New York State in Early Women's Sports History
- 1819 - Mms. Adolphe becomes the first woman to perform on a tightrope in the US in New York City.
- 1825 - Madame Johnson takes off in a hot air balloon in New York, landing in a New Jersey swamp.
- 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.
- 1876 - Mary Marshall, 26, shocks spectators when she beats Peter VanNess in the best of three walking matches (called Pedestrians) in New York City.
- 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.
- 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.
- 1888 - Women join (bi)cycling clubs in Chicago and tennis clubs in New York City.
- 1889 - The first women's six-day bicycle race ends at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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."
- 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.
- 1903 - Eleanor Roosevelt enrolls in the Junior League of New York where she teaches calisthenics and dancing to immigrants.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!"
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 1929 - The Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association (IWFA) is founded by Bryn Mawr, Cornell, New York University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
- 1939 - Eleanor Holm, a 1936 Olympian, performs at the World's Fair in New York, popularizing synchronized swimming nationwide.
- 1948 - Roller Derby is broadcast live on television from New York City with women skaters.
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