Women in History

January

January 2:  In 1857, M. Carey Thomas, pioneer of women's higher education is born.

January 3: In 1793, Lucretia Coffin Mott, abolitionist and women's rights leader is born.

January 4: In 1939, Dr. Frieda Wunderlich became the first woman to be named dean of a graduate school.

January 6: Born in 1412, Joan of Arc.

January 8: In 1975, Ella Grasso is sworn in as the first female governor in her own right.

January 9: In 1859, Carrie Chapman Catt is born. She was the engineer of the "winning plan" that gained passage of the 19th Amendment for women's suffrage.

January 10: Born in 1898, Katharine Burr Blodgett, developer of the first non-reflecting glass.

January 11: Amelia Earhart leaves Honolulu on first solo flight across the Pacific in 1935.

January 13: Born in 1850, Charlotte Ray was the first female black lawyer in the U.S.

January 14: In 1697, the Massachusetts colony holds a day of fasting to take "the blame and the shame" for the Salem witch trials and executions.

January 15: In 1968, Jeannette Rankin, age 87, leads 5,000 women in a march on Capitol Hill to protest the Vietnam War.

January 18: Born in 1841, Alice Putnam, kindergarten advocate in the 1870's.

January 21: Sophia Louisa Jex-Blake, born in 1840, was an English physician who secured the rights of her countrywomen to study and practice medicine.

January 23: In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first woman in the U.S. to gain an M.D. degree.

January 24: In 1866, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker receives the Congressional Medal of Honor for her Civil War Service.

January 26: Born in 1893, Wu Yi Fang is the first and only female college president in China before Communism.

From: Women Who Dare(Library of Congress)