Ferdinand of Aragon, financed Columbus's 1492 voyage?

Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon financed Columbus's voyage in 1492, the year their forces took Granada, completing the Reconquista, and the Alhambra Decree expelled Spain's Jews.

Liliʻuokalani, deposed in an 1893 coup, was the last sovereign monarch of which kingdom?

Liliʻuokalani reigned over the Kingdom of Hawaii from 1891 until the 1893 overthrow led by American businessmen; its only queen regnant, she composed 'Aloha ʻOe'.

In 1926 Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across which body of water?

Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel to the Kent coast on 6 August 1926 in about fourteen and a half hours, nearly two hours faster than the men's record; New York gave her a ticker-tape parade.

Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the UN commission that drafted which 1948 document?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed the General Assembly on 10 December 1948 by 48 votes to none; eight countries abstained, but not one voted against the text her commission had drafted.

Edith Wharton was the first woman to win the Fiction Pulitzer, in 1921, for which novel?

The Age of Innocence is an ironic portrait of old New York society, yet it won a prize then meant for the novel best presenting 'the wholesome atmosphere of American life'; Martin Scorsese filmed it in 1993.

Betty Friedan co-founded and became the first president of which group in 1966?

Betty Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women in 1966 and led it until 1970; her 1963 book 'The Feminine Mystique' is often credited with sparking second-wave feminism.

Which French existentialist wrote the 1949 feminist landmark 'The Second Sex'?

Simone de Beauvoir argued in 'The Second Sex' that one is not born a woman but becomes one; the Vatican put the book on its Index of prohibited books.

Florence Nightingale became 'The Lady with the Lamp' nursing the wounded of which war?

Florence Nightingale ran the barracks hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War (1853-56), across the Bosporus from Constantinople, and later pioneered statistical diagrams to argue for hospital reform.

Six-year-old Ruby Bridges desegregated William Frantz Elementary in 1960 in which city?

Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans on 14 November 1960; federal marshals escorted her past protesters daily, a scene Norman Rockwell painted in 1964 as 'The Problem We All Live With'.

Which chemist won the 1964 Nobel Prize for mapping penicillin and vitamin B12 by X-ray crystallography?

Dorothy Hodgkin solved penicillin in the 1940s and vitamin B12 in 1956, and in 1969 finally cracked insulin, more than thirty years after her first X-ray photograph of the crystal.

Which astronomical object did doctoral student Jocelyn Bell Burnell discover in 1967?

Jocelyn Bell Burnell spotted the first pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star, in Cambridge radio-telescope data in 1967; her supervisor Antony Hewish shared the 1974 physics Nobel while she was left out.

Marie Tharp's maps of the ocean floor revealed a rift valley along which feature, bolstering plate tectonics?

Marie Tharp, working with Bruce Heezen from echo-sounder data, mapped the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and in 1952 spotted a rift valley running down its centre, which Heezen at first dismissed as 'girl talk'.

In which city was Joan of Arc put on trial for heresy in 1431?

Captured by Burgundians and sold to the English, Joan was tried at Rouen, the English headquarters in Normandy, and burned at the stake there on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen.

Jane Goodall began studying chimpanzees in 1960 at Gombe Stream, in which modern country?

Gombe Stream lies in Tanzania on Lake Tanganyika; Louis Leakey sent Jane Goodall there in 1960, where her sightings of chimps stripping twigs to fish for termites overturned the idea that only humans make tools.

Which physicist ran the 1956 cobalt-60 experiment that overturned the law of parity?

Chien-Shiung Wu ran the test with a National Bureau of Standards team, proving Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang right that parity is not conserved in beta decay; the two men won the 1957 Nobel Prize without her.

Which medieval writer published 'The Book of the City of Ladies' in 1405?

Christine de Pizan, born in Venice and raised at the Paris court, wrote 'The Book of the City of Ladies' in 1405; widowed at 25, she supported her children by her pen, one of Europe's first professional women authors.

Who in 1980 became the world's first woman directly elected as a head of state?

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a theatre director and divorced single mother, narrowly beat three men in Iceland's 1980 election, five years after 90% of the country's women had gone on strike for a day.

Which American holiday did founder Anna Jarvis later try to have rescinded, upset by its growing commercialization?

Mother's Day was first observed in 1908 at a Methodist church in Grafton, where Jarvis held a memorial for her own mother. The white carnation she picked as its emblem was soon being sold for profit.

Schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor, on her 63rd birthday, became the first person to survive a plunge over what?

Niagara Falls was her plan to pay for old age: she rode a padded oak-and-iron barrel that had been tested two days earlier with a cat. Friends pumped in air with a bicycle pump before she went over.

Juliette Gordon Low held a 1912 troop meeting in Savannah, Georgia, that launched which American youth organization?

Girl Scouts began as an American branch of Britain's Girl Guides, a year after Low met Scouting founder Robert Baden-Powell. The famous cookie sales started in 1917.

The Susan B. Anthony dollar, first struck in 1979, flopped partly because Americans confused it with which coin?

The quarter is only about two millimeters narrower and has the same copper-nickel cladding, so the two were easily mixed up. Campaigners had demanded a real woman on the coin instead of an allegorical figure.

Which World War II cultural icon represents the American women who took jobs in factories and shipyards?

Rosie the Riveter got her name from a 1942 song by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, which portrayed her as a tireless assembly line worker and became a national hit.

Which First Lady is credited with saving George Washington's portrait before British troops burned the White House?

Dolley Madison ordered Paul Jennings, a man she enslaved, to save the Gilbert Stuart painting as the staff fled in 1814. His own memoir says two other men actually took it off the wall.

DuPont chemist Stephanie Kwolek invented which fiber, stronger than steel by weight and used in bulletproof vests?

Kevlar came from a cloudy solution of the kind chemists usually threw away. Kwolek had to persuade a technician to spin it, because he feared it would clog his machine.

Cells taken from which Baltimore cancer patient, without her knowledge, became the first immortal human cell line?

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, yet her HeLa cells still reproduce in labs around the world. Her family did not learn the cell line existed for more than two decades.

Which territory, now nicknamed the Equality State, became the first in the United States to grant women suffrage?

Wyoming's all-male legislature also let women hold office in 1869, and in 1890 it joined the Union as the first state where women could cast ballots. Its motto is Equal Rights.

Which 14-year-old gymnast earned the first perfect 10 in Olympic history at the 1976 Montreal Games?

Nadia Comăneci's score flashed up as 1.00 because the scoreboard had not been programmed to show a 10. She earned six more perfect scores at those Games and won three golds.

Which teenager carried her infant son on a cradleboard while interpreting for the Lewis and Clark Expedition?

Sacagawea gave birth two months before the explorers left their winter fort. William Clark noted that a woman travelling with the men reassured the tribes they met that the strangers came in peace.

Which partially blind 20-year-old became Helen Keller's teacher in 1887, spelling words into her hand?

Anne Sullivan began with d-o-l-l, for the doll she had brought as a present, and stayed with Keller for nearly 50 years. A childhood eye infection had left her own sight badly damaged.

Which author based the 1868 novel Little Women loosely on her own childhood with three sisters?

Louisa May Alcott first won notice with Hospital Sketches, drawn from her service as a Civil War nurse. Her family was so short of money that Ralph Waldo Emerson paid their rent.

Which 1972 law bans sex discrimination in federally funded schools and is best known for reshaping school sports?

Title IX made no mention of sports in its original text. It was later renamed for Representative Patsy Mink, who had defended it against attempts to weaken it.

Which 1992 film starring Geena Davis fictionalized a women's professional baseball circuit of the 1940s?

A League of Their Own drew on a circuit founded by chewing gum mogul Philip Wrigley, whose first tryouts were held at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Which former paddle tennis champion from Harlem became the first Black player to win a Grand Slam title?

Althea Gibson took up the game after neighbors collected money for her lessons, though at first she thought it a sport for weak people. She went on to win 11 Grand Slam titles.

Which Air Force instructor and test pilot became the first woman to pilot and later command a Space Shuttle?

Eileen Collins commanded the 1999 mission that launched the Chandra X-ray Observatory. She also led NASA's return to flight in 2005 after the Columbia disaster.

Which filmmaker beat her ex-husband James Cameron to become the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar?

Kathryn Bigelow won for the Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker, while Cameron was nominated for Avatar. She also became the first woman to take the Directors Guild's top film award.

Which actress became the first African American to win an Oscar, for playing Mammy in Gone with the Wind?

Hattie McDaniel collected the award after sitting at a segregated table at the side of the room. Her wish to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery was later refused because it, too, was segregated.

Which sitcom star became the first woman to run a major television studio, which went on to produce Star Trek?

Lucille Ball took charge of Desilu Productions in 1962. She and Desi Arnaz had earlier taken a pay cut to own their show's reruns, which CBS gave up because programs were then expected to air once.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in which state, returning there after her 1849 escape to rescue her family?

Maryland's Eastern Shore, where she grew up, had a Black population that was already half free. Tubman herself fled to Philadelphia before turning back to lead others out.

Rosa Parks was elected secretary of the Montgomery chapter of which civil rights organization in 1943?

The NAACP post was seen as a woman's job, and Parks said she was too timid to refuse it. She used it to investigate cases of racial and sexual violence, including the assault of Recy Taylor.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote which newspaper column six days a week for almost 27 years?

My Day made her the first First Lady to write a daily newspaper column. She started it partly to earn more income, then gave much of the money away to good causes.

Civil War surgeon Mary Edwards Walker became the first woman to receive which American military decoration?

The Medal of Honor recognized her for treating the wounded across enemy lines, which got her taken prisoner. Her name was struck from the roll in 1917 with 900 others, then restored in 1977.

Deborah Sampson disguised herself as a man named Robert Shurtleff to serve as a soldier in which war?

Revolutionary War service left her with a leg wound that never fully healed. Paul Revere later wrote to officials on her behalf, helping her win a military pension.

Which trick shooter joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1885 and out-earned everyone in the troupe but its owner?

Annie Oakley got her start by beating travelling marksman Frank Butler in a pigeon-shooting match, costing him a $100 bet. She later married him.

Emma Lazarus wrote the 1883 sonnet The New Colossus to help raise money for which American landmark?

The Statue of Liberty opened in 1886 with the poem already forgotten. A friend of Lazarus later campaigned to have it cast on a bronze plaque, which went up inside the pedestal in 1903.

The view from Pikes Peak inspired professor Katharine Lee Bates to write the words of which patriotic song?

America the Beautiful began as a poem that Bates first titled Pikes Peak. It was only paired with Samuel Ward's hymn tune under its familiar name in 1910.

Wilma Mankiller was the first woman elected Principal Chief of which Oklahoma-based tribal nation?

Cherokee Nation voters first chose her as deputy chief in 1983, and she stepped up when her boss left for a federal post. She had come to activism through the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz.

Pocahontas married which Jamestown tobacco planter in 1614, later sailing with him to London?

John Rolfe wed her after she had been held captive by the colonists and baptized as Rebecca. In London she was presented to high society to drum up investment in the colony.

Which enslaved Boston poet, named after the slave ship that carried her, published a book of verse in London?

Phillis Wheatley is considered the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. George Washington wrote to praise her talent after she sent him a poem written about him.

Which poet from Amherst, Massachusetts, saw only 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems published during her lifetime?

Emily Dickinson's poems first appeared as a selection in 1890, four years after her death. Her editors heavily altered them to fit the poetic conventions of the day.

Muckraking journalist Ida Tarbell's 1904 book helped bring about the breakup of which giant monopoly?

Standard Oil's dissolution was only part of her impact, since the book also helped usher in the Federal Trade Commission. Tarbell grew up in Pennsylvania during the oil boom, the daughter of an oilman.

Which daughter of missionaries, raised in China, became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature?

Pearl S. Buck won in 1938, after The Good Earth had been America's best-selling novel two years running. A missionary herself for years, she came to doubt the need for foreign missions.

Which Harlem Renaissance writer, also a trained anthropologist, wrote the 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Zora Neale Hurston studied under anthropologist Franz Boas and collected African-American folklore in Florida. She set many of her stories in Eatonville, the town where she grew up.

Which fossil hunter from Lyme Regis found the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton at age twelve?

Mary Anning also unearthed the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons. As a woman she was still barred from joining the Geological Society of London.

Anne Frank kept her diary while hiding with her family in a secret annex behind a bookcase in which city?

Amsterdam became home when the Franks left Germany in 1934. Her father Otto, the family's only survivor, returned after the war to find that his secretaries had saved the diary.

Which 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her Montgomery bus seat nine months before Rosa Parks?

Claudette Colvin went on to be one of four plaintiffs in the federal case that struck down Alabama's bus segregation laws. Campaigners had dropped her own case because she was unmarried and pregnant.

Lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu wrote which 11th-century work, widely considered one of the world's first novels?

The Tale of Genji follows courtiers of Japan's Heian era and may have been delivered chapter by chapter to aristocratic women. Its author's personal name is unknown, since Murasaki Shikibu is a descriptive name.

Angela Merkel, Germany's first female chancellor, earned a doctorate in which field before entering politics?

Quantum chemistry kept her busy as a research scientist in East Germany until the revolutions of 1989 drew her into politics. Her younger brother became a physicist.

Which New York congresswoman became the first woman on a major-party ticket as Walter Mondale's 1984 running mate?

Geraldine Ferraro was a former public school teacher who became a prosecutor, heading a Queens bureau that handled sex crimes and child abuse. The ticket was defeated in a landslide.

Which Prague-born diplomat, who arrived in America at age eleven, became the first female Secretary of State?

Madeleine Albright wrote her doctoral thesis on the Prague Spring. Only in 1997, the year she took office, did she say her parents had never told her of the family's Jewish ancestry.

Which former federal public defender became the first Black woman to serve on the US Supreme Court in 2022?

Ketanji Brown Jackson took the seat of Justice Stephen Breyer, the same justice she had clerked for two decades earlier. No previous member of the court had been a federal public defender.

Which talk show host, whose program aired from Chicago for 25 years, was once the world's only Black billionaire?

Oprah Winfrey started out as the youngest news anchor at a Nashville station. She later took a last-place Chicago morning show to the top of the local ratings within months.

Which Today show veteran became the first woman to co-anchor an American network evening news program in 1976?

Barbara Walters shared the ABC desk with Harry Reasoner, 15 years after joining Today as a writer who was handed lighter assignments and the weather.

After winning two track and field golds at the 1932 Olympics, Babe Didrikson Zaharias won 10 majors in which sport?

Golf also saw her take on the men, making the cut in PGA Tour events in 1945. Five years later she was a founding member of the women's professional tour.

Which state's legislature sealed the 19th Amendment when its youngest member broke a tie, swayed by a letter from home?

Tennessee's Harry Burn wore a red rose, the badge of the opposition, and had twice sided with attempts to shelve the measure. His mother's letter asked him to back ratification, and he did.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee was the first American woman to win Olympic gold in which multi-discipline track and field event?

Heptathlon gold came at the 1988 Seoul Games, where she also won the long jump five days later. Sports Illustrated for Women went on to vote her the greatest female athlete of all time.

Which suffragist was the primary author of the Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton read the document aloud at the convention she had organized, and those attending were invited to sign it. Decades later she took on scripture itself in The Woman's Bible.

Anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar developed a 10-point score in 1952 to help doctors and nurses quickly assess whom?

Newborn babies get the test at one minute and five minutes after birth, covering breathing, skin color, reflexes, motion and heart rate. Apgar designed it to combat infant mortality.