Welcome to Infinite Women

This Day In History

Journalism

1936 Dorothea Lange’s iconic image, Migrant Mother, was published in the San Francisco News. Since that first publication, the photo has come to represent America’s Great Depression and the strain of poverty in rural America.

Politics

1993 Janet Reno was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to be U.S. attorney general, the first woman to serve in that role.

2006 Michelle Bachelet is inaugurated as the first female president of Chile.

Science

1875 Jennie Kidd Trout became the first woman in Canada to become a licensed medical doctor, on March 11, 1875. Trout was the only woman in Canada licensed to practice medicine until July 1880, when Emily Stowe completed the official qualifications.

1960 Nina Starr Braunwald performed the first successful human implant, in a 44-year-old woman with mitral regurgitation.

Writing

1818 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published.

1959 A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, starring Sidney Poitier as Walter Lee Younger, a struggling son with big dreams, Claudia McNeil as his mother Lena and Ruby Dee as his hardworking wife Ruth. The run made playwright Lorraine Hansberry the first African-American female playwright to have a show on Broadway.