“Bicycling has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.
I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride on a wheel.
It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.”
Susan B. Anthony, suffragist, 1896
776 B.C. - The first Olympics are held in ancient Greece. Women are excluded, so they compete every four years in their own Games of Hera, to honor the Greek goddess who ruled over women and the earth.
396 B.C. - Kyniska, a Spartian princess, wins an Olympic chariot race, but is barred from collecting her prize in person.
1406 - Dame Juliana Berners of Great Britain writes the first known essay on sports fishing. She described how to make a rod and flies, when to fish, and the many kinds of fishing in her essay, “Treatise of Fishing with an Angle.”
1552 - Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-87), an avid golfer, coins the term “caddy” by calling her assistants cadets. It is during her reign that the famous golf course at St. Andrews is built.
1704 - Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727) sets out alone on horseback from Boston to New Haven and later New York, keeping a diary of her travels, which was published in 1825 as The Journal of Madame Knight.
1722 - British fighter Elizabeth Wilkinson enters the boxing ring.
1780 - Three days of horse racing at the track in Hempstead Plains, Long Island, include an event for women riders.
1784 - Elizabeth Thible of Lyons, France, is the first woman to soar in a hot air balloon.
1798 - France’s Jeanne Labrosse makes a solo balloon flight.
1804 - The first woman jockey was Alicia Meynell of England. She first competed in a four-mile race in York, England.
1805 - Madeleine Sophie Armant Blanchard solos in the first of 67 gas-powered balloon flights. She made her living as a balloonist, was appointed official Aeronaut of the Empire by Napoleon, and toured Europe until she fell to her death in an aerial fireworks display in 1819.
1805 - The first ice skating race for Dutch women is in held in Leeuwarden.
1805 - Englishwoman Alicia Meynell, riding as Mrs. Thornton, defeats a leading male jockey, Buckle, in a race.
1811 - On January 9, the first known women’s golf tournament is held at Musselburgh Golf Club, Scotland, among the town fishwives.
1819 - Mms. Adolphe becomes the first woman to perform on a tightrope in the US in New York City.
1825 - Madame Johnson takes off in a hot air balloon in New York, landing in a New Jersey swamp
1834 - The first modern Lacrosse games are played. Lacrosse will become a major new sports opportunity for women in the 1990’s with many colleges offering scholarship dollars. The original game was played by North American Indians.
1837 - Donald Walker’s book, Exercise for Ladies, warns women against horseback riding, because it deforms the lower part of the body.
1850 - Amelia Jenks Bloomer begins publicizing a new style of women’s dress, first introduced by Fanny Kemble, a British-born actress - loose-fitting pants worn under a skirt. Other women’s rights leaders like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony adopted the new style. But it wasn’t until Katharine Hepburn (another actress) began wearing stylish pants in public nearly a century later that a wide-spread revolution in women’s clothing finally “took.”
1855 - The first modern game of hockey is played in Kingston, Ontario, using rules similar to today’s. Women’s hockey will become a new sports opportunity in the 1980’s and ‘90’s, with the US Women’s team winning the gold medal in 1998, the first year women’s ice hockey is a medal sport.
1856 - Catherine Beecher (1800-78) publishes Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families, the first fitness manual for women.
1858 - Julia Archibald Holmes (1838-87) climbs Pikes Peak in Colorado (14,110 feet) wearing bloomers on Aug. 5.
1863 - New Yorker James Plimpton uses a rubber cushion to enable the wheels of roller skates to turn slightly when the skater shifted his or her weight. This design is considered the basis for the modern roller skate, allowing for safer, controlled skating.
1864 - The Park Place Croquet Club of Brooklyn organizes with 25 members. Croquet is probably the first game played by both men and women in America.
1865 - Matthew Vassar opens Vassar College with a special School of Physical Training with classes in riding, gardening, swimming, boating, skating and “other physical accomplishments suitable for ladies to acquire ... bodily strength and grace.”
1866 - Vassar College fields the first two women’s amateur baseball teams.
1867 - The Dolly Vardens, a black women’s team from Philadelphia, is a women’s professional baseball team.
1867 - Frances S. Case and Mary Robinson climb Mt. Hood in Oregon (11,235 feet).
1867 - St. Andrew’s in Scotland is the first ladies golf club.
1869 - Frenchwomen enter cycling races at Bordeaux, France.
1869 - The first women’s croquet championship is held in England and won by a Mrs. Joad.
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