Rockford Register Star
  • Key dates in women's history

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  • 1903
    In 1903 Marie Curie awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics with her husband, Pierre, and Henri Becquerel for the discovery of radioactivity. Curie wins the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the isolation of radium in 1911.
    A massive fire claims the lives of 146 individuals, mostly young immigrant women, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company sweatshop in New York City, touching off a national movement for safer working conditions.
    The United States extends the right to vote to women nationally. It was not the first country to do so. Women in New Zealand, for example, had national voting rights as early as 1893, Australia in 1902, Finland in 1906, and Norway in 1913.
    Best known today for the mystery of her disappearance near the International Date Line in 1937, during this year Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo over the Atlantic Ocean.
    Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for sitting down on a bus and refusing to give up her seat to a white man. Her arrest leads to a boycott and a U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring segregated seating unconstitutional.
    In 1960 Sri Lankan stateswoman Sirimavo R.D. Bandaranaike became the world's first female prime minister. Though the first, she wasn't the last. She paved the way for future leaders Indira Gandhi of India, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Margaret Thatcher of Britain and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro of Central America.
    Rachel Carson's prophetic Silent Spring is published creating worldwide awareness of the dangers of environmental pollution.
    Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman to travel into space. Two decades later, the United States would launch its first woman into space, with Sally Ride traveling aboard the space shuttle Challenger in June 1983.
    Though several women had served in key legislative and executive branch roles in the United States, none had ever reached the country's highest court until 1981, when Sandra Day O'Connor was appointed to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.
    Source: Britannica.com
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