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History of Women in Sports Timeline
Part 3 - 1930-1959
"Loosen your girdle and let 'her fly!"
Babe Didrikson Zaharias
- 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 York 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 - Helen Wills Moody beats Eileen B. Whitingstall 6-4, 6-1 for the women's title at the US Lawn Tennis Association championship.
- 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 - Marion Barberan and Joaquin Collar make the first non-stop flight between Seville, Spain, and Cuba, the first crossing of the Atlantic to the West Indies.
- 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.
- 1936 - American swimmer Marjorie Gestring becomes the youngest-ever Olympic gold medalist (in springboard diving) at age 13 yrs. 9 months.
- 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 - Jean Lee becomes the first woman to win a world target championship in archery.
- 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 - Maureen Connolly wins her first (of three) title at Wimbledon single's by defeating Louise Brough 6-4, 6-3.
- 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 - Betsy Rawls wins the US Women's Open with a 6-stroke palyoff victory over Jacqueline Pung.
- 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 - Marlene Bauer Hogge beats Patty Berg in a sudden-death playoff to take the LPGA Championship.
- 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.
- 1958 - Mickey Wright wins the LPGA Championship by six strokes over Fay Crocker.
- 1959 - Maria Bueno is named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year for tennis.
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