100 Fun Facts About Women's History

Which country, in 1893, became the first self-governing nation to give women the vote in national elections?

New Zealand passed its Electoral Act on September 19, 1893, the first self-governing country to let all women vote in parliamentary elections.

Which scientist was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?

Marie Skłodowska-Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel. She later won a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911.

Who, in 1960, became the first woman in the world to be elected head of government of a modern nation?

Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, became prime minister after her Sri Lanka Freedom Party won the July 1960 election, the world's first elected woman national leader.

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

Virginia Woolf published the extended essay in 1929; its thesis is that a woman must have money and a room of her own to write fiction.

In which modern Olympic Games did women first officially compete?

1900 Paris saw around 22 women compete; sailor Hélène de Pourtalès, born Helen Barbey in New York, became the first female Olympic champion.

Which US constitutional amendment, adopted in August 1920, barred denying the vote on the basis of sex?

The Nineteenth Amendment reached the required 36 state ratifications when Tennessee approved it on 18 August 1920; Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified it on 26 August.

Which English mathematician, who wrote about Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine, is often called the first computer programmer?

Ada Lovelace's 1843 notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine included a method for computing Bernoulli numbers, widely called the first computer program.

Which seamstress and NAACP secretary refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery in 1955?

Rosa Parks, a seamstress and secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, was arrested on 1 December 1955; her arrest triggered the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott.

Who became the first woman in space, flying a solo mission aboard Vostok 6 on 16 June 1963?

Valentina Tereshkova, a former textile worker and amateur parachutist, orbited Earth 48 times over nearly three days aboard Vostok 6 in June 1963.

Who founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903, dedicated to 'deeds, not words'?

Emmeline Pankhurst founded the WSPU in Manchester in October 1903 with her daughter Christabel; she had earlier co-founded the Women's Franchise League in 1889.

Who was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, graduating in 1849?

Elizabeth Blackwell graduated first in her class from Geneva Medical College in New York on 23 January 1849; she later co-founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children in 1857.

In 1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop across which ocean?

The Atlantic crossing earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross; she also helped found the Ninety-Nines, an organisation for women pilots.

Florence Nightingale rose to fame organising care for wounded soldiers during which war?

Florence Nightingale led 38 nurses to the British army hospital at Scutari during the Crimean War in 1854; her night rounds earned her the nickname 'the Lady with the Lamp'.

Harriet Tubman made roughly how many Underground Railroad missions, rescuing about 70 people?

Harriet Tubman made about 13 trips back to Maryland's Eastern Shore, guiding roughly 70 enslaved people to freedom; she later served the Union Army as a scout and spy.

How old was Malala Yousafzai when she became the youngest Nobel laureate in history, in 2014?

Malala Yousafzai, born 12 July 1997, was 17 when the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize was announced that October; she shared it with Indian campaigner Kailash Satyarthi.

Katherine Johnson calculated trajectories and launch windows for which early spaceflight programme?

Katherine Johnson computed the trajectory for Alan Shepard's 1961 Project Mercury flight, and John Glenn asked her to check the computer's orbital numbers by hand before his 1962 mission.

Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai founded which tree-planting organisation in Kenya?

Wangari Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977; it has planted tens of millions of trees across Kenya, and she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Sojourner Truth's 'Ain't I a Woman?' speech was delivered in 1851 at a women's convention in which city?

Sojourner Truth spoke at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron on 29 May 1851; the famous 'Ain't I a Woman?' wording comes from Frances Gage's 1863 retelling.

Junko Tabei of Japan was the first woman to reach the summit of which mountain?

Junko Tabei reached the summit of Mount Everest on 16 May 1975, twelve days after an avalanche buried her team's camp; in 1992 she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits.

Kathrine Switzer became the first registered woman to run which race in 1967?

Kathrine Switzer ran the 1967 Boston Marathon entered as 'K.V. Switzer'; official Jock Semple tried to tear off her bib mid-race, and the AAU then barred women from competing alongside men.

Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr co-invented what during World War II?

Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil patented a frequency-hopping radio guidance system for torpedoes in 1942; the idea foreshadowed spread-spectrum techniques used in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Jeannette Rankin, first woman elected to Congress, was the only member to vote against what in 1941?

Jeannette Rankin cast the lone vote against declaring war on Japan on 8 December 1941, 388 to 1; a Montana pacifist, she had also voted against the 1917 declaration of war on Germany.

What is Rosalind Franklin's famous X-ray image of DNA known as?

Photo 51, the X-ray diffraction image of B-form DNA, was taken in May 1952 by her student Raymond Gosling; Franklin died of ovarian cancer at 37 in 1958, four years before the Nobel Prize.

Which 1940 Frida Kahlo painting sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby's in November 2025?

The Dream (The Bed) shows Kahlo asleep beneath a papier-mâché skeleton; it sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby's New York in November 2025, then the highest auction price for a work by a woman.

Which group organised the first 'Woman's Day', forerunner of International Women's Day, in New York in 1909?

The Socialist Party of America held the first National Woman's Day in New York on 28 February 1909; Clara Zetkin then proposed an international day at the 1910 Copenhagen socialist women's conference.

Who argued successfully at Seneca Falls in 1848 to keep women's suffrage in the Declaration of Sentiments?

Frederick Douglass, the convention's only African American attendee, spoke for the suffrage resolution, which passed narrowly; 100 of the roughly 300 present signed the declaration.

The Seneca Falls Convention was organised by local Quaker women together with which non-Quaker activist?

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the only non-Quaker among the five organisers, drafted the Declaration of Sentiments; they planned the July 1848 convention around Philadelphia Quaker Lucretia Mott's visit to the area.

Which element did Marie and Pierre Curie announce first, in July 1898?

Polonium, named for Poland, was announced by the Curies in July 1898, five months before radium; Marie Curie won the 1903 Physics and 1911 Chemistry Nobel Prizes.

In which year did Marie Curie become the first woman professor at the University of Paris?

After Pierre's death in April 1906 Marie Curie took over his chair, giving her first Sorbonne lecture on 5 November 1906; in 1995 she became the first woman entombed in the Panthéon on her own merits.

Women in which European country could not vote at the federal level until 1971?

France waited until 1944 and Greece until 1952; one Swiss canton held out locally until 1990.

Which US territory granted women the vote in 1869, decades before the Nineteenth Amendment?

Wyoming Territory gave women the vote on 10 December 1869 and kept it on becoming a state in 1890; Colorado followed in 1893, Utah and Idaho in 1896.

In how many days did Nellie Bly circle the world in 1889-90, beating the fictional Phileas Fogg?

Nellie Bly finished in 72 days, 6 hours and 11 minutes, returning to New Jersey on 25 January 1890; earlier she had gone undercover in the Blackwell's Island asylum for 'Ten Days in a Mad-House'.

At what age did Sally Ride become the first American woman in space in 1983?

She held a Stanford PhD in physics and was only the third woman in space overall.

Golda Meir grew up and trained as a teacher in which US city?

Golda Meir's family settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1906; she trained at the Milwaukee State Normal School for teachers before leaving for Mandatory Palestine in 1921.

Simone de Beauvoir's landmark feminist work The Second Sex was published in which year?

The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe) appeared in two volumes in 1949; its line 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman' became a foundation of feminist theory.

Which president nominated Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman on the US Supreme Court in 1981?

Ronald Reagan fulfilled a campaign promise by nominating Sandra Day O'Connor in July 1981; the Senate confirmed her 99 to 0, and she had earlier led the Arizona state senate as majority leader.

Boudica led a failed uprising against Rome in AD 60 or 61 as queen of which British tribe?

Boudica was queen of the Iceni of modern Norfolk; her husband Prasutagus had left the kingdom jointly to their daughters and the emperor, a will Rome ignored before flogging her and assaulting her daughters.

Before politics, Margaret Thatcher studied which subject at Oxford and worked briefly as a researcher in it?

Margaret Thatcher read Chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, then worked as a research chemist at BX Plastics and J. Lyons; a Soviet army newspaper coined the 'Iron Lady' nickname in 1976.

Mary Wollstonecraft, regarded as a founding feminist philosopher, was of which nationality?

Mary Wollstonecraft was English, born in Spitalfields, London, in 1759; her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) argued that women seemed inferior only because they were denied education.

The mathematician Hypatia, killed by a mob in AD 415, taught in which city?

Hypatia taught mathematics and Neoplatonist philosophy in Alexandria, Egypt, where she worked on Ptolemy, Diophantus and Apollonius; a Christian mob murdered her there in March 415.

Fossil hunter Mary Anning made her Jurassic discoveries in the English Channel cliffs of which Dorset town?

Lyme Regis's cliffs gave up her finds; she helped identify the first correctly recognised ichthyosaur skeleton at just twelve years old.

British nurse Edith Cavell was executed by the Germans in 1915 in which city?

Edith Cavell was court-martialled in Brussels for helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape to the neutral Netherlands, and shot at dawn on 12 October 1915 at the Tir national rifle range in the city's Schaerbeek district.

Grace Hopper's A-0 System of 1952 is remembered as one of the first examples of what?

The A-0 System was a compiler that translated symbolic mathematical code into machine instructions for the UNIVAC I; Hopper later drove the development of COBOL, released in 1959.

Who in 1988 became the first woman elected to lead a Muslim-majority country?

Benazir Bhutto became Prime Minister of Pakistan in December 1988 and served two terms (1988–90 and 1993–96); she was assassinated in Rawalpindi in December 2007 while campaigning for a third.

The mortuary temple of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut stands at which site?

Hatshepsut's terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari, across the Nile from Luxor, is attributed to her steward Senenmut; its reliefs record her famous trading expedition to Punt.

Shut out of US flight schools, Bessie Coleman earned her 1921 pilot's licence where?

Bessie Coleman learned French at a Berlitz school in Chicago, then trained at the Caudron brothers' school in France and received her Fédération Aéronautique Internationale licence on 15 June 1921.

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the first elected female president in the world, led which country?

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a former theatre director, won Iceland's presidency in June 1980 and served four terms until 1996.

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

Gertrude Ederle swam the English Channel from Cap Gris-Nez to Kingsdown on 6 August 1926 in roughly fourteen and a half hours, nearly two hours faster than the men's record.

Tu Youyou won a 2015 Nobel Prize for discovering artemisinin, a treatment for which disease?

Artemisinin, which Tu Youyou isolated from sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) in 1972, became a frontline malaria drug; she shared the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu's 1956 experiment famously showed that which law is not conserved?

Wu's cobalt-60 experiment showed that parity is not conserved in beta decay, confirming Lee and Yang's proposal; they won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics while Wu was passed over.

Cleopatra VII was the last active ruler of which dynasty of ancient Egypt?

The Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by Alexander's general Ptolemy I in 305 BC, was Macedonian Greek; Plutarch says Cleopatra was the first of her line to learn the Egyptian language.

Joan of Arc was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in 1431 in which French city?

Joan was burned in the Vieux-Marché square at Rouen, the English-held capital of Normandy, on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen; a 1456 retrial annulled the verdict and she was canonised in 1920.

Who wrote the 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel first ran as a serial in the abolitionist paper The National Era from June 1851 to April 1852; the book sold some 300,000 copies in the United States in its first year.

Which Civil War nurse founded the American Red Cross?

Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross on 21 May 1881, holding its first meeting in her Washington apartment; she had nursed and supplied Union troops at Antietam and other battlefields.

Anne Frank died in early 1945 in which concentration camp?

Anne and her sister Margot were moved from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen in November 1944; both died there of probable typhus in February or March 1945, weeks before British troops liberated the camp on 15 April.

Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring documented the harm caused by which pesticide?

Silent Spring's case against DDT prompted a US ban on its agricultural use in 1972, two years after the Environmental Protection Agency was created.

Billie Jean King beat which man in the 1973 'Battle of the Sexes' tennis match?

Bobby Riggs, 55, lost to the 29-year-old King 6–4, 6–3, 6–3 at the Houston Astrodome on 20 September 1973, before a crowd of more than 30,000.

Nadia Comăneci scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics at which Games?

At the 1976 Montreal Games the scoreboard, built for three digits, could not show a 10, so Comăneci's uneven bars score flashed up as 1.00.

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

Bill Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg in June 1993 to the seat of retiring justice Byron White; the Senate confirmed her 96 to 3.

Jane Goodall's decades-long chimpanzee study at Gombe Stream took place in which country?

Gombe Stream lies on Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania (then Tanganyika); Louis Leakey sent Goodall there in July 1960 before she had any degree, the first of the so-called Trimates.

Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar for which film?

The Hurt Locker, a drama about a US bomb-disposal team in Iraq, won six Oscars in March 2010; Bigelow beat her ex-husband James Cameron, whose Avatar had taken the Golden Globe over her that season.

Mother Teresa was born in which present-day capital city?

Mother Teresa was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje on 26 August 1910, when the city was Ottoman Üsküb; Skopje is now the capital of North Macedonia.

Elizabeth II's reign, the longest of any British monarch, lasted roughly how many years?

70 years and 214 days on the throne made Elizabeth II the longest-reigning British monarch and the longest-reigning queen regnant in history.

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

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly on 10 December 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, 48 votes to none with eight abstentions.

Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984 by whom?

The two Sikh bodyguards acted in revenge for Operation Blue Star, the army's storming of the Golden Temple earlier that year.

Queen Liliʻuokalani, overthrown in 1893, was the last monarch of which kingdom?

Liliʻuokalani was the last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii, deposed on 17 January 1893 in a coup led by American and European businessmen; she composed the song 'Aloha ʻOe' in 1878.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was first published anonymously in which year?

Frankenstein appeared anonymously in three volumes on 1 January 1818 with a preface by Percy Shelley; Mary was 18 when she began it in 1816 and 20 when it was published.

Whose debut novel Sense and Sensibility was credited on its title page only to 'A Lady'?

Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility appeared in 1811 credited to 'A Lady'; none of her novels carried her name in her lifetime, Pride and Prejudice being billed as 'by the author of Sense and Sensibility'.

Susan B. Anthony was arrested in 1872 for voting in a presidential election in which city?

Anthony voted in Rochester, New York, on 5 November 1872 and was arrested days later; at her 1873 trial in Canandaigua she was fined $100, told the judge she would never pay a dollar of it, and never did.

Deafblind Helen Keller earned her 1904 bachelor's degree from which college?

Helen Keller graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in June 1904, the first deafblind person to earn a bachelor's degree; Anne Sullivan spelled the lectures into her hand.

Frances Perkins, the first woman in a US cabinet, held which post under FDR?

Frances Perkins was Secretary of Labor from March 1933 to June 1945, the longest tenure in the post, and a driving force behind the Social Security Act of 1935.

How many workers died in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan?

The fire of 25 March 1911 killed 146 garment workers, 123 of them women and girls; a locked stairwell door trapped many on the ninth floor.

Suffragette Emily Davison was fatally injured by the King's horse at which 1913 race?

At the Epsom Derby on 4 June 1913 Davison ducked under the rails at Tattenham Corner and was struck by George V's horse Anmer, ridden by Herbert Jones; she died four days later.

Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential campaign slogan was 'Unbought and ...' what?

'Unbought and Unbossed' was also the title of Chisholm's 1970 autobiography; in 1972 she became the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination.

Wilma Rudolph won three sprint gold medals at which Olympic Games?

At the 1960 Rome Games Rudolph took the 100 m, 200 m and 4 x 100 m relay, the first American woman to win three track golds at one Olympics.

Title IX, banning sex discrimination in US education, became law in which year?

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 was signed by Richard Nixon on 23 June 1972; Senator Birch Bayh sponsored it in the Senate, and it transformed women's college sport.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, co-founded which group in 1966?

The National Organization for Women was founded in June 1966 with Friedan as its first president; in 1970 she organised the nationwide Women's Strike for Equality.

Madam C. J. Walker made her fortune selling what to Black women?

Guinness records her as the first woman in America to become a self-made millionaire.

Journalist Ida B. Wells spent the 1890s campaigning against which practice?

Wells documented lynching in her pamphlets Southern Horrors (1892) and The Red Record (1895); her reporting earned a posthumous Pulitzer Prize special citation in 2020.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, led which country?

Sirleaf was President of Liberia for two terms from January 2006 to January 2018 and shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman.

Wu Zetian, China's only female emperor, proclaimed which dynasty in 690?

Wu Zetian proclaimed her own Zhou dynasty in 690, interrupting the Tang for fifteen years until the Shenlong Coup of February 705 forced her to abdicate and restored her son Zhongzong.

Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded in 1587 at which English castle?

Mary was beheaded in the great hall of Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, on 8 February 1587, after nearly nineteen years in English custody and conviction over the Babington Plot to kill Elizabeth I.

Catherine the Great was born in Stettin, a city that today lies in which country?

Stettin is now Szczecin in north-western Poland; Catherine was born there as Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst on 2 May 1729 and seized the Russian throne from her husband Peter III in 1762.

Queen Nzinga fought Portuguese expansion in the 1600s in what is now which country?

Nzinga ruled the Ambundu kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba, in what is now northern Angola, from 1624 until her death in December 1663 at about eighty.

Physicist Lise Meitner helped discover which radioactive element with Otto Hahn?

Hahn and Meitner identified protactinium (symbol Pa) in 1917–18 as the parent of actinium; in 1939 Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch explained and named nuclear fission.

Dorothy Hodgkin's 1964 Nobel Prize recognised her mapping the structure of what?

Hodgkin solved the structure of vitamin B12 in 1956 after years of X-ray work; she had earlier confirmed penicillin's structure and in 1969 completed a 35-year effort on insulin.

Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock discovered 'jumping genes' by studying which plant?

McClintock traced transposable elements through the colour patterns of maize kernels at Cold Spring Harbor; her unshared 1983 Nobel Prize came some thirty years after the discovery.

Constance Markievicz, first woman elected to the Commons in 1918, stood for which party?

Markievicz won Dublin St Patrick's for Sinn Féin in December 1918 while held in Holloway Prison; following the party's abstentionist policy she never took her Westminster seat, sitting instead in the First Dáil.

Who became the first woman to perform a spacewalk, in July 1984?

She spent 3 hours 35 minutes outside Salyut 7 cutting and welding metal, and was also the first woman to fly to space twice.

The 1888 London matchgirls' strike was against which match manufacturer?

About 1,400 women and girls walked out of Bryant & May's Bow factory in July 1888; they worked with white phosphorus, which caused the disfiguring bone disease known as phossy jaw.

The Soviet 'Night Witches' of World War II flew their night raids in which aircraft?

The 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew the Polikarpov U-2 (later Po-2), a wood-and-canvas biplane of 1928 built for training and crop-dusting; its pilots idled the engine to glide silently onto targets.

Marie Tharp's ocean-floor maps revealed a rift valley running along which feature?

Tharp plotted a rift valley down the centre of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge from echo-sounder profiles with Bruce Heezen in the 1950s; their maps helped win acceptance for seafloor spreading and plate tectonics.

Which medieval writer defended women in The Book of the City of Ladies (1405)?

Christine de Pizan, widowed in 1389 with three children, supported her family by writing at the French court; The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) answers misogynist texts such as the Romance of the Rose.

Artemisia Gentileschi was the first woman admitted to the Accademia del Disegno in which city?

Artemisia joined the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in 1616, the first woman admitted; she painted for the Medici there before working in Rome, Naples and London.

Razia Sultan, who reigned 1236–1240, was the only woman to rule which state?

Razia, daughter of Iltutmish, ruled the Delhi Sultanate from 1236 until her overthrow and death in 1240; her reputed grave lies near Turkman Gate in Old Delhi.

Sophie Germain won the Paris Academy of Sciences grand prize for work on what?

Germain won the Academy's 1816 prize for a mathematical theory of the elasticity of vibrating plates, prompted by Chladni's sand-pattern experiments; she had corresponded with Gauss as 'Monsieur Le Blanc'.

Mary Kies's 1809 US patent, signed by James Madison, covered a technique for weaving what?

Mary Kies of Connecticut patented a method of weaving straw with silk or thread to make hats on 5 May 1809, the first US patent issued to a woman; the original record was lost in the 1836 Patent Office fire.

Dismissed by the Nazis in 1933, mathematician Emmy Noether moved to which US college?

Emmy Noether took a post at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in autumn 1933, also lecturing at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study; she died in Bryn Mawr in April 1935 after surgery.

In which year did Raymonde de Laroche become the world's first licensed female pilot?

The Aéro-Club de France issued de Laroche licence number 36 on 8 March 1910, making her the world's first licensed woman pilot; she died in a crash in 1919.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became England's first female mayor in which Suffolk town?

Garrett Anderson was elected mayor of Aldeburgh in November 1908, a post her father Newson Garrett had also held; in 1865 she had become the first woman to qualify as a physician in Britain.