Women Facts

New Zealand was the first self-governing country in the world to grant all women the right to vote in national elections, in 1893.

Afghanistan's first-ever modeling competition in 2009 received over 3,000 applications. Only 10 were from women.

The first person to go over Niagara falls was Annie Edson-Taylor. She made the trip in a wooden barrel and survived!

Ching Shih, once a prostitute, became one of the most powerful pirates to have ever sailed. She commanded one of the most formidable pirate fleets in all of China during the early 1800s, with hundreds of ships under her command.

Men get hiccups more often than women.

Men produce about 50% more sweat than women, but women's sweat glands are more efficient at cooling the body.

There's a book titled "Everything men know about women" that has over 100 blank pages.

Last 2 European countries to let women vote: Switzerland (1971) and Leichtenstein (1984).

48% of all video game players in the United States are women, and players aged 45 and older represent the fastest-growing gaming demographic.

In Russia, women outnumber men by about 10.4 million people.

Sisa Abu Daooh, an Egyptian woman, disguised herself as a man for 43 years after her husband passed away so she could work and provide for her daughter. She worked as a shoe shiner, brick layer, and farmer. When she was finally revealed in 2015, the Egyptian government didn't punish her — they awarded her the "Ideal Mother" prize on national television.

A B-25 bomber slammed into the Empire State Building in heavy fog. Elevator operator Betty Lou Oliver was burned on the 80th floor. Rescuers placed her in an elevator to get her down - but the crash had severed the cables. She plummeted 75 stories to the basement. She survived. She still holds the Guinness World Record 80 years later.

Five University of Georgia Kappa Alpha Theta sisters pulled over on a rural Georgia road on March 15, 2024, when they spotted Cori Craft's SUV sinking into Brier Creek - wading in, freeing her and both sons, then watching Clarke Jones drop to her knees and perform CPR on a four-year-old whose lips had turned blue. About a minute and a half later, he opened his mouth and started crying. The sheriff's office made all five honorary deputies.

The world's first computer programmer was a woman, Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first algorithm for Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical computer in 1843. Her work included the revolutionary idea that machines could process more than just numbers, envisioning computer-generated music and art.

The village of Piplantri in Rajasthan, India plants 111 trees every time a girl is born. In a region where daughters were once seen as a burden, the birth of a girl now triggers a celebration. They also start a savings fund for each girl's education. Piplantri now has over 350,000 trees. Every tree is named after a girl.

Geena Davis picked up a bow at 41 after watching the 1996 Olympics. She had no background in competitive sports. She practiced up to six hours a day. Two years later, she made the semifinals of the U.S. Olympic trials for Sydney 2000. About 300 women competed for a team spot.

Sylvia Bloom worked as a legal secretary on Wall Street for 67 years. Every time her boss bought a stock, she quietly bought the same one. Nobody - not her husband, not the lawyers she worked for - knew. When she died at 96, her estate was worth $9 million. She left $8.2 million for college scholarships.

A secretary in Dallas kept making typing errors, so she started painting over them with white tempera paint. She offered the idea to IBM - they said no. She built Liquid Paper into a company doing $38 million a year. Gillette bought it for $47.5 million. Her son was in The Monkees.

Maria Gatchalian spent 30 years as a NICU nurse at Kaiser Permanente, repeatedly reporting unsafe staffing and patient safety failures. In 2019, Kaiser fired her - citing a photo of her with bare feet resting on an incubator during a break. A jury found the photo was a pretext. The real reason was the reports. They awarded her $41.49 million.

A 73-year-old flower delivery woman in Lawrence, Massachusetts was pinned under a 4,000-pound car when it rolled onto her leg. About a dozen neighbors and police officers lifted nearly two tons off her as she screamed in Spanish, clutching a stranger's leg. She walked out of hospital on her own two feet.

Serena Williams was booed throughout her 2001 Indian Wells final. Her father said the crowd directed racial slurs at him from the stands. She refused to return for 14 years. When she finally returned in 2015, the crowd gave her a standing ovation. She cried.

Grace Groner bought 3 shares of Abbott Laboratories stock for $180 in 1935. She was a secretary. She held those shares for 75 years, reinvesting every dividend, while living in a one-bedroom cottage and buying clothes from rummage sales. When she died at 100, those shares were worth $7 million. She left every cent to her old college.

Angela Hernandez was driving Highway 1 in Big Sur when she swerved to avoid a small animal and her Jeep plunged 200 feet off the cliff to the rocky shore below. She survived the crash, broke out of her partially submerged car, and spent seven days alone on the beach - using a 10-inch hose from the wreck to siphon fresh water dripping from cliff moss. Two hikers spotted the crushed Jeep and found her alive.

Josephine Baker used her fame as a jazz superstar to spy for the French Resistance during World War II. She hid intelligence about German troop movements in invisible ink on her sheet music and pinned notes inside her bra - certain no one would dare search her. In 2021, France inducted her into the Pantheon as the first Black woman ever honored there.