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The first Women's Day observance, 1909 - Though the first Women's Day observance was held February 28, 1909, in New York, the date was later changed to match international trends. The claim that the first Women’s Day was in celebration of a protest by women garment workers in New York on March 8, 1857, is actually a myth.

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True Women's Day origin - The true reason behind the March 8 date is because that’s the day women gained suffrage in Soviet Russia, and the day became a public holiday there, so other countries followed suit to heighten its impact.

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First women’s-rights convention meets in Seneca Falls, New York, 1848 -

Between July 19 and 20, 1848, more than 240 women and men gathered at Seneca Falls to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman.

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First women’s-rights convention meets in Seneca Falls, NY, 1848 -

That summer day, 68 women and 32 men signed a Declaration of Sentiments, modeled on the Declaration of Independence, stating that women, like men, were citizens with an “inalienable right to the elective franchise.” The convention kicked off the campaign for women's suffrage.

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Wyoming Territory is first to grant women the vote, 1869 -

In 1869, the territory’s legislature declared that “every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this territory, may at every election…cast her vote.”

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Wyoming Territory is first to grant women the vote, 1869 - Congress lobbied hard to take it away when Wyoming became a state in 1890, but women managed to retain their right. In 1924, Wyoming voters elected America’s first female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross.

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California’s Julia Morgan is first woman admitted to the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, 1898 -

The 26-year-old already held the title of the only woman engineer at Berkeley when she received her architecture degree from the Ecole de Beaux-Arts, the best architecture school in the world. She became the first woman licensed to practice architecture in the state. 

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California’s Julia Morgan is first woman admitted to the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris, 1898 - Morgan is most famous for Hearst Castle, a massive compound she designed for the publisher William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon, CA. Morgan designed more than 700 buildings in her long career.

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Activist Alice Paul proposes the Equal Rights Amendment for the first time, 1923 - The women’s rights advocate proposed the amendment 50 years before Congress, in 1972, finally sent the proposed amendment to the states for ratification.

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Activist Alice Paul proposes the Equal Rights Amendment for the first time, 1923 - Though 22 of the 38 required states ratified it right away, conservative activists mobilized against it and ultimately succeeded. In 1977, Indiana became the 35th and last state to ratify the amendment, and in June 1982, the ratification deadline expired. The amendment has never been passed.

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The Equal Rights Amendment - States that didn’t ratify the ERA by the deadline: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia. Nevada did, however, ratify the amendment in 2017, the only state to do so after the deadline.

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Amelia Earhart is the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane, 1928 - Earhart became a celebrity after completing her famous trip across the ocean, which took more than 20 hours.

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Amelia Earhart is the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane, 1928 - Less than a decade later, she disappeared while attempting to become the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe at the Equator, the earth’s widest point. Before disappearing, she, along with her navigator Fred Noonan, successfully hopscotched from Miami to Brazil, Africa, India, and Australia.

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Frances Perkins becomes the first female member of a Presidential cabinet, 1933 - The sociologist and progressive reformer in New York served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor until 1945.

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The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is the first professional baseball league for female players, 1943 - Though women had been playing professional baseball since the 1890s with gender-integrated “Bloomer Girls” teams (named after feminist Amelia Bloomer), playing opportunities decreased as the men’s minor leagues expanded.

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The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is the first professional baseball league for female players, 1943 - But because so many major-league stars had joined the armed services and gone off to war, by 1943 stadium owners and baseball executives worried that the game would never recover. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League became the solution to their problem, as it would keep the stadiums filled through the end of the war. The league dismantled in 1954.

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The FDA announces its approval of the pill, the first birth control drug, 1960 - The pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle applied for a license from the FDA the previous year to sell Enovid, a oral contraceptive that combined the hormones estrogen and progesterone.

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The FDA announces its approval of the pill, the first birth control drug, 1960 - There were some contention points, as the FDA was generally against allowing doctors to prescribe drugs to healthy people. Also, the man assigned to the case had moral and religious objections to the pill. However the pill ended up being approved for short-term use in October 1960.

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Janet Guthrie is the first woman to drive in the Indy 500, 1977 - The aerospace engineer was training to be an astronaut, but was cut from the space program because she didn’t have her PhD. She turned her focus to racing instead, and became the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500.

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Janet Guthrie is the first woman to drive in the Indy 500, 1977 -

She didn't end up competing that year because of mechanical issues, but competed the following year and finished in ninth place, despite having a broken wrist.

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President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman on the Supreme Court, 1981 - Despite lacking extensive judicial experience—she had only been a judge for a few years and had never served on a federal court—she soon made a name for herself as one of the Supreme Court’s most thoughtful centrists.

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President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman on the Supreme Court, 1981 - She retired in 2006.

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Joan Benoit wins the first women’s Olympic Marathon, 1984 - Known today as Joan Benoit Samuelson, she completed the first-ever women’s marathon in 2:24.52 at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

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Joan Benoit wins the first women’s Olympic Marathon, 1984 - She finished 400 m ahead of the silver medalist, Norway’s Grete Waitz.

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Manon Rheaume is the first woman to play in an NHL game, 1992 - The Canadian goalie from Quebec City was the first women to play in any of the major men’s sports leagues in the US.

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Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State, 1997 - The international relations expert Madeleine K. Albright was sworn in as the the nation’s 64th Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton.

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Condoleezza Rice becomes first African-American woman Secretary of State, 2004 - Appointed in 2004 by President George W. Bush, Rice took office in January 2005 to become the second woman to hold the title. She replaced Colin Powell, who was the first African-American to serve in that position.

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Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, 2010 - Her 2008 film ‘The Hurt Locker’ won six Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture.

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Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, 2010 - She was competing with, among others, her former husband, James Cameron, whose science-fiction epic ‘Avatar’ was also a front-runner.

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Hillary Clinton becomes first female presidential nominee of a major party, 2016 - The former US Senator, Secretary of State, and First Lady was chosen as the Democratic nominee on July 26, 2016, becoming the first woman from a major party to do so.

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Hillary Clinton becomes first female presidential nominee of a major party, 2016 -

Clinton previously unsuccessfully ran in 2008, missing out on the nomination at the Democratic National Convention against former President Barack Obama.

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Kamala Harris becomes first female vice president, 2020 -

Kamala Harris made history as the first female vice president, as well as the first Black woman and South Asian American to be elected to one of the two highest offices in the United States.

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Karine Jean-Pierre -

In 2022, Karine Jean-Pierre made history, not only as the first Black woman to be appointed White House Press Secretary, but also as the first openly gay person to hold the position. 

Sources: (History)

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