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History of Women in Sports Timeline
Part 2 - 1900-1929
"People said women couldn't swim the Channel but I proved they could."
Gertrude Ederle
- 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 1905 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 - 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 - The French Academy of Sports awards Marie Marvingt a medal in March 1910 "for all sports."
- 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 exercise.
- 1910 - For the second consecutive year, Hazel Hotchkiss wins the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at the US Lawn Tennis Association's championships.
- 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.
- 1912 - Eleanora Sears completes her first marathon walk of 108-miles in 19 hours and 50 minutes.
- 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.
- 1913 - Women's ice hockey is played at the University of Saskatchewan.
- 1913 - American Alys McKey Bryant becomes the first woman to fly a plane in Canada on July 31 when she performed in an exhibition flight for Prince Albert, Duke of York (King George VI). She learned to fly after winning a job to perform in flight demonstrations. She married John Bryant, one of the pilots who hired her, and ended her flying career after his death in August 1913.
- 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 - Charlotte "Eppy" Epstein founded the National Women's Life Saving League in New York.
- 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 - Molla Bjuerstedt wins the women's US Lawn Tennis Association title for the thrid straight year with a 4-6, 6-0, 6-2 victory over Marion Vanderhoef.
- 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 Jeffersonborn 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.
- 1919 - Hazel Hotchkiss-Wrightman wins the women's US Lawn Tennis Association's championship with a 6-1, 6-2 victory over Marion Zinderstein.
- 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 regulations."
- 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.
- 1923 - Helen Mills, 17, defeats the defending Molla Bjurstedt Mallory, 6-2, 6-1, at the US Lawn Tennis Association's championship.
- 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.
- 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 and 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 serves 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.
- 1928 - Eula Pearl Carter Scott (1915-2005), OK, who becomes one of the nation's youngest female pilots at 3, is taught by Oklahoma aviation legend Wiley Post. On Sept. 12, Scott soloes and receives her license and spends several years performing in air shows. In 1983 she became the first woman elected to the Chickasaw Nation legislature. Scott is inducted into the Chickasaw Nation Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame in 1995.
- 1929 - Tuskegee Institite in Alabama forms one 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.
- 1929 - Ora Washington, a black American woman, wins her first American Tennis Association's singles title, a title she held for 7 years; she regains it in 1937. Her record held until Althea Gibson broke it with 9 titles.
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