Women's History Month spans from March 1st-31st. Here are some facts about women's history that you may not know.
- No women or girls were permitted at the first Olympics. At the first Winter Olympic Games in 1924, the only event open to women was figure skating. There were 15 women who participated.
- In the early years of the blues, from 1910 to 1925, the vast majority of singers were women. New research has found that some of the biggest players in the form of music were actually women.
- Martha Wright Griffiths, an American lawyer and judge, pushed through the Sex Discrimination Act in 1964 as part of the Civil Rights Act.
- In 1777, sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington raced through the night to warn New York patriots that the British were attacking nearby Danbury, CT, where munitions and supplies for the entire region were stored during the heat of the Revolutionary War. Paul Revere gets all the glory, but her journey took her twice the distance and helped the troops prepare and repel a British attack.
- The first woman to run for U.S. president was Victoria Woodhull, in 1872 under the National Woman’s Suffrage Association. Women didn't have the right to vote by a constitutional amendment for nearly 50 years after her run. (There were no laws prohibiting a woman from running for the chief executive position at the time.)
- Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote and the first state to elect a female governor-- Nellie Tayloe Ross.
- Susan Kare developed most of the interface elements for Apple Macintosh. Kare helped develop the bulk of those little icons early Mac users clicked on every day.
- Theresa Malkiel, an activist who served on the women's committee of the Socialist Party of America, established the first “National Women's Day” on February 28, 1909.