Events for Women

1871 - Miss Carrie A. Moore demonstrates a variety of roller skating movements at the Occidental Rink in San Francisco. Later in the same day, she exhibits her skill on a velocipede.

1871 - the Empire City Rowing Club's 10th annual regatta features a rowing match among young women on the Harlem River in New York on Sept. 25. Five women row 17-foot workboats around a 2 mile course. Rowing the Glen, Amelia Shean wins the singles race in 18:32. Elizabeth Custarce and Annie Harris win the pairs race.

1872 - Mills College in Oakland, CA establishes women's baseball teams.

1873 - 10 young women compete in a mile-long swimming contest in the Harlem River. Miss Deliliah Goboess wins the prize, a silk dress worth $175.

1874 - Mary Ewing Outerbridge of Staten Island introduces tennis to the United States. She purchases tennis equipment in Bermuda (and had trouble getting it through Customs!) and uses it to set up the first US tennis court at the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club that spring.

1875 - Lizzie Ihling, the niece of famed American balloonist John Wise, makes a solo flight on July 5. The skin of the bag began to rip, sending the balloon falling to earth. Lizzie was not injuried.

1875 - The "Blondes" and "Brunettes" play their first match In Springfield, IL on Sept. 11. Newspapers heralded the event as the "first game of baseball ever played in public for gate money between feminine ball-tossers."

1875 - Wellesley College opens with a gymnasium for exercising and a lake for ice skating and the first rowing program for women.

1875 - English teenager Agnes Beckwith, accomplishes a long distance swim in the Thames River from London Bridge to Greenwich, a distance of about 6 miles.

1875 - The first roller-skating rink opens in London.

1876 - Mary Marshall, 26, shocks spectators when she beats Peter VanNess in the best of three walking matches (called Pedestrians) in New York City.

1876 - Maria Speltarini crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope in July, wearing 38-pound weights on each ankle.

1876 - Ten percent of the members of the newly created Appalachin Mountain Club are women.

1876 - Nell Saunders defeated Rose Harland in the first United States women's boxing match, receiving a silver butter dish as a prize.

1877 - Eliza Bennett swims across the Hudson River in August.

1878 - Woman pedestrian Ada Anderson walks 3,000 quarter-miles in 3,000 quarter hours over the course of a month in New York' Mozart Hall, kicking off a series of "lady walker" matches.

1879 - The first National Archery Championship is held, with 20 women participating.

1879 - Speed-walker Ada Anderson walks 2,700 quarter-miles in 2,700 quarter hours, as indoor Pedestrianism continues to attract attention.

1880 - Balloonist Mary Meyers makes her first ascent on July 4 at Little Falls, NY before a crowd of 15,000.

1880 - Distance swimmer Agnes Beckwith treads water for 30 hours in the whale tank of the Royal Aquarium of Westminster to equal a pervious mark set by Matthew Webb.

1881 - Bell Cook of California and Emma Jewett of Minnesota toured the country, competing in a series of 20-mile horse races. On Sept. 29, in Rochester, NY's Driving Park, the two compete, with Jewwtt winning for the first time when Cook was thrown from her horse with only half a mile to go. Jewett covered the 20 miles in 45:05 using a nunber of changes of mount.

1881 - Indoor tennis is played inside the 7th Regiment Armory in New York City on Nov. 26, with 12 courts put in use for women enthusiasts and their male partners.

1881 - Edith Johnson of England sets the world's endurance indoor swimming record at 31 hours. The record holds until 1928.

1882 - The National Croquet Association is formed to revise and standarize the rules.

1882 - At the YWCA in Boston, the first athletic games for women are held.

1883 - Mrs. M. C. Howell wins her first archery title. She will win the national championship for women 17 times between 1883 and 1907.

1883 - The first baseball "Ladies Day" is held on June 16 by the NY Giants, where both escorted and unescroted women are allowed into the park for free.

1884 - Women's singles tennis competition is added to Wimbledon. Maud Watson wins in both 1884 and '85.

1885 - The Association of Collegiate Alumnae publishes a study which concludes that "...it is sufficient to say that female [college] graduates...do not seem to show, ...any marked difference in general health for the average health ... of women engaged in other kinds of work, or in fact, of women generally...", refuting the widely held belief that college study impaired a woman’s physical health and ability to bear children.

1885 - Annie Oakley (Phoebe Ann Moses, 1860-1926), 25, is the sharp-shooting star of the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. She could hit a moving target while riding a galloping horse; hit a dime in mid-air; and regularly shot a cigarette from her husband's lips.

1885 - More than $20 million has been invested in roller skating rinks in almost every city and small town around the country.

1886 - Mary Hawley Myers sets a world altitude record in a hot air balloon, soaring 4 miles above Franklin, PA, without benefit of oxygen equipment. Her first balloon ascent was in Little Falls, NY in 1880. Between 1880 and 1890 she completed more balloon ascents than any other living person.

1886 - The first known women's lacrosse game is played.

1887 - A women's field hockey club is started in Surrey, England.

1887 - Ellen Hansell is crowned the first Women's Singles tennis champion at the US Open.

1887 - Lottie Dod wins the women's Wimbledon Championship five times between 1887 and 1893.

1887 - First Women's French Tennis Championship is held.

1887 - Indoor baseball (the forerunner of softball) was invented by George Hancock at the Farragut Boat Club on Chicago's South Side. The first game was played on Thanksgiving Day. The basic equipment included a huge 17-inch ball and a stick-like bat. No gloves were worn, and the catcher wore no mask. It quickly became the indoor winter sport of choice for boys and girls in the area.

1887 - Rose Coghlin ties two men in a mixed trap shooting match held at the Philadephia Gun Club. All three score 7.

1888 - The modern "safety" bicycle is invented with a light frame and two equal-sized wheels and a chain drive.

1888 - Women join (bi)cycling clubs in Chicago and tennis clubs in New York City.

1888 - Berta Benz becomes the first woman to drive on a 60 mile trip cross-country in Germany in a "motor-wagon" (a 3-horse-power car with solid rubber tires) with only her two teenage sons along in August.

1888 - The Amateur Athletic Union is formed to establish standards and uniformity in amateur sport. During its early years, the AAU served as a leader in international sport representing the US in the international sports federations.

1888 - AAU holds its first fencing championships. Professor J. Hartl of Vienna tours America with a women's fencing demonstration; women begin to fence at private clubs.

1888 - Lord Stanley, the Governor General of Canada, has an outdoor skating rink created in his back yard for his wife and 10 children (including 2 daughters) to skate and play hockey on. Lord Stanley will donate a silver bowl worth about $50 which will become the coveted Stanley Cup, to be won each year by the top amateur hockey team in Canada.

1889 - The first women's six-day bicycle race ends at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

1889 - Isobel Stanley is one of the first women hockey players in Canada. Her Governmnt House team played the Rideau ladies in what may be the first women's hockey game in Ottawa. There is a photograph in the National Archives of Canada commemorating the "action."

1890's - More than a million American women will own and ride bicycles during the next decade. It is the first time in American history that an athletic activity for women will become widely popular.

1890 - Miss Carrie Low and John Reid defeat Mrs. Reid and John Upham in golf's first mixed foursome.

1890's - The Bloomer Girls baseball era lasted from the 1890s until 1934. Hundreds of teams -- All Star Ranger Girls, Philadelphia Bobbies, New York Bloomer Girls, Baltimore Black Sox Colored Girls -- offered employment, travel, and adventure for young women who could hit, field, slide, or catch.

1890 - A women's baseball club plays a game against the Danville, IL Browns before 2,000 fans on Sunday, June 8. As the women leave town in carriages for Covington, IN, they are arrested and fined a total of $100 for disturbing the peace by playing baseball on Sunday in viloation of the local "Blue Laws." The men's team members are also arrested.

1890 - Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Cochran Seaman) becomes the first woman to travel around the world alone - she does it in just 72 days while a reporter for the New York World newspaper, returning on Jan. 25.

1890 - Fanny Bullock Workman (1859-1925), with her husband William, begins 10 years of bicycle tours. Cycling across the back roads of Europe and charting new pathways for fellow cyclists, the Workmans published their first travel book in 1895, after a tour of Algeria. They toured the Far East, cycling across Asian countries and the Indian Subcontinent in 1897 and 1898, publishing more travel accounts. For the rest of their careers they were mountaineers, completing eight Himalayan expeditions between 1898 and 1912.

1890 - Fay Fuller climbs the 14,410 foot Mt. Rainier in Washington.

1891 - Zoe Gayton arrives in Castleton, New York on March 20 after walking cross-country in 213 day, leaving the West Coast in Aug. 1890, averaging 18 miles per day. She won a $2,000 wager.

1891 - At least 60 women enter a rifle-shooting contest in Regina, Saskatchewan.

1891 - Mary French Sheldon (1847-1936) mounts her first expedition to East Africa. Her her travel accounts broke new, scientific and anthropological territory by focusing on the women and children in the territories she visited. She was one of only twenty-two women who were invited to join the Royal Geographic Society in 1892, an invitation withdrawn after contentious debate about women's presence in the Society. She eventually made four trips around the world.

1891 - On Feb. 11, two unnamed women's ice hockey teams play a match in Ottawa, Ontario.

1891 - The Shinnecock Hills Golf Club on Long Island opens its doors to women. Golf proved so popular that the club opened a 9-hole course for women two years later.

1891 - Beatrice Von Dressden, 14 of Buffalo, NY, makes her first parachute jump from a hot air balloon.

1892 - The journal Physical Education (a publication of the YMCA) devote an issue to women, saying that women need physical strength and endurance and dismis the popular idea that women are too weak to exercise.

1892 - Gymnastics instructor Senda Berenson Abbott adapts James Naismith's basketball rules for women and introduces the game to her students at Smith College, where she became the first director of physical education in Jan. Her rules confine each player to one-third of the court.

1892 - The Sierra Club of California welcomes women members as it organizes.

1892 - Louise Pound, (born Lincoln, NE June 30, 1872), enrolled at the University of Nebraska and earned a BA degree in 1892 and her MA in 1895. While in college she helped organize a girls' military company and she set a record at rifle target practice. She was the first woman named to the Lincoln Journal Sports Hall of Fame in 1954. She participated in tennis, golf, cycling, and ice skating, and also coached girls' basketball. She made pioneering contributions to American philology and folklore.

1892 - Hessie Donahue, who donned a loose blouse, bloomers and boxing gloves and sparred a few rounds as part of a vaudeville act, knocks out legendary heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan for over a minute after he accidentally landed a real blow on her during the act.

1893 to 1900 - The "Golden Age of the Bicycle", with the development of the modern-style "safety bicycle" with two equal- sized wheels, coaster brakes, and pneumatic tires creating a comfortable, faster and safer ride. A side effect is more common-sense dressing for women.

1893 - 16-year old Tessie Reynonds of Brighton rides her bycycle to London and back, a distance of 120 miles, in 8.5 hours. She wore the shocking "rationale" dress - a long jacket over knickers, which outraged some observers as much as her feat.

1893 - Formation of the Ladies Golf Union which sponsors the first British Ladies' championship, won by Lady Margaret Scott.

1893 - A women's ice hockey team is formed in Medicine Hat, Alberta.

1893 - Katharine Lee Bates climbs to the top of Pike's Peak and is inspired to compose a poem, "America, the Beautiul."

1894 - The first ladies golf tournament is held on the 7-hole Morristown, NJ course on Oct 17-18. Miss Hollard A. Ford won with a 97 scored on the double-7, 14 strokes under her nearest rival.

1894 - College girls at McGill University in Montreal begin weekly ice hockey games at an indoor rink - with 3 male students on "guard" at the door.

1894 - The first Australian women's national golf championship is held.

1895 - Annie Smith Peck is the first woman to reach the peak of the Matterhorn. She climbed in a pair of knickerbockers, causing a sensation with the press. She helps to found the American Alpine Club in 1902.

1895 - The first Women's Amateur Golf championship is contested among 13 golfers at the Meadow Brook Club, Hempstead, N.Y., on Nov. 9. The match is won by Mrs. Charles S. Brown with a 132 and the runner-up is Nellie Sargent.

1895 - The first organised athletics meeting is generally recognized as the "Field Day" at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, on Nov. 9. A group of "nimble, supple and vivacious girls" engaged in running and jumping events despite bad weather.

1895 - Frances Willard, president of the WTCU, publishes A Wheel Within a Wheel, a best-selling account of learning to ride a bicycle.

1895 - The first women's softball team is formed at Chicago's West Division High School. They did not have a coach for competitive play until 1899.

1895 - Volleyball is invented in Holyoke, MA. By the 1990's, volleyball is the second-largest participation sport in the United States with more than 42 million participants. There is indoor and outdoor competition for boys and girls, men and women and co-ed teams.

1895 - The American Bowling Congress is organized, establishing equipment standards and rules on Sept. 9. By the 1990's, bowling is the second-largest participation sport in the world, with more than 100 million athletes, 46% of whom are women who compete equally with men.

1895 - Mrs. Frank Sittig exhibits her new duplex riding skirt - which The New York Times judges to be "An ideal suit for cycling, to which even the most prudish could not object."

1896 - Women are buying 25-30% of all new bicycles.

1896 - Susan B. Anthony says that "the bicycle has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world."

1896 - The first 6-day bicycle race for women starts on Jan 6 at Madison Square Garden in NYC.

1896 - The first women's intercollegiate basketball championship is played between Stanford and the University of California at Berkely. Stanford wins 2-1 on April 4 before a crowd of 700 women!

1896 - At the first modern Olympics in Athens, a woman, Melpomene, barred from the official race, runs the same course as the men, finishing in 4 hours 30 minutes. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics, says, "It is indecent that the spectators should be exposed to the risk of seeing the body of a women being smashed before their very eyes. Besides, no matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organizm is not cut out to sustain certain shocks."

1897 - Lena Jordan becomes the first person to successfully execute the triple somersault on the flying trapeze. The first man to acomplish this didn't do so until 1909.

1897 - The first Women's French Tennis Championship is held.

1898 - Three women create a stir when they compete in a "century run" endurance contest in bicyling. Irene Bush of Brooklyn rides 400 miles in 48 hours; Jane Yatman of Brooklyn rides 500 miles in 58 hours; and Jane Lindsay rides 600 miles in 72 hours.

1898 - Lizzie Arlington becomes the first woman to sign a professional baseball contract, appearing in her first professional game pitching for the Philadelphia Reserves.

1899 - Setting a new women's cycling endurance record, 125 pound Jane Yatman rides 700 miles in 81 hours, 5 mintes on Long Island. During the 3 and one half day trial, she rests less than 2 hours. Her record is beaten on Oct. 19 by Jane Lindsay who rides 900 mikes in 91 hours, 48 minutes.

1899 - Two teams of women ice hockey players play a game on the artifical ice at the Ice Palace in Philadelphia.

1900-1920 - Physical Education instructors strongly oppose competition among women, fearing it will make them less feminine.

1900 - The first 19 women to compete in the modern Olympics Games in Paris, France, play in just three sports: tennis, golf, and croquet. Margaret I. Abbott is the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal. An art student in Paris, she won the nine-hole golf tournament by shooting a 47.

1900 - May Sutton is America's first woman tennis player of international reknown. She wins the Pacific Southwest Championship at age 13.

1900 The first women's ice hockey league is organized in Quebec with three teams from Montreal, one from Quebec City, and another from Trois-Rivieres.

1901 - Field Hockey is introduced to women in the United State by Constance M. K. Applebee, a British physical education teacher. She presents a hockey exhibition at Harvard University.

1901 - Annie Taylor, 43, becomes the first person to go over Naigara Falls in a custom-built barrel and live. She couldn't swim. Her comment on being retreieved: "Nobody ever ought to do that again."

1901 - The ambidextrous May Kaarlus, 16, performs a sereis of amazing billard shots in New York City. Male experts try and fail to duplicate her shots.

1902 - Britian's Madge Syers opens the door for women figure skaters when she enters the all-male 1902 world championships and places second. Her second place finish causes officials to ban women from the championships until 1095 when a separate ladies event is held.

1902 - Mrs. Adolph Landenburg introduces the split skirt for horseback riding in Saratog Springs, NY.

1903 - Eleanor Roosevelt enrolls in the Junior League of New York where she teaches calisthenics and dancing to immigrants.

1903 - A women's curling team from Quebec City defeats a men's curling team from the Royal Caledonia in Scotland.

1903 - Cuban-born Aida de Acosta pilots a dirigible over Paris, just months before the Wright Brothers fly at Kitty Hawk, NC.

1904 - Lydia Scott Howell (who won the first of 17 archery championships in 1882), wins three gold medals in archery, which is an unofficial Olympic sport at the St. Louis games.

1904 - A women's ice hockey team from Dawson City play the team from Victoria in the new Dawson City Arena as Klondike gold rush fever swells the population of the Yukon.

1904 - Amanda Clement, just 16 years old, becomes the first female umpire to officiate a men's baseball game in Iowa for pay.

1904 - Bertha Kapernick becoms the first woman to give bronco riding exhibitions at the Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo. 1906 - Lula Olive Gill becomes the first woman jockey to win a horse race in California.

1906 - Skater Madge Syers becoms the first woman world figure skating champion, repeating in 1907.

1906 - Ada Evans Dean rides her horse to victory twice in Liberty, NY, after learning that her jockey was ill. She had never ridden in a horse race before.

1906 - The first provincial women's ice hockey tournament takes place in Banff, Alberta, with a six-team league.

1907 - The first organized bowling league for women begins in St. Louis, MO. The first of three women's bowling tournaments organized by the American Bowling Congress is held. The 1908 tournament is held in Cincinnati and the 1909 tournament in Pittsburgh.

1907 - Annette Kellerman is the first underwater ballerina at the New York Hippodrome. The Australian native attracts attention when she appears at Boston's Revere beach in a one-piece bathing suit.

1908 - The national anthem of baseball, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, is written about a young girl's love of the game.

1908 - Madge Syers is the first woman Olympic figure skating gold medalist at the London Games.

1908 - Edith Berg becomes the first woman to go up in an airplane. She was a passenger in the Wright Brother's Flyer in a demonstration in France.

1908 - In England, Muriel Matters, a suffragette and balloonist, flies over the British Houses of Parliament, dropping hundreds of flyers urging "votes for women."

1909 - On Jan. 11, a dozen woman-driven cars left New York in a long distance race for Philadelphia. Mrs. J. Newton Cuneo won in a Lancia, followed by 8 eight other cars. Four cars didn't make it past Burlington, NJ, in a series of mishaps.

1909 - On Aug. 31, Mrs. Adolph Ladenburg introduces the split skirt for horseback riding in Saratoga, NY.

1909 - Annie Smith Peck, 57, becomes the first person to climb 21,000 foot Mount Huascaran, the highest peak in Peru on Sept. 2. Her last climb was Mount Madison, NH at age 82.

1910 - Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher debunks several popular myths of female health, including one claiming women breathe differently than men, which makes them unfit for strenuous excersie.

1910 - On March 8, Baroness Raymonde de Laroche passes her qualifiying tests to become the first woman in the world to be issued a pilot's license.

1910 - Blanche Stuart Scott, 19, becomes the first woman to fly a plane solo in Hammondsport, NY on Sept. 2. Earlier that year she completes a cross-country trip in an Overland automobile with a woman journalist along to record the trip.

1910 - Australia's Annette Kellerman is arrested for swimming in Boston Harbor in an "indecent" one-piece swimsuit for exposing her legs.

1910-11 - Nan Jane Aspinall rides across the country on horseback alone, from San Fransicso to New York.

1911 - Harriet Quimby makes her professional aviator debut with a moonlight flight over Staten Island before a crowd of 20,000 spectators to become the first woman to make a night flight on Sept. 5.

1911 - Charlotte Granville, an English sportswoman and a member of the Royal Aero Club of England and Areo Club of Frabcxe, is denied membership to the Aero Club of New York. A veteran of over 50 flights, she commented, "How perfectly stupid!"

1911 - The first women's flying school is founded in France, run by qualified pilot Jane Herveux.

1911 - Annie Smith Peck plants a "Votes for Women" banner on top of Mt. Coropuna in Peru when she becomes the first woman to climb it (at the age of 61).

1911 - Helene Britton becomes the first woman owner of a major league team, the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1911 to 1917.

1912 - Harriet Quimby is the first woman to pilot an airplane across the English Channel on April 16. For most of the flight she was in fog, depending on her compass.

1912 - The first women's foil National Championship is won by Adelaide Baylis.

1912 - Mrs. Edwards and Faurlein Kussin meet in the boxing ring at a bout on March 7.

1912 - Swimming and diving debut at the Stockholm Olympic Games, with 57 women from 11 nations competing in those sports plus tennis.

1912 - Dora Keen successfully reaches the peak of Alaska's 13,690 foot Mount Blackburn, in the first expedition to go up the southeast face, to feature a prolonged night ascent, and the first to succeed without a Swiss guide.

1912 - Many young American college women take up the lastest sports craze: wall scaling.

1913 - Katherine Stinson becomes the first woman to fly the mail from the fairgound outside Helena, MT into the city. She was the first woman to loop the loop, and the first to loop the loop at night.

1912 - Eleanora Sears completes her first marathon walk of 108-miles in 19 hours and 50 minutes.

1913 - Women's ice hockey is played at the University of Saskatchewan.

1914 - Miss Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick, demonstrating air-jumping techniques to the US Army in San Diego, CA, pulled her release manually, becoming the first person to make an intentional free-fall parachute jump from an airplane on June 21.

1914 - The American Olympic Committee formally opposes women's athletic competition in the Olympics. The only exception is the floor exercise, where women are allowed to only wear long skirts.

1914 - Women's basketball rules change to allow half-court play, expanded from the original one-third court rules. Full court play for women doesn't come in until the 1970's.

1914 - The first national swimming championships are held with women allowed to register by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU).

1915 - The British government appoints Gertrude Bell (born in England in 1868) a diplomat in Baghdad because of her knowledge of the territory. She was the first European woman to travel in remote parts of the Middle East. She traveled, often alone, and wrote about her journeys and the excavations she saw.

1915 - Percy Page organizes the Edmunton Grads, the most successful women's basketball team with 502 wins and only 20 losses from 1915-1940.

1915 - Katherine Stinson becomes the first woman to do multiple loops while flying.

1915 - In a stunt, aviator Ruth Law drops a grapefruit from her plane for Brooklyn Dodger outfielder Casey Stengel to catch. Having forgetten to take the baseball into the place with her, she makes a lost minute substitution.

1916 - Evelyn Burnett wins the first US Platform Diving Championship.

1916 - A group of 40 women form the Women's International Bowling Congress, which will become the oldest and largest women's sports organization in the world.

1916 - Women take up trap-shooting in the US.

1916 - Kay Curtis institutes synchronized swimming as an integral part of the University of Wisconsin's physical education program.

1916 - Sisters Adeline and Augusta Van Buren become the first women to ride motorcycles across the country, leaving Brooklyn on July 5 and arriving in San Francisco on Sept. 12. They are also the first women to conquer the 14,100-foot summit of Pikes Peak on motorcycles.

1916 - Women start playing organized ice hockey at the University of Minnesota. (Men began in 1914.)

1916 - Ruth Law flies non-stop from Chicago to Hornell, NY, setting the American nonstop cross-country record for both men and women, flying 590 miles in just 6 hours. She had installed axillary gas tanks, upping her fuel capacity from 8 to 53 gallons and added a rubber gas line to her open "pusher" type Curtiss plane.

1916 - 100 women compete in the first "Championship of the World" bowling tournament on Nov. 26-19 in St. Louis. The total purse was $222. The Women's National Bowling Association is organized as a result of the success of the tournmant.

1917 - Katherine Stinson breaks Ruth Law's distance record by flying 610 miles (976 km) nonstop.

1917 - Charlotte (Eppie) Epstein, a court reporter, rents one of NYC's only chlorinated pools (in the basement of Brooklyn's Hotel Terrain) and founds the Women's Swimming Association of New York, dedicated to competitive training for women.

1917 - Lucy Diggs Slowe wins the singles title at the first American Tennis Association (ATA) national tournament, becoming the first female African-American national champion in any sport.

1917 - The American Physical Education Association forms a Committee on Women's Athletics to draft standardized, separate rules for women's collegiate field hockey, swimming, track and field, and soccer.

1918 - Eleanora Sears (a great-great-granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson born in 1881) takes up squash, after excelling at polo (which she rode astride, shocking conventions of the day), baseball, golf, field hockey, auto racing, swimming, tennis, yachting and speedboat racing. She accumulated 240 trophies during her athletic career. She demonstrated that women could play men's games and was a prime liberator of women in sports.

1918 - Lillian Leitzel, 36, a 90-pound acrobat and aeriast with Ringling Brothers & Barnumn &and Baily beat the 1878 world's record (12) for one-armed chin-ups - she performed 27 one-armed chin-ups hith her right arm; swiching hands, she did 19 more.

1918 - The first annual Women's National Bowling Association tournamnet is held in Cincinnati. OH at the Armory Building in March.

1919 - Anna Low is the first Chinese-American woman aviator.

1920's - The skimpy fashions of the '20's put a new emphasis on athletic bodies and narrow the gap between health and glamour. Advertisers, like Grape-Nuts, say, "Grandmother went bathing - girls like Molly go in to swim."

1920 - The first horeshoe pitchinbg tournament for women is held in Asbury Park, NJ, with Marjorie Voorhees the winner.

1920 - The first American women's field hockey team to compete internationally is the All-Philadelphia team. Their application to the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp is denied, but they pay in an English tournamnet (loosing both games).

1920 - Female swimmers become the first American women to achieve full Olympic status. Ethelda Bleibtrey (1902-78), held the world record in the 100-yard backstroke when women's swimming was added to the Olympic program. The only three events were the 100-meter and 300-meter freestyles and the 4 by 100-meter freestyle relay, so she entered all three and won three gold medals.

1920 - 14-year old Aileen Riggin wins the first women's Olympic springboard diving competition. US women will dominate Olympics springboard diving, winning all the gold, silver and bronze medals from 1920 - 1948.

1920 - Theresa Weld Blanchard wins the first US medal in the Winter Olympics, a bronze for figure skating. She is scolded for putting a salchow (jump) into her program!

1920 - The Dick-Kerr's Ladies Professional Soccer Team tours the US, outscoring their male opponents 35-34 with a 3-3-2 record.

1920 - At the Summer Olympics, France's Suzanne Lenglen abandoned the customary tennis garb for a short, pleated skirt, sleeveless silk blouse, and matching sweater. She won two gold and a bronze medal and became the first female celebrity athlete.

1920 - Marjorie Voohies wins the first national tournament for female horseshoe pitchers.

1920's - The Lake Placid Club (NY) organizes skiing events for college women.

1921 - Helen Meany wins the first US Springboard Diving Championship, repeating in 1922, 1926, and 1927. She also wins the US Platform Chapionship in 1921-23, 1925 and 1928.

1921 - In Monaco in May, the first all-woman Olymiades Feminines Games are held.

1921 - A group of French women stage their version of international games for women, the Jeux Olympiques Feminine du Monde. 300 women from five countries compete in track and field and basketball. The games are repeated in 1922 and 1923.

1921 - In October, Alice Milliat and members of the Femina Sport from the Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale.

1921 - Bessie Coleman becomes the first black licensed pilot in the world.

1921 - Adrienne Bolland becomes the first woman to fly over the Andes, taking off from Mendoza, Argentina, and landing 10 hours later in Santiago de Chile. She flew at an altitude of 14,750 feet on bitter cold, having to avoid mountain peaks that were higher than the altitude her airplane could fly.

1921 - Phoebe Fairgrave becomes the first woman to do a double parachute jump, cutting away her first 'chute and opening a second. In the 1930s she organized a group of women fliers who barnstormed the country urging communities to paint the name of their town or city in large white letters on a rooftop to aid pilots in navigation. She was the first woman to hold a government aviation post, serving as technical advisor to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1921 - The National Women's Athletic Association is organized.

1921 - Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle, 14, wins an international 3-mile swim in New York Bay against 50 of the best swimmers of England and America.

1922 - Glenna Collett (Vare) wins the first of her record-making six US National Amateur golf championships (1922, 1925, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1935). She also holds the record for the most times in the finals (8). The Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring average is named in her honor.

1922 -The U.S. Field Hockey Association, the National Governing Body for field hockey in the United States, is established.

1922 - Miss J. I. Cave wins the first title at the Women's British Open Squash Championship.

1922 - The National Amateur and Athletic Federation (NAAF) is founded, committed to boys and girls being on an "equal footing with the same standards, the same program and the same regulaltions."

1922 - "Women as Athletes" appears as a heading in the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature.

1922 - The Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale hold the first of four Women's Olympic games. It included 11 track and field events and drew over 2,000 fans. Six countries participated, including the USA.

1922 - Lilian Gatlin becomes the first woman to fly across the continent in 27 hours and 11 minutes on Oct. 23.

1922 - The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) adds track and field events open to women.

1922 - Sybil Bauer swims the 100-yard backstroke in 1 minute 17.6 seconds.

1922 - First women's Australasian Tennis Championship is held.

1924 - The first Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix, France; figure skating is the only event for women.

1923 - 22% of US colleges have varsity sports teams for women.

1924 - Janet Allen is elected president of the Ladies' Ontario Hockey Association in Canada.

1924 - Publication of The Sportswoman magazine begins; it continues until 1936.

1924 - Alexandra David-Neel of England is the first European woman to travel to the forbidden city of Tibet.

1924 - Sybil Bauer becomes the first woman to break an existing men's world swimming record when she won the 100-meter backstroke in 1:23.2 at the Olympic Games.

1924 - Aileen Riggin becomes the first athlete to win Olympic medals in both swimming and diving. At the 1920 Antwerp Games, the 14-year-old from Brooklyn Heights, NY, won the first women's Olympic springboard diving competition. Four years later, in Paris, she won a silver in the springboard and a bronze in the 100-meter backstroke, making her the first athlete, male or female, to medal in both the Olympic swimming and diving competitions. She will go on to become one of America's first female sportswriters.

1924 - Women's foil is added to the events at the first Summer Olympic Games in Paris.

1924 - American Helen Wills brings home gold in both singles and doubles tennis at the Paris Olympic Games.

1924 - Gertrude Ederle wins three medals at the Paris Olympics: a gold in the 4x100-meter relay and bronze in the 100 and 400 freestyle.

1924 - Ruth Law (1901-60) is the first woman to quality for an international hydroplane license.

1924 - The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) holds the first national basketball tournmant for women with six teams.

1924 - Ora Washington becomes the first black American woman to win the American Tennis Association's singles title, a title she held for 12 years.

1925 - The Society of Women Geographers is organized by Helen Chalmers Adams, Marguerite Harrison, Blair Niles (Mary Blair Rice Beebe) and Grace Seton.

1925 - For the first time since 1665, a woman jockey wins the Newmarket Town four-mile race. Eileen Joel, 18, raced against four other women and three men to ride Hogier home by three lengths in the oldest racing event in history.

1926 - New York City native Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle, 19, becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel in 14 hours, 31 minutes, beating the best time to date by 2 hours on Aug. 6. (She had won a gold medal and 2 bronzes for swimming at the 1924 Olympics.)

1926 - Just three weks after Ederlie's successful Channel crossing, American Mrs. Clemington Corson of New York made the swim in 15.5 hours. Her record time also beat all the men simmers to date.

1926 - The first national speed skating championships for women are held by the Amateur Skating Union.

1926 - The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) sponsors the first-ever national women's basketball championship, using men's rules.

1926 - Kinue Hitomi (1907-31), Japan's foremost woman athlete, wins two gold medals at the second World Women's Games.

1926 - The International Table Tennis Federation is formed, holding the first world championship with 9 nations competing.

1926 - Suzanne Lenglen of France plays Helen Wills, a 20-year-old American, in the only match between two tennis greats. Lenglen won, 6-3, 8-6.

1927 - Elizabeth Graham, a female goalie from Queens University, wore the first goalie face mask - a wire fencing mask to protect her face during collegiate games. [In 1959 Montreal goalie Jacques Plante begins wearing a face mask in every game he plays.]

1927 - The International Federation of Women's Field Hockey Associations (IFWHA) is formed to provide competition for teams from the US, England, Scotland and Ireland.

1927 - American Helen Wills wins her first of eight singles tennis titles at the All-England Club from 1927-38. She holds the No. 1 world ranking for eight years, not losing a set from 1927-33. In her career, she captured a total of 31 career Grand Slam titles, including 19 in singles.

1928 - Nellie Zabel Willhite solos on Jan. 13, becoming South Dakota's first licensed woman pilot - and probably the first pilot who was almost completely deaf. She was outstanding air show performer in the tight, fast maneuvering necessary in balloon target racing in which pilots would fly into balloons to burst them.

1928 - Helene Mayer of Germany wins the gold medal for Fencing in the Amsterdam Olympics. She would hold three world championships (1929, 1931, 1937).

1928 - Sonja Henie (1912-69) wins the first of three consecutive Olympic gold medals (1932 + 1936) in figure skating. She was known as the "Pavalova of the Ice" for her ballerina-like approach to skating and her meticulous choreography, inspiring thousands of young women to take up figure skating. When she retired from amateur competition in 1936, she had won nearly 1,500 medals and trophies.

1928 - Lottie Schoemmel sets a new women's indoor smimming edurance records at 32 hours.

1928 - Eleanora Sears helps found the US Women's Squash Racquets Association. She was its first singles champion, later served as president, and was captain of the US national team.

1928 - The Summer Olympic Games open gymnastics and five track and field events to women. Official rules stipulate that women wear shorts that came with in about 4 inches of the knee. American Betty Robinson becomes the first woman to win a gold medal in track and field at the Olympics for the 100-meter race.

1929 - Tuskegee Institite in Alabama formsone of the first women's college track teams, offering scholarships to promising women athletes, and adding women's event to their Tuskegee relays track meets.

1929 - The Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association (IWFA) is founded by Bryn Mawr, Cornell, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

1929 - 20 women compete in the first major air race for women, the National Air Race, which began in California on Aug. 13 and ended at Cleveland Municipal Airport on Aug. 20. Competitors weren't allowed to use any navigational aids except road maps, so flying was limited to daylight hours. The race was won Louise Thaden.

1929 - The Ninety-Nines, a club for women pilots, forms with Ameilia Earhart as the first president. The name comes from the number of pilots who join out of the 126 licensed women pilots.

1929 - Rose Jacobs bowls a perfect 300 game in a Rainbow League match in Schenectady, NY.

1930 - Ruth Nichols sets a transcontinental speed record of 13 hours and 21 minutes, beating the record set by Charles Lindbergh.

1930 - Anne Morrow Lindbergh is the first woman to earn a glider pilot's license.

1930 - 17-year old Stella Walsh from Cleaveland, OH, sets her second world record in a week by running the 220-yard dash in 26 and 4/5 seconds.

1930 - On April 20, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindburgh set a transcontinental speed recprd. flying from Los Angeles to New Yprk in 14 hours, 45 minutes. Anne was 7 months pregnant at the time.

1930 - Kinue Hitomi is the captain of the Japanese team at the Prague Women's Games, winning all of Japan's 15 points and 2 golds, 1 silver and 1 bronze, as well as a gold medal as the best all-around athlete. (She died in 1931 at age 24 of tuberculosis.)

1930 - Amy Johnson, an Englishwoman, sets a speed record flying from London to India of 13 days, while on her way to Austrailia, becoming the first woman to fly that distance solo.

1930 - Jennie Kelleher of Wisconsin is the first woman to bowl a perfect 300 game.

1931 - Roberta C. Ranck wins the first US All-Around Gymnastics Championship.

1931 - Lili de Alvarez shocks social propriety by playing at Wimbledon in shorts instead of the longish, hampering dresses that were the de rigueur tennis dress on June 24.

1931 - Women begin competing in skiing events at the world championships sponsored by the International Ski Federation.

1931 - Baseball Commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis bans women from professional baseball (the bans lasts until 1992), after 17-year-old pitcher Virne Beatrice "Jackie" Mitchell strikes out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game for the Chattanooga Lookouts. Landis voids Mitchell's contract, saying baseball is "too strenuous" for women.

1931 - Phoebe Omlie scores the highest number of points in the first air race between men and women in Cleaveland, Ohio.

1931 - Helene Madison is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for swimming.

1931 - Gloria Hollister Anable sets a new deapth record for a woman, descending 1,208 feet below the ocean in a bathysphere.

1931 - Katherine Cheung is the first woman of Chinese ancestry to earn a pilot's license.

1931 - The first international women's archery competition is held. Janina Spychajowa- Kurkowska of Poland wins the women's singles title. She won six more world titles in archery, more than any other man or woman in history.

1932 - Speed skating for women is demonstrated at the Winter Olmpics in Lake Placid, NY.

1932 - Babe Didrikson scores enough points at the AAU national meet to win the team championship single-handedly. She won 6 gold medals and broke 4 world's records, totalling 30 points. The entire second place team won just 22. She is named the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year for track and field.

1932 - The US Women's Lacrosse Association is formed, holding its first tournament the next year.

1932 - Jacqueline Cochran gets her pilot's license after two and a half weeks of flight lessons. At her death in 1980 she held more speed, altitude, and distance records than any pilot, male or female, in the world.

1932 - The first Curtis Cup Match is staged in May at England's Wentworth Golf Club and drew fifteen thousand spectators. The US team narrowly beat the British team. After years of trying organize an international women's competition, the Curtis Cup match would be staged every two years, alternating between the US and England.

1932 - Amelia Earhart, 34, becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in a red Lockheed Vega in 15 hours and 39 minutes.

1932 - American Helene Madison becomes the first woman to swim the 100 yard freestyle in a minute at the Los Angeles Olympics. "Babe" Didrikson becomes the first woman to win medals in three events at the Summer Games. Olympic rules restrict women competitors to three events.

1932 - Two black American women, Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett qualify for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, but are not allowed to compete.

1932 - In April, Florence Clasr, 32, becomes the first woman to drive a dog sled team to the summit of Mount Washington, NH, and back.

1933 - Helen Jacobs is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis.

1933 - At the Chicago National Solfball Tournament, the male and female champions are honored equally.

1933 - Pope Pius XI condemns women who attend boxing matches. He states that it isn't possible to preserve the "dignity and grace peculiar to women" when they "admire spectacles of brutal violence."

1933 - Jockey Judy Johnson, an Englishwoman, rides three winners in a single day on Oct. 7 at Commack, LI, again on Nov. 12, and wins two more races the next day.

1933 - Babe Didrikson makes her first professional basketball appearance, scoring 9 points for the Brooklyn Yankees in a 19-16 win over the Long Island Ducklings.

1934 - Mary Hirsch becomes the first woman to be a licensed trainer of thoroughbreds.

1934 - Balloonist Jeannette Piccard and her husband, Jean, set an altitude record of 57,600 feet into the stratosphere. Her altitude record is unbroken until Valentina Tereshkova goes into space in 1963.

1934 - Phyllis Dewar of Moose Jaw becomes the first Canadian woman to win four gold medals for swimming at the 1934 British Empire Games, a record that stands until 1966.

1934 - The Modern Mermaids, a synchronized swim team, perform at the Chicago World's Fair.

1934 - Virginia Van Wie is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf.

1934 - Anne Morrow Lindburgh becomes the first woman to win the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Gold Medal for distinction in exploration, research and discovery.

1935 - Jacueline Cochran becomes the first woman to enter the Bendix Transcontinental Air Race.

1935 - Laura Ingalls is the first woman to fly across the country non-stop from Brooklyn to Burbank.

1935 - Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly non-stop between Hawaii and Oakland, CA.

1935 - Helen Wills Moody is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis.

1935 - Glenna Collett Vare (born in 1903), won her last championship, defeating the teenaged as Patty Berg before an estimated crowd of 15,000 who came to watch the Grande Dame of golf. Vare dominated the sport in the 1920s, winning 59 of 60 consecutive matches. Women golfers of the day competed for the fun of it since there were no money prizes for women.

1936 - Sonja Henie wins the last of her ten consecutive world skating championships, begun in 1927. She revolutionized skating by choreographing her programs in time to music and by wearing short-skirted costumes, allowing her the freedom to execute more complicated movements.

1936 - Ruth Hughes Aarons (1910-80) wins the world singles table tennis championship, the first American to do so.

1936 - Sally Sterns becomes the first woman coxwain of a male rowing team at Rollins College.

1936 - Louise Thaden and co-pilot Blanche Noyes win the prestigious trans-continental air race for the Bendix Trophy, after women are allowed to enter for the first time in 1935. Laura Ingalls comes in second, and Amelia Earhart, with co-pilot Helen Richey, placed fifth, giving women three of the top five race finishes.

1936 - Kit Klein of the US becomes the first woman World Champion of Speedskating. (To qualify, a skater must win three of the four contested distances - 500, 1500, 3000 and 5000 meters).

1936 - Alpine skiing events for women are featured at the Garmisch Partenkirchen Games.

1936 - Women's tennis champion Helen Wills Moody and Howard Kinsey, a former Davis Cup player, volley a tennis ball 2, 001 times without a miss, in 1 hour, 18 minutes. Mr. Kinsey breaks off the volley to teach a lesson.

1936 - Formation of the All American Red Heads Basketball Team, who use men's rules and compete against men's teams. The team toured for more than fifty years, playing only men's teams and winning 85-90% of all their games.

1936 - Alice Marble, wins the first of 12 US Open championships. Her aggressive serve-and-volley style -- unusual for a woman -- that set new standards for tennis. In her last three years as an amateur, she won 23 of 24 tournaments and 120 of 122 matches.

1936 - Helen Stephens Moody is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for track.

1936 - Gynmastics for women is added to the Olympic program at the Berlin Games.

1937 - The US nation championship in cycling begin with competition for women with Doris Kopsky taking top honors.

1937 - Trainer Mary Hirsch's thoroughbred, No Sir, races in the Kentucky Derby.

1937 - The US becomes the first country to win the men's (Swaythling Cup) and women's (Marcel Corbillon Cup) team table tennis championships in the same year.

1937 - Conchita Cintron (born Chile 1922) begins fighting bulls in Mexico at age 15. During her 13-year career she slew 800 bulls. She retired in 1951. She is recognized as the first woman to compete at a high professional level as a bullfighter.

1937 - Katherine Rawls is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for swimming.

1938 - Patty Berg, 20, wins the National Women's Amateur Golf title and was voted the outstanding woman athlete of the year in an Associated Press poll.

1938 - The Philadelphia Girls' Rowing Club is formed.

1939 - The first synchronized swimming competition in the United States is a dual meet between Wright Junior College and the Chicago Teacher's College.

1939 - Eleanor Holm, a 1936 Olympian, performs at the World's Fair in New York, popularizing synchronized swimming nationwide.

1939 - Alice Coachman wins the first of 10 national high jump championships.

1939 - Alice Marble is a triple champion at Wimbledon in singles, doubles and mixed doubles.

1939 - Alice Marble is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis, a feat she repeats in 1940.

1940 - At the 23rd annual Women's National Bowling Association tournament held in Syracuse, NY, 1185 5-women teams compete for the championship.

1940 - Belle Martel of Van Nuys, California, becomes the first woman boxing referee when she officiated at eight bouts in San Bernardino, CA.

1941 - The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) adopts synchronized swimming as an official competitive sport for duet and team events. The first Synchronized Swimming Championship is held March 1 in Wilmette, IL.

1941 - Betty Hicks Newell Marble is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf.

1942 - Gloria Callen is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for swimming.

1943 - Judy Johnson rides Lone Gallant at Plimlico, marking the first time a woman rides professionally in Maryland. She finishes 10 of a field of 11.

1943 - Phillip K. Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, establishes the All-American Girls Softball League, the forerunner of the All-American Girls Baseball League (AAGBL).

1943 - In its June 14th issue, Time estimates there are 40,000 semi-pro women's softball teams in the US.

1943 - Patty Berg is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf.

1944 - In Datyon, OH, Ann Baumgartner (Carl), a WASP test pilot for the armed services, is the first woman to fly the top-secret experimental YP-59 experimental jet airplane, flying 350 mph at 35,000 feet.

1944 - Swimmer Ann Curtis becomes the first woman to win the James E. Sullivan Memorial Award, presented annually by the Amateur Athletic Union since 1930. The Sullivan Award is named after the former AAU president and given to the athlete who, “by his or her performance, example and influence as an amateur, has done the most during the year to advance the cause of sportsmanship.” An athlete cannot win the award more than once.

1944 - Ann Curtis is also named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for swimming.

1945 - Babe Didrikson Zaharias is named the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year for golf, 13 years after winning for track and field in 1932. She repeats in 1946 and 1947. The Babe won a total of 114 golf tournaments, 83 amateur golf tournaments, 31 on the P.G.A. tour, with a string of seventeen consecutive major women's tournaments.

1946 - Alice Coachman becomes the first woman of color to be a member of the US All-American Track and Field Team. By 1948, 9 of 12 members of the women's team would be black.

1946 - The Women's Professional Golf Association is formed. Patty Berg wins $1,500 in the first US Women's Golf Open.

1947 - Babe Didrikson Zaharias becomes the first American woman to win the British Women's Amateur Golf Tournment.

1947 - Aviator Margie Hurley becomes the first woman to break the 300 mph airspeed barrier.

1947 - Ann Shaw Carter is the first licensed helicopter pilot.

1947 - Althea Gibson won the first of ten consecutive American Tennis Association national championships.

1947 - Barbara Washburn becomes the first woman to climb 20,320-foot Mount McKinley.

1948 - Gretchen Fraser takes the gold in the women's slalam at the Winter Olympics, becoming the first American skier to take a gold in the slalom and a silver in the alpine combined.

1948 - Canadian Barbra Ann Scott wins the Olympic, World, and European figures skating titles.

1948 - Alice Coachman becomes the first black American female gold Olympic medalist, in the high jump.

1948 - Patty Berg becomes a founder and the first president of the Ladies' Professional Golf Association. [In 1979 the LPGA established the Patty Berg Award for outstanding contributions to women's golf.]

1948 - Amy Johnson sets the record for the decade for speed by flying 671 mph (1,073 kph).

1948 - The Girls Rodeo Association is formed in San Angelo, TX with 74 founding members. Margaret Owen is crowned the first GRA World Champion. The GRA changes its name to the Women's Professional Rodeo Association in 1982.

1948 - Fanny Blankers-Koen is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for track.

1948 - Louise Suggs officially joins the LPGA Tour after a brilliant career as an amateur, with three pro major wins to her credit.

1948 - Roller Derby is broadcast live on television from New York City with women skaters.

1949 - The US Volleyball Association begins sponsoring the women's open title.

1949 - Bobbie Rosenfeld is named the Canadian Woman Athlete of the Half Century. She excelled at most sports, including ice hockey and softball, and was an 1928 Olympic track and field gold medalist.

1949 - Wilson Sporting Goods agrees to sponsor the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA).

1949 - Louise Suggs wins the US Women's Open by 14 strokes, setting an LPGA 72-hole scoring record, which stood until 1953 when Suggs lowered it to 288 with a win at the Tampa Open.

1949 - Marcenia Lyle Alberga is the first woman to play a full season in a professional men's baseball league.

1949 - Marlene Bauer, 15, wins the first US Golf Association Girls' Junior Championship out of a field of 33 girls under 18 years at the Philadelphia Country Club. She became the youngest athlete ever to be named AP Athlete of the Year, Golfer of the Year and Teenager of the Year.

1949 - Wantha Davis, riding Northeast, defeats Johnny Langdon on Grey Spook in a match race in Tijuana, Mexico.

1949 - Marlene Bauer is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf.

1950 - Florence Chadwick, 31, swims the English Channel, beating the record set by Gertrude Ederle in 1926.

1950 - Six women are selected as charter members of the Women's Golf Hall of Fame.

1950 - Babe Didrikson Zaharis is named “Women Athlete of the Half Century” by an AP poll for her outstanding performances in golf, basketball, baseball, javelin, tennis, diving, bowling, 80 meter hurdles, shot-put, high jump & discus. She won won $14,800 during the LPGA's first season, a record one-year amount.

1950 - Joan Pflueger wins the Grand American Trapshoot at Vandalia, OH against an all-male field. The 18 year old from Miami outshot contestants from the other 47 states (and Cuba), breaking 100 straight clay pigeons. She is the first woman champion in the 51 year history of the meet.

1950 - Margaret Dobson of Portland, OR, is the women's Fast Pitch Tournament batting champion for softball with a .615 batting average.

1950 - Kathyrn Johnson, 12, the first girl to play Little League Baseball, plays for the King's Dairy team in Corning, NY, during the summer season.

1950 - Althea Gibson becomes the first African-American— male or female—to play in a major United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) event.

1951 - Babe Zaharias sets a one-year earnings record for women golfers with $14,800 in winnings. She is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf.

1951 - Pat McCormick becomes the first diver to ever win all five national championships. She took a gold in springboard diving and a gold in platform diving at the Helsinki Summer Games, as well. She also wins AAU's James E. Sullivan Memorial Award.

1951 - The US solo and duet champions, Beulah Gundling, Connie Todoroff and Shirley Simpson, demonstrate synchronized swimming at the first Pan American Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1951 - Florence Chadwick, a 32-year old typist from California, becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions and is also the first to swim from England to France against the tide.

1951 - Althea Gibson becomes the first black player to comete at Wimbledon.

1951 - Maureen Connolly is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis; she is named again in 1952 and 1953.

1951 - Louise Suggs, a founder and charter member of the LPGA, becomes the association's first Hall of Famer. During her pro career, Suggs won 50 LPGA events, eight of which were majors.

1951 - Betty Chapman cecomes the first black American professional softball player as an outfielder on the Admiral Music Maids of the National Girls Baseball League out of Chicago.

1952 - The romantic comedy, Pat and Mike, features Katherine Hepburn as an all-around athlete who competes against real-life athletes of theera, Babe Zaharis and Betty Hickes in golf, and Aloce Marble and Gussie Moran in tennis.

1952 - Patricia McCormick from Big Spring, TX, becomes the first North American woman bullfighter on Jan. 20 in Juarez, Mexico.

1952 - Women compete in "open" equestrian events at the Olympics for the first time, meaning men and women compete together.

1952 - A 10k cross-country or nordic ski event for women is added to the Oslo Winter Olympics.

1952 - Andrea Mead Lawrence becomes the first US woman to win two gold medals in one Olympics, in the slalom and giant slalom. She skiied the Olympic flame into the stadium at the Squaw Valley Olympics in 1960.

1953 - Maureen "Little Mo" Connolly, 16, becomes the first woman to score a Grand Slam - winning all four major world (US Open, Wimbledon, French & Australian Opens) tennis matches in a single season, with her US singles title at Forest Hills on Sept. 7.

1953 - Tenley Albright becomes the first US skater to win the world figure skating crown.

1953 - Jacqueline Cochran becomes the first woman to fly faster than sound.

1953 - The U.S. Women's Open comes under the auspices of the USGA.

1953 - International basketball competition begins for women, with the USA women's basketball team winning the gold medal in the World Championships.

1954 - Babe Zaharias is named the AP's Top Woman Athlete for a sixth time. Two months before her death of cancer in 1955, she gives a 4-foot high trophy to be awarded to the AP's Woman Athlete of the Year so that other women would have more than press clippings to show for their efforts. It is named the Babe Didrikson Zaharias trophy in her honor and memory.

1954 - B. Byer of Cape Moreton, Australia, catches a 1,052-pound white shark. It is the largest white shark ever caught by a woman.

1954 - Canadian Marilyn Bell, 16, becomes the first person to swim across Lake Ontario.

1954 - The Iowa Girls' High School Athletic Union is formed under the direction of Wayne Cooley, which successfully works to establish a state-wide program for girls sports equal to that for boys. By 1974 almost 500 Iowa schools have full girls' programs, which included equal coaches salaries, better media coverage, and end of season championships for girtls and boys.

1954 - Nera White, a 6’ 1” foward from Tennessee, helps her team win the first of 10 AAU championships in 11 years, including eight straight from 1962-69.

1955 - 13 women form the Whirly Girls, the first female association of helicopter pilots.

1955 - The International Women's Fishing Association of Palm Beach, FL, was founded to promote angling competitions for girls and women.

1955 - The Pan American Games in Mexico City include synchronized swimming as an official event for the first time. The US wins all three events.

1955 - Willa Worthington McGuire wins her third world water-skiing overall title, repeating her feat from 1949 and 1950.

1955 - Louise Boyd becomes the first woman to fly over the North pole.

1955 - The first LPGA championship is held.

1955 - Patty Berg is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf.

1956 - Larissa Latynina, a Ukrainian native, wins the all-around title and three other gold medals, plus a silver and a bronze in gymnastics at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

1956 - Australian swimmer Dawn Fraser wins the gold in the 100-meter freestyle at the Melbourne Olympics, the first of a career total of eight medals—four gold and four silver, four in individual events and four in relays—and 39 world records. She will be the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals and the first swimmer to win an event in three straight Olympiads (1956, 1960 and ‘1964).

1956 - Althea Gibson becomes the first black to win a Grand Slam singles title when she wins the French championships. The next year, she makes more history by winning Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals, the first black to win either.

1956 - Pat McCormick becomes the first woman to win back-to-back springboard and platform diving events at the Olympics. Tenley Albright, who overcame polio as a child, becomes the first American woman to win a Olympic gold medal in figure skating. Nell Cecelia Jackson, a 1948 Olympian, becomes the first black coach of the women's track team. She is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for diving.

1956 - Willye White, 16, a member of the US Olympic team at the Melbourne Games, wins a silver medal in the long jump, becoming the first American female ever to medal in that event.

1956 - The Uber Cup, signifying the winner of the Ladies International Badminton Chamionship, is initiated.

1957 - With her first Wimbledon title and first U.S. Championship, Althea Gibson becomes the top-ranked female tennis player in the world.

1957 - Louise Suggs wins the Vare Trophy for the best scoring average for a woman golfer.

1957 - Althea Gibson is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis, a feat she repeats in 1958.

1957 - Nera White leads the US women's basketball team to a gold medal at the world championships in Brazil.

1958 - Maria-Teresa de Filippis of Italy is the first woman to compete in a European Grand Prix auto race.

1958 - Women are admitted to the international cycling championships.

1959 - Patty Berg hits the first "hole-in-one" for a woman in a golf tournament.

1959 - Maria Bueno is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis.

1960 - At the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, CA, Carol Heiss performs the first double jump in women's figure skating.

1960 - Wilma Rudolph, during the Olympic Games in Rome, becomes the first American woman to win 3 track and field gold medals - in the 100 meter dash, the 200 meter dash, and the 400 meter relay. She was nicknamed the "Black Gazelle" for her graceful running style. She is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for 1960 and 1961.

1960 - Larissa Latynina wins three golds, two silvers and a bronze medal for gymnastics at the Rome Olympic medal count while three months pregnant.

1960 - Mamie Rollins sets a new record for women's 70-yard hurdles at 8.7 seconds.

1960 - Marion Ladewig, of Grand Rapids, MI, wins the first women's pro bowling tournament, the Professional Women's Bowling Association Championship in North Miami Beach, FL.

1960 - Donna de Varona is the youngest member of the 1960 US Olympic swimming team at 13.

1961 - Mickey Wright wins the first woman's golf "grand slam," with the LPGA championship, the US Open, and the Titleholders tournament.

1961 - On Feb. 15, golfer Louise Suggs defeats 10 men at the $10,000 Palm Beach par-3 invitational.

1961 - Wilma Rudolph, track, wins AAU's James E. Sullivan Memorial Award. After she retired from competition, she finished college and then took part in a special program to help ghetto children learn athletics from star performers.

1962 - Dawn Fraser is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for swimming.

1962 - The National Women's Rowing Association is formed in California.

1963 - Helen Shablis of the USA is the first woman's Tenpin Bowling World Champion.

1963 - the LPGA championship tournament is televised for the first time, with a record purse of $9,000, going to winner Mickey Wright. She is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf, repeating in 1964. Mickey Wright set the LPGA record with 13 victories this year.

1964 - Volleyball is added to the Olympic Games.

1964 - Willye White, the only American woman to compete on five Olympic track and field teams, wins her second silver at the Tokyo Games in the 4x100-meter relay. During a career as a member of 39 international track and field teams, White held the American record in the long jump for 16 years. She was also a member of three US 4x100 world-record relay teams.

1964 - Ukrainian native Larissa Latynina completes her Olympic career in gymnastics with more medals than any athlete in Olympic history: nine gold, five silver and four bronze.

1964 - Althea Gibson becomes the first black woman to earn her LPGA player's card.

1964 - Jerrie Mock is the first woman to fly successfully around the world in a Cessna 18. She set seven new records during the flight which lasts 29 days, traveling nearly 22,860 miles.

1964 - Mickey Wright is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf again this year with 11 victories on the year.

1965 - Margo Oberg, who was the youngest winning competitor in the women's no-age limit class at a San Diego surfing event at age 11, wins her first national event at age 12. She was the only girl competing against a beach full of boys.

1965 - Donna De Varona, a 1964 Olympic swimmer, becomes the first woman sports broadcaster on national TV for ABC. She is also a founder of the Women's Sports Foundation.

1965 - Golfer Kathy Whitworth is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, an award she earns again in 1966.

1965 - The Women's Golf Open is televised nationally for the first time.

1965 - The first international women's softball tournament is held in Melboourne, Australia, with the home country beating the US in the final, 1-0.

1966 - Billie Jean King wins her first Wimbledon single title, repeating in 1967 and '68.

1966 - The first intercollegiate women's basketball tournmanet is played in Pennsylvania.

1966 - Roberta Gibb of the US, becomes the first woman to finish the Boston Marathon, a feat she repeats in 1967 and 1968. She finished in the top third behind about 125 of the 500 men.

1966 - Joyce Hofman wins her second straight world amateur surfing championship in Sydney Australia - becoming the first woman to win the title twice.

1966 - The first National Women's Rowing Association nationals are held in Seattle, with 45 boats entered.

1966 - LPGA player Kathy Whitworth wins the first of her 7 LPGA Player of the Year awards (1966-69, 1971-73).

1967 - The first woman’s season champion in the World Cup of ski racing is Canada’s Nancy Greene, who wins the final race of the season by seven-hundredths of a second. She repeats as world champion in 1968, and wins an Olympic gold medal in the giant slalom at the Winter Games in Grenoble, France, as well.

1967 - Billie Jean King is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, an honor she earns again in 1973.

1967 - K. (Katherine) Switzer registers to run the Boston Marathon. Race officials try to tear her number from her back during the race.

1968 - The Olympic Committee conducts gender tests for the first time in international sports at the Winter Games in Grenoble, France.

1968 - Swimmer Debbie Meyer wins AAU's James E. Sullivan Memorial Award. The year before she was named the Woman Athlete of the Year - by the Soviet news agency, TASS!

1968 - Anna Lewis becomes the youngest person to win a world rodeo championship when she wins the Womens's Pro Rodeo Association barrel racing at age 10.

1968 - Enriquette Basilio becomes the first woman to light the Olympic flame at the Mexico City Summer Games.

1968 - Debbie Meyer becomes the first female to win three individual gold medals in Mexico City. At age 16, she set Olympic records in the 200-meter, 400-meter and 800-meter freestyle races.

1968 - Wyomia Tyus becomes the only woman to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals in the 100-meter dash at Mexico City; the first in Tokyo. She won 8 national AAU championships and was inducted in the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 1985.

1968 - Peggy Fleming is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for skating.

1968 - Margo Oberg wins her first World Championship in surfing.

1968 - Kathy Whitworth and Carol Mann both win 10 LPGA events during the year.

1969 - Diane Crump becomes the first woman jockey to ride in a parimutuel horse race in North America.

1969 - Barbara Jo Rubin becomes the first woman jockey to win at a US thoroughbred track.

1969 - Sharon Sites Adams becomes the first woman to sail solo across the Pacific in the 31-foot Sea Harp.

1969 - Debbie Meyer is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for swimming.

1969 - 17-year old Ruth White becomes the first black woman to win a major US fencing title and the youngest, when she is named the national fencing champion.

1970 - Just 294,000 American high school girls take part in interscholastic sports.

1970 - Pat Palinkas is the first woman to play in a professional football game. She held the ball for the place kickers on the Orlando Panthers team.

1970 - Diana Crump becomes the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby aboard Fathom on May 2.

1970 - The US's Mary Jo Peppler is voted the outstanding volleyball player in the world at the International Games in Bulgaria.

1970 - Cathy Rigby wins a silver medal in balance beam at the world championships, becoming the first American man or woman to win a medal in international competition.

1970 - Australian Margaret Smith Court becomes the second grand slam tennis winner. In her career, Smith-Court would win 24 Grand Slam singles titles, of a record 62 total Grand Slam titles

1970 - Chi Cheng is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for track.

1971 - Canadian Debbie Brill becomes the first woman to high jump six feet.

1971 - The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women is formed to plan, govern, and promote the growing number of college tournament for women athletes.

1971 - Billie Jean King becomes the first woman athlete to win more than $100,000 in a single season in any sport. She is the only woman to have won US singles titles on grass, clay, carpet and hard court.

1971 - Cheryl White, 17, becomes the first black woman to ride a horse, Ace Reward, at the Thitsledown Race Track in Cleaveland.

1971 - The five-player, full-court game and the 30-second shot clock is introduced to women's basketball.

1971 - Jockey Mary Bacon becomes the first woman to ride to 100 wins on California Lassie on June 30 at the Thitsledown Race Track in Cleaveland.

1971 - Evone Goolagong is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis.

1971 - Austria’s Annemarie Moser-Pröll, 17, becomes the youngest woman to win a World Cup in overall points title for downhill skiing. During her 12 year career, she wins a record 62 World Cup races, includuing 36 downhill victories, to become the most accomplished female downhill skier.

1971 - Althea Gibson is inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

1972 - At the Munich Olympics, Shirley Babashoff, 15, wins the first of her eight Olympic medals in swimming. She won 27 national championships, and was a member of five world-record-setting relay teams.

1972 - Congress passes Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any education program or activities receiving Federal financial assistance.” When President Nixon signs the act on July 23 about 31,000 women are involved in college sports; spending on athletic scholarships for women is less than $100,000; and the average number of women's teams at a college is 2.1.

1972 - There are 817,073 girls participating in high school sports.

1972 - Laura Blears Ching, the International Surfing champion, is the first woman to go up against men in a surfing meet in Hawaii.

1972 - AAU changes the rules of the Boston Marathon, letting women run with official numbers for the first time. Nina Kuscik is one of only nine women to finish the race. She comes in ahead of 800 men in the field of runners.

1972 - Immaculata College claims its first of three straight national titles with a 52-48 victory over West Chester State College, in the first-ever women's college basketball season to culminate with an official national championship.

1972 - Billie Jean King is named the Sportswoman of the Year by Sports Illustrated, the first time the award is given to a woman.

1972 - Olga Korbut is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for gymnastics.

1973 - Joan Lind wins the national title for single sculling.

1973 - There are 1.3 million girls participating in high school sports.

1973 - US Tennis Association announces that men and women will receive equal prize money at the US Open.

1973 - Marcia Frederick is the first American to win an Olympic gold medal and the gymnastics title. She wins on the uneven parallel bars.

1973 - Robyn Smith becomes the first woman jockey to win a stakes race when she rides North Sea to victory at Aqueduct.

1973 - Billie Jean King wins the "battle-of-the-sexes" tennis match against Bobby Riggs on Sept. 20 in Houston in front of more than 30,000 people and a world-wide TV audience of more than 50 million. It firmly connected women's rights to women's sports and inspired millions to demand equal rights, equal treatment, and equal pay.

1973 - Linda Meyers becomes the first US world champion in archery.

1973 - Golfer Kathy Whitworth finsihes the year with 7 wins and $82,862 in prize money.

1973 - Jean Balukas, 14, a native of Brooklyn, wins her first US pocket billiards championship, a title she also wins in 1974 and 1975.

1973 - Billie Jean King is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis.

1973 - Marion Ladewig, a native of Grand Rapids, MI, is voted the Greatest Woman Bowler of All Time. Ladewig started bowling at age 22, winning the first women's pro bowling tournament in 1960, the Professional Women's Bowling Association Championship in North Miami Beach, FL. Between 1949 and '63, Ladewig led the nation in high average for a woman four times, won the US Open Championship eight times, was a five-time World's Invitational Champion, and was voted Bowler of the Year nine times. No other person, man or woman, has won that award so many times.

1974 - Lanny Moss is the first woman to manage a professional men's baseball team. She was hired by the minor league Portland Mavericks.

1974 - Carol Polls becomes the first licensed woman boxing judge in the US.

1974 - Ann Meyers is the first high school player to make the women's national basketball team.

1974 - Little League Baseball admits girls (after losing a lawsuit). Bunny Taylor is the first girl to pitch a no-hitter.

1974 - The first issue of Women's Sports magazine is published.

1974 - The inaugeral season of the first women's professional football league kicks off with seven US teams.

1974 - Women begin competing for the world rowing championship.

1974 - Winston Cup racing reporter Pat Singer (who edited the Auto Racing Monthly in the early 1970's) gets her first garage pass at the Rockingham, NC, NASCAR track. This allowed her into auto racing's version of the pro sports locker room four years before Sports Ilustrated's Melissa Ludtke wins her lawsuit for equal access in major league baseball.

1974 - Chris Evert is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis; she repeats in 1975, 1977, and 1980. Chris Evert is ranked the number 1 American for the first of 5 consecutive years. Over her professional career, Evert would compile a win-loss record of 1309-146, and be the first woman to earn $1 million in her career.

1974 - Donna de Varona co-founds the Women's Sports Foundation, serving as the organization's first president from 1979 to '84.

1975 - On Jan. 27, the first-ever nationally televised women's college basketball game sees Immaculata defeat the University of Maryland, 85-63.

1975 - Olympian and national team member Debbie Green becomes volleyball's youngest All-American at 16.

1975 - Margaret Murdock out-guns all her competition, to be come the first woman to win a gold medal in the over-all shooting events at the Pan-American Games.

1975 - The US women's lacrosse team beats the British team for the first time in lacrosse history in England.

1975 - Margo Oberg, age 22, returns to surfing when it becomes a professional sport. She wins the Hang Ten International in Malibu, the first professional women's surfing contest, and the circuit's next two pro world titles. She will win her last title in 1981.

1975 - Marion Bermudez, 23, is the first US woman to compete in the formerly all-male Golden Gloves boxing tournament in Mexico City. She won her first match against a man. She is also a national karate champion and has competed against men in that sport, as well.

1975 - Title IX goes effect on June 21.

1975 - Tammy Wilson and partner John Fowler roller skate nonstop for 178 hours in Montgomery, AL.

1975 - In an endurance match, Sandy Gross and Rita Santarpia play continuous tennis for 30 hours and 30 minutes in Beltsville, MD.

1975 - The first girl to win the All-American Soap Box Derby is Karen Stead, age 11.

1975 - The International Women's Professional Softball League forms. Player contracts ranged from $1,000 to $3,000 per year, but the league disbands in 1980 because of financial problems.

1975 - Kathy Whitworth of Texas is inducted into the LPGA Hall of Fame. She was the LPGA's player of the year from 1966 to 1973 (except for 1970). During her 33-year career (1962 to 1985), she won 88 championships, the best record of any professional woman golfer. She was the LPGA Player of the Year seven times, won six majors, and was a seven-time winner of the Vare Trophy, as the female golfer with the lowest scoring average.

1975 - Junko Tabei of Japan is the first woman in the world to reach the top of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain. On May 16, leading an all-female Japanese expedition, she reaches the summit. She has also climbed to the top of the highest mountains in 20 of the 167 countries of the United Nations.

1975 - Mary Jo Peppler is named the International Volleyball Association's Coach of the Year.

1976 - Ann Meyers becomes the first female recipient of a full athletic scholarship at UCLA. She will lead the Bruins in rebounding, assists, steals and blocked shots during each of her four seasons. She will became the only player (male or female) in school history to record a quadruple-double (20 points, 14 rebounds, 10 assists and 10 steals).

1976 - Rowing, handball, and basketball become Olympic events for women. Joan Lind becomes the first American woman to win a (silver) medal as a single sculler.

1976 - Margaret Murdock becomes the first woman member of the US Olympic shooting team, sharing the podium with team member Lanny Bassham (the declared winner) after they posted equal gold medal-winning scores at the Montreal Summer Games.

1976 - At the Innsbruck Olympic Games, Sheila Young becomes the first American to win three medals at a Winter Olympics, taking gold in the 500, silver in the 1,500 and bronze in the 1,000 in speedskating. Later that year she wins her second skating/cycling world championships double before retiring from competition.

1976 - West German Rosi Mittermaier, 25, turns in the greatest performance in one Olympics by a female alpine skier when she captures the gold in the women’s downhill, the slalom and took the silver in the giant slalom at the Innsbruck Olympics.

1976 - Dorothy Hamill wins Olympic gold by scoring eight 5.8’s, a 5.9 in technical merit and all 5.9’s in artistic interpretation.

1976 - The Connecticut Falcons beat the San Jose Sunbirds in the first Women's Professional Softball World Series championship.

1976 - Natalie Dunn, 20, becomes the first US woman to win the world title in figure roller-skating; she repeats in 1978.

1976 - The New York Times reports there are more than 10,000 women weight-lifters, up from just a few hundred in 1974.

1976 - Krystyna Choynowski-Liskiewicz of Poland is the first woman to sail around the world solo, finishing on March 28.

1976 - Kitty O'Neil breaks the woman's world land-speed record by almost 300 mph, setting the new mark at 612 mph.

1976 - After winning three medals in speed skating at the Winter Olympics, Sheila Young of Michigan wins both the United States and world sprint cycling titles.

1976 - Shirley Babashoff becomes the all-time Olympic medal leader among US women. She wins one gold and two silver medals in 1972, along with one gold and four silver in 1976.

1976 - Margaret Murdock's silver three-position rifle victory at the Olympic Games makes her the first markswoman in history to win an Olympic medal. The event was open, with men and women competing against each other.

1976 - Nadia Comaneci is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for gymnastics.

1976 - Shirley Muldowney becomes the first woman to win a national event in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Top Fuel division.

1977- Mary Shane, the first woman to be hired by major league baseball on Jan. 4, is the new TV play-by-play commentator for the Chicago White Sox.

1977 - The first varsity women's soccer program begins at Brown University.

1977 - Camdian Comdy Nichols, 19, swims the English Channel in both directions in just 19 hours and 55 minutes.

1977 - Janet Guthrie, a 39-year-old physicist, becomes the first woman to participate in the Indianaoplis 500 auto race on May 29. She qualifies for the race in 1978 (finishing in eighth place) and 1979, as well.

1977 - Lucy Giovinco, a college student, becomes the first US bowler to win the Women's Bowling World Cup with a 620 in a 3-game round.

1977 - Marie Ledbetter becomes the first woman to win the World Accuracy Title at the 12th annual Parachuting Championship in Rome. In 8 jumps from 2,500 feet, her total accumulated distance off target is only 3.3 inches.

1977 - At 13, Lise Ann Russell becomes the youngest amatuer to qualify and compete in a LPGA event, the Coca Cola Classic in May.

1977 - Lucy Harris becomes the first woman to be drafted by an NBA team (New Orleans Jazz).

1978 - The Amateur Sports Act of 1978, prohibiting gender discrimination in open amateur sports, makes training facilities and money more available to women and minorities.

1978 - 1.6 million American high school girls are taking part in interscholastic sports.

1978 - Shirley Muldowney becomes the first woman first woman to win the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) points title.

1978 - Ann Meyers signs a contract to try out for the Indiana Pacers, the first woman to sign a contract with an NBA team. She later plays for the New Jersey Gems of the Women's Professional Basketball League.

1978 - Swimmer Tracy Caulkins wins AAU's James E. Sullivan Memorial Award.

1978 - Melissa Ludtke of Sports Illustrated file a lawsuit; a US District Court judge rules that male and female reporters should have the same access to athletes, even if it means entering locker rooms while athletes are dressing.

1978 - Norwegian Grete Waitz wins the New York City Marathon in 2:32:30, two minutes faster than the existing world record.

1978 - Betty Cook becomes the first woman to complete in one day the 580-mile run down the Gulf of California from San Felipe to La Paz. Averaging just over 50 mph, she completed the offshore boat race in 12 hours and 45 minutes.

1978 - 13-year old Penny Dean sets an English Channel swimming record time of 7 hours 40 minutes.

1978 - The first game of the Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL) is played between the Chicago Hustle and Milwaukee Does on Dec. 8.

1978 - New York State becomes the first state to offer an amateur competition for female and male athletes when the Empire State Games debut in Syracuse. Competition is divided into three categories: high school athletes, an open category for college students and young adults, and a masters level for older adults.

1978 - Nancy Lopez is the first female golfer to win Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year in the same year. She wonnine tournaments and $189,813, a record for any rookie, male or female. She is also named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for golf.

1978 - Carol Blazejowski, "Blaze," a three-time All-American forward at Montclair State. Is the first recipient of the Wade Trophy. She sets a collegiate scoring record (male or female) in Madison Square Garden with 52 points in a single game. She led the nation in scoring in '76-77 (33.5 ppg) and in '77-78 (38.6 ppg). Her total points at Montclair State were 3,199 points, a career scoring average of 31.7 points per game, the highest in the history of women's college basketball.

1979 - Lyn Memarie is the first woman to complete the Hawaii Ironman Triathalon in 12:55:38.

1979 - Grete Waitz becomes the first woman ever to run a marathon in under 2:30, winning her second New York City Marathon with a new world mark (2:27:33).

1979 - Softball debutes at the Pan-American Games with the United States Women's National Team winning the gold medal.

1979 - Crystal Fields, an 11-year-old from Cumberland, MD, becomes the first girl to win the annual baseball Pitch, Hit, and Run competition against boys in finals held in Seattle in conjunction with the All-Star Game.

1979 - Beth Heiden becomes the first US women's world overall champion in speed skating. She follows this with a world title in cycling and the NCAA championship in cross-country skiing.

1979 - Tracy Austin, age 16, wins the US Open singles tennis championship, becoming the youngest player to win the title. She is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis; repeating in 1981.

1979 - Dr. Sylvia Earle becomes the first person in the world to dive to a depth of 1,250 feet. She led an all-woman team of scientists in an experiment in undersea living, staying for two weeks in a submerged capsule in the Caribbean Sea.

1979 - Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, a 12-time world Cycling champion, begins competing. In her career, she will break 36 world records, and win 37 French national titles.

1979 - Ann Meyers, first woman to sign a contract with a men’s NBA team, is the first player taken in the Women’s Professional Basketball League draft. She is named the league’s first MVP at the end of the season.

1979 - Billie Jean King wins her 20th Wimbledon title.

 

1980 - Mary Decker becomes the first woman to run a mile in under 4 and a half minutes in Philadelphia on Jan. 25. She is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for track.

1980 - Eleanor Conn and her husband Sidney are the first to fly a hot air balloon over the North Pole.

1980 - A total of 233 women compete in the Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid - just 21 had competed there in 1932.

1980 - Field hockey becomes a medal sport for women in the Olympics. The Zimbabwe women's field hockey team went undefeated to win the Olympic gold medal.

1980 - Grete Waitz beats her own time in the New York City Marathon with her third win in three years in a time of 2:25:41.

1980 - The Women's Sports Foundation establishes the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame.

1980 - Shirley Muldowney becomes the first driver to win two National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) points titles.

1980 - Althea Gibson is inducted into the International Women’s Sports Hall of Fame.

1980 - Julie Krone, who will be come the winningest female jockey, gets he