Female Firsts
1400 - 1899
1406 - Great Britian's Dame Juliana Berners writes the first essay on sports fishing called, "Treatise of Fishing with an Angle."
1825 - Sarah Kemble Knight published her diary of her horseback ride from Boston to New Haven called, The Journal of Madame Knight.
1837 - Excercise for Ladies, a book written by Donald Walker, is published warning women against horseback riding because it deforms the lower part of the body.
1856 - Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families, the first fitness manual for women, is published by Catherine Beecher.
1858 - Julia Archibald Holmes climbs Pikes Peak in Colorado wearing bloomers.
1865 - Matthew Vasser opens Vassar College with a special School of Physcial Training with classes in riding, gardening, swimming, boating, skating, and "other physical accomplishments suitable for ladies to acquire...bodily strength and grace."
1873 - Ten young women compete in a mile-long swimming contest in the Harlem River. The first place winner, Deliliah Goboess, won a silk dress valused at $175.
1882 - The first athletic games for women are held at the YWCA in Boston.
1883 - The first babeball "Ladies Day" is held by the NY Giants. All women, escorted and unescorted, are allowed into the park for free.
1885 - A study is published by the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, which concludes that "it is sufficient to say that female [college] graduates...do not seem to show, ...any marked difference in general health for the average health...of women engaged in other kinds of work, or in fact, of women generally..." This statement refutes the widely held belief that college stuy impaired a woman's physical health and ability to bear children.
1888 - The Amateur Athletic Union is formed to establish standards and uniformity in amatuer sport.
1890 - Nellie Bly, a reporter for the New York World newspaper, becomes the first woman to travel around the world alone. She completed this task in just seventy-two days.
Nellie Bly
1892 - The journal Physical Education, published by the YMCA, devotes an issue to women, saying that women need physical strength and endurance, and dismis the popular idea that women are too weak to exercise.
1892 - Hessie Donahue, who donned a loose blouse, bloomers, and boxing gloves, knocks out legendary heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan.
1895 - Annie Smith Peck was the first woman to reach the peak of the Matterhorn, shocking the public by wearing knickerbockers during her ascent.
1895 - Frances Willard, president of the WTCU, publishes a best-selling account of learning to ride a bicylce called A Wheel Within A Wheel .
Frances Willard
1895 - Mrs. Frank Sittig exhibits aher new duplex riding skirt, which the New York Times judges to be "An ideal suit for cycling, to which even the most prudish could not object."