Welcome to Infinite Women

This Day In History

1876 Maria Spelterini was an Italian tightrope walker who was the only woman to cross the Niagara gorge on a tightrope, which she did as part of a celebration of the U.S. Centennial.

1911 Cowgirl “Two-Gun Nan” Aspinwall became the first woman to make a solo trip by horse across the United States, arriving in New York 10 months after departing San Francisco.

Military

1948 The United States Air Force accepts its first female recruits into the Women in the Air Force (WAF).

Sports

1912 The first-ever women’s Olympic swimming event was the 100m freestyle, a competition that began on 8 July 1912, at the Olympic Games in Stockholm. Competing for Australasia, 22-year-old Fanny Durack set a world record in the heats and secured a comfortable victory in the final. She won the first-ever women’s Olympic swimming gold medal and became Australia’s first female Olympic medallist. The New South Wales Ladies Swimming Association was opposed to women participating in the Olympic Games, and Durack and fellow swimmer Mina Wylie were initially refused permission by NSWLSA to compete, but later they were allowed to go provided they paid their own expenses. They organised local fundraising to raise the funds for themselves as well as for the obligatory chaperones.

2000 Venus Williams beat Lindsay Davenport 6-3, 7-6 (3) for her first Grand Slam title, becoming the first black female champion at Wimbledon since Althea Gibson in 1957-58.