Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
Famous Firsts in Women's History
This blog has long been used to settle bar bets, and for Women's History Month 2011, here are 10
famous firsts that you can try out on your friends or study up on to help you win quiz/trivia contests.
These are the answers to the questions that we posed here.
1. What was the first known reference to contraceptives?
Answer: Egyptian texts dating from 1850 BCE describe contraceptive suppositories made from a mixture
of honey and crocodile dung.
2. What was missing from the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE?
Answer: Women. Women were barred from the first Olympiad, not only as competitors but even as
spectators.
3. Who was the first women ruler of China?
Answer: Gaohou. She seized power from her son in 195 BCE. Britannica calls her a "cruel, vindictive
woman."
4. Who was the first woman named to a chair of physics at a university?
Answer: In 1776 Laura Bassi, author of De problemate quodam mechanico and De problemate quodam
hydrometrico, was appointed to the chair of experimental physics at the University of Bologna, thus
becoming the first woman named to a chair of physics at a university.
5. Who was the first woman in the United States to hold a patent?
Answer: Hannah Slater. She was granted her patent in 1793 for a type of cotton thread. Her invention
helped her husband build a successful textile business.
6. What was the first American charitable organization operated by women for women?
Answer: The House of Industry. It was founded in 1795 by Anne Parish to provide employment to poor
women.
7. Which 19th century British woman is sometimes considered the world's first computer programmer?
Answer: Augusta Ada King, countess of Lovelace (and daughter of Lord Byron), began studying Charles
Babbage’s “difference engine” in 1833. She became, arguably, the world’s first computer programmer.
More than a century later the computer language Ada is named for her.
8. What was the first American college to admit men and women on an equal basis?
Answer: Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College), which was founded in 1833 in Ohio.
9. What prompted Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to call the first women's rights convention?
Answer: The pair called the first women's rights convention in 1840, after female delegates were
refused admission to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London.
10. Who in 1849 became the first modern-day woman doctor of medicine in the United States?
Answer: Elizabeth Blackwell.
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
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