Welcome to Infinite Women

This Day In History

Arts

2019 The musical “Hadestown”, with music, lyrics and book by Anaïs Mitchell, earned a leading 14 Tony Award nominations. It would go on to win eight, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.

Crime

1927 The Federal Industrial Institution for Women, the United States' first women’s federal prison, opens in Alderson, West Virginia. All women serving federal sentences of more than a year were to be brought here.

1993 Top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a match in Hamburg, Germany, by a man who described himself as a fan of second-ranked German player Steffi Graf. The man, convicted of causing grievous bodily harm, was given a suspended sentence, which was later upheld by a second judge. The judge claimed that testimony from Seles would have been needed to convict the man on a more serious charge, despite the facts that she was clearly traumatised, did not know her attacked, and the assault was video-recorded and hte man apprehended immediately. The judge accepted testimony by police officers and psychiatrists who said that, aside from his fixation on Graf, the man who stabbed her was harmless. The attacker had also expressed racism against Serbs (Seles is from a Serbian area of Yugoslavia).

Espionage

1944 As a member of a three-person SOE team code-named "Freelance", Nancy Wake parachuted into occupied France to liaise between the SOE and several Maquis groups in the Auvergne region. She participated in a battle between the Maquis and a large German force in June 1944. In the aftermath of the battle, she bicycled 500 kilometers to send a situation report to SOE in London.

Inventor

1834 Phebe Atwell became one of the first women to secure a US patent in her own name, for a method of "fur, extracting from skins and manufacturing it in yarn." Phebe was an assignor, someone signing over their ownership of intellectual property, to a man named Levi Ward.

Military

2010 The US military's ban on women serving on submarines officially ended.

Religion

1997 In a widely publicized episode of the ABC sitcom Ellen, TV character Ellen Morgan (played by Ellen DeGeneres) announces that she is gay.