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1896

Alice Guy Blach�, the first American woman film director, shoots the first of her more than 300 films, a short feature called La Fee aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy).

1901

On October 24, 1901, Annie Edson Taylor, a schoolteacher from Michigan, becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

1914
Mary Davenport-Engberg is the first woman to conduct a symphony orchestra, in Bellingham, Washington.

1916

Jeannette Rankin, of Montana, is the first woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

1921
American novelist Edith Wharton becomes the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She wins the award for her novel The Age of Innocence.

1922

Rebecca Felton, of Georgia, is appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill a temporary vacancy. The first woman senator, she serves for only two days.

1924

Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to serve as governor of a state, in Wyoming. In the fall of 1924 she was elected to succeed her deceased husband, William Bradford Ross. (Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson is inaugurated governor of Texas days later.)

1926
American Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel.

1931

Maxine Dunlap becomes first American woman to earn a glider pilot license.
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1932
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, traveling from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Ireland in approximately 15 hours.

Hattie Wyatt Caraway, of Arkansas, becomes the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.