What every American should know about women's history: 200 events that shaped our destiny

1607: the first European women arrive at the Jamestown Colony

1638: Anne Hutchinson is expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony

1650: Anne Bradstreet, earliest American poet, publishes her first poem

1692: Salem Witch Trials

1740: Eliza Lucas Pinckney begins managing her father's plantation

1769-70: The Daughters of Liberty support the nonimportation agreement

1773: Phillis Wheatley's poetry becomes the first book by a Black American

1776: Abigail Adams admonishes John to "remember the ladies"

1783: New Jersey women vote under the terms of a state statute

1790: Judith Sargent Stevens Murray argues for equal education for women

1792: Mary Wollenstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women is first published in America

1818: Emma Willard asks for taxpayer support to educate females

1826: the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance is founded

1829: Fanny Wright becomes the first female public speaker in America

1829: Anne Royall, publisher and writer, is convicted of slander

1830: The first book advocating birth control is published in the United States

1832: Fanny Kemble, the brilliant English actress, makes her American debut in New York

1833: Oberlin is founded as America's first coeducational college

1833: Prudence Crandall opens a school for African-American girls

1833: the female Anti-slavery Society of Philadelphia is founded

1833: the first National Temperance Convention is held

1833: Lydia Maria Child publishes the first anti-slavery book in the United States

1834: Lowell Mill girls go on strike

1834: the American female moral reform society is founded

1837: Mount Holyoke Seminary, the first women's college is founded by Mary Lyon

1837: Angelina and Sarah Grimk©♭ lecture mixed-sex audiences on abolitionism

1839: Margaret Fuller initiates "conversations" with prominent Boston women

1840: the abolitionist movement divides over women's rights

1840: Georgia female college grants the first full bachelor's degrees to women

1840: Lucretia Mott is denied a seat at the World Anti-slavery Conference

1843: Dorothea Dix exposes the harsh treatment accorded the mentally ill in Massachusetts hospitals

1843: Oliver Wendall Holmes publishes The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever

1844: The Lowell Female Labor Reform Association is formed

1848: Maria Mitchell is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

1848: the Seneca Falls Convention

1849: Elizabeth Blackwell becomes the first modern woman to graduate from medical school

1850s: Amelia Bloomer introduces bloomers

1850: Philadelphia Quakers found the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania

1850: Harriet Tubman first leads slaves to freedom

1851: Sojourner Truth addresses a woman's rights convention in Akron, Ohio

1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe writes Uncle Tom's Cabin

1852: Emily Dickinson's first poem is published

1853: Antoinette Blackwell becomes the first ordained woman minister in America

1859: the American Medical Association announces its opposition to abortion

1863: the National Women's League supports emancipation

1867: the Grange Movement accepts women as equal members

1869: the Knights of Labor is founded and includes women workers

1869: Suffragists organize

1872: Victoria Woodhull runs for president of the United States

1873: the "women's uprising"

1873: Remington begins manufacture of the typewriter

1873: Congress passes the Comstock Law

1874: Mary Ewing Outerbridge brings tennis to the United States

1874: the U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case of Minor v. Happersett

1878: A woman suffrage amendment is first submitted to Congress

1879: Mary Baker Eddy founds the Christian Science Movement

1879: the first woman practices before the U.S. Supreme Court

1881: Clara Barton founds the American Red Cross

1882: the Association of Collegiate Alumnae is founded

1883: Ladies Home

Journal begins publication

1885: William Stead exposes widespread trafficking in young girls

1885: Annie Oakley joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show

1888: the formation of the Illinois Women's Alliance

1889: Jane Addams founds Hull House in Chicago

1889: Nellie Bly goes around the world in seventy-two days

1890: the General Federation of women's clubs is founded by Jane Cunningham Croly

1890: Suffragists unite under the banner of the National Woman Suffrage Association 1891: impressionist Mary Cassatt is invited to paint a mural for the world's Columbian Exposition

1892: Illinois becomes the first state to limit work hours for women

1893: Mary Elizabeth Lease runs for the U.S. Senate

1895: the Henry Street nurses Settlement is founded by Lillian D. Wald

1895: the first American women's amateur golf championship takes place at the same time as the first men's championship

1898: Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes Women and Economics

1899: Florence Kelley accepts a position with the National Consumer's League

1900: the rise of social feminism

1900: Sister Carrie reveals the harsher side of urban living

1901: the invention of the electric washing machine

1902: Fannie Farmer opens a cooking school in Boston

1903: the National Women's Trade Union League is formed

1903: Mother Jones leads a caravan of children to the President's Oyster Bay Home

1904: Ida Tarbell publishes the History of the Standard Oil Company

1906: Congress passes the Pure Food Act

1907: Margaret Sage founds the Russell Sage Foundation

1908: the U.S. Supreme court uphold protective legislation in Muller v. Oregon

1908: The American Home Economics Association is founded

1909: Sigmund Freud visits Clark University

1909: the "uprising of 30,000"

1910: Frances Elisabeth Crowell is appointed executive secretary of the Association of Tuberculosis clinics in New York City

1911: Dr. Alice Hamilton publishes the first study of occupational disease

1911: the Triangle Fire kills scores of young women workers

1911: Kansas City, Missouri, Passes the nation's first mother's pension law

1912: the Heterodoxy Club holds its first meeting

1912: Juliette Gordon Low founds the Girl Scouts of America

Alice Paul leads a protest at Woodrow Wilson's Inauguration

1912: the U.S. Children's Bureau is established

1913: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn organizes the Paterson Strike

1915: the Woman's Peace Party is founded

1916: Jeannette Rankin becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress

1916: Georgia O'Keefe's works are exhibited by Alfred Stieglitz

1916: the "birth control sisters" are arrested for opening a clinic in Brooklyn

1917: the American Women's Hospitals Service helps female physicians serve in World War I

1917: Isadora Duncan appears at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York

1919: the League of Women Voters is founded

1919: the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs is founded

1919: the Nineteenth Amendment is passed by Congress

1920: Paramount Pictures makes Lois Weber one of the highest paid movie directors

1920: Edith Wharton wins a Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence

1921: Congress passes the Sheppard-Towner Act

1921: the Women's Bond Club of New York is founded

1921: Betty Crocker first appears

1921: the Miss America Pageant attracts Atlantic City tourists

1921: M. Carey Thomas opens the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women in Industry

1922: Ida Husted Harper completes the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage

1922: Emily Post publishes Etiquette

1923: the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down minimum wage laws

1924: the National Council of Parents and Teachers is founded

1925: Florence Sabin is elected to the National Academy of Sciences

1928: Margaret Mead publishes Coming of Age in Samoa

1929: women inspectors in an Elizabethan, Tennessee, textile factory go on strike

1929:

Women pilots organize the ninety-nines

1930: the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching is founded

1931: Jane Addams is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1931: the Society of Industrial Engineers awards the first Gilbreth Medal to Lillian Gilbreth

1931: Dorothy Thompson interviews Hitler

1932: Amelia Earhart flies the Atlantic Ocean solo

1932: Frances Perkins becomes the first woman cabinet officer

1933: Sodium pentathol is introduced as an anesthetic

1935: Mary McLeod Bethune accepts a government position as minority affairs advisor

1935: Billie Holiday records with Teddy Wilson

1935: Congress enacts the Social Security Act

1935: the National Council of Negro Women is organized

1935: Sulfonamides are first used against Puerperal Fever

Margaret Mitchell publishes Gone With the Wind

1936: Eleanor Roosevelt transforms the role of First Lady

1936: the Federal Court rules that the Comstock Law Definition of Obscenity cannot include birth control

1938: Pearl Buck wins the Nobel Prize for literature

1938: the Fair Labor Standards Act establishes minimum wages

1939: Karen Horney publishes New Ways in Psychoanalysis

1939: Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial

1939: Grandma Moses' paintings are exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art

1940s: Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White win honors for photographic essays

1941: Women are accepted into the Armed Forces in roles other than nursing

1941: World War II increases the demand for women workers

1942: Planned parenthood adopts a new name over the objections of Margaret Sanger

1942: the WASPS are created by Jackie Cochran and General "Hap" Arnold.

-- 1945: Eleanor Roosevelt joins the U.S. delegation to the United Nations -- 1946: Emily Greene Balch is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize -- 1947: Farnham and Lundberg publish The Modern Woman: The Lost Sex --

1949: Babe Didrikson Zaharias is named woman athlete of the twentieth-century

1950: Margaret Chase Smith delivers "A Declaration of Conscience" speech

19590: Althea Gibson breaks the color barrier in professional tennis

1950: Gwendolyn Brooks wins a Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen

1951: Marianne Moore wins the Pulitzer Prize

1952: playwright Lillian Hellman testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee

1952: Marilyn Monroe achieves stardom in Gentleman Prefer Blondes

1953: the Kinsey Report reveals changing sexual mores and practices

1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus

1956: the La Leche League is founded

1959: the Lorraine Hansberry Play, a Raisin in the Sun, opens on Broadway

1960: the Food and Drug Administration approves "the pill"

1962: Dolores Huerta helps found the United Farm Workers Union

1962: Silent Spring alerts the public to the dangers of pesticides

1963: the Mary Kay cosmetics company is founded

1963: the President's Commission on the Status of Women Issues its American Women Report

1963: Congress passes the Equal Pay Act of 1963

1963: the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan is published

1964: "Bewitched" begins a seven-year run as a top-rated television show

1964: the Civil Rights Act includes a prohibition against sex discrimination in employment

1964: Fannie Lou Hamer founds the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

1965: Helen Gurley Brown takes over as editor of Cosmopolitan

1966: the National Organization for Women is founded

1967: Executive Order 11375 broadens affirmation action to include sex

1968: Shirley Chisholm becomes the first African-American congresswoman

1969: San Diego State University establishes the first women's studies Baccalaureate degree program

1970: the Coalition of 100 Black Women organizes to provide leadership

1971: Ms. Magazine is founded

1971: the National Women's Political Caucus is founded

1972: Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs

1972: Congress passes the Equal Rights Amendment

1973: Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in a widely touted battle of the sexes

1973: Roe v. Wade strikes down antiabortion laws

1976: women are admitted to the U.S. Service Academies by an act of Congress

1976: Maxine Hong Kingston wins the National Book Critics Circle Award

1977: a Year of the Woman Conference is held in Houston

1977: Iris Rivera refuses to make her boss coffee

1978: the first woman is elected to the U.S. Senate in her own right

1979: Judy Chicago completes the "Dinner Party"

1980: the U.S. divorce rate reaches an all-time high

1981: Sandra Day O'Connor is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court as the first woman associate justice

1983: astronaut Sally Ride becomes the first woman to travel in space

1984: Geraldine Ferraro accepts the nomination as the Democratic Party's vice-presidential candidate

1985: Wilma Mankiller becomes principal chief of the Cherokee Nation

1985: EMILY's list funds women's campaigns

1987: the National Museum of Women in the Arts opens in Washington, D.C.

1991: Anita Hill testifies at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings

1992: the American Association of University Women reports on sex bias in schools

1993: African-American writer Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

1993: Maya Angelou reads an original poem at President Clinton's inauguration.