79 Powerful Facts About Women You’ll Be Surprised to Know

Women were not allowed to wear pants on the U.S. Senate floor until 1993 after Senators Barbara Mikulski and Carol Moseley Braun defiantly staged a protest by wearing pantsuits.

2. A New York sociologist named William Whyte observed that women are a good indicator of good public places because they are more sensitive to annoyances. "If a plaza has a markedly low proportion of women, something is wrong if it has a high proportion, the plaza is probably a good and well-managed one."

3. During the Third Reich, there was a program called Lebensborn, where 'racially pure' women slept with SS officers in the hopes of producing Aryan children. An estimated 20,000 children were born during 12 years.

4. When it was invented, the sewing machine was controversial, feared to be too sexually stimulating to women.

5. Edward Pickering decided to hire a team of women after his increasing frustrations with his male assistants. He declared that his maid could do a better job so he hired his maid, and subsequently a team of women whom soon discovered how to measure distances of stars.

In 2012, Miss America claimed to make $45 million of scholarship money available to women annually, where in reality, in 2012, the Miss America Foundation gave out less than $500,000 in cash scholarships.

7. During the 1988 purges in Iran, women were lashed for missing their daily prayers. When one woman died after 22 days and 550 lashes, the authorities certified her death as a suicide because it was 'she who had made the decision not to pray'.

8. The Romans believed eyelashes fell out from excessive sex, so women would use cosmetics to make their eyelashes look fuller and longer to demonstrate their chastity.

9. Although 227 minutes long, Lawrence of Arabia film has no women in speaking roles. It is reportedly the longest film not to have any dialog spoken by a woman.

10. Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao became Vietnam's first female billionaire thanks to her idea of staffing Vietjet Airlines with attractive women clad in sexy two-piece swimsuits.

A Listerine mouthwash ad from the 1920s coined the phrase, "Often a bridesmaid but never a bride" to describe women with bad breath.

12. When women were excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London and forced to sit in a "no speaking section", William Lloyd Garrison, the conference's keynote speaker, refused to give his speech and sat with the women, "dominating the convention without saying a word".

13. An Islamic religious authority blamed women who dress immodestly for causing earthquakes. In response, a blogger organized Boobquake, an event where 200,000 women wore immodest clothing in a light-hearted scientific experiment to produce an earthquake.

14. Some Viking runes are simply graffiti, translated as "Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women" or "Tholfir Kolbeinsson carved these runes high up."

15. The actress who played Aunt Bethany in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was the same lady who provided the voice for Betty Boop and Olive Oyl.

In 2013, women earned 60% of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.

17. A doctor introduced hand-washing at his clinic in 1846 because he noticed a connection between women dying of childbed fever and the autopsies doctors performed before delivering babies, and that most didn't believe him, and he lost his job, and later died of sepsis in an asylum.

18. In Japan, women use the euphemism 'Sailor Moon is visiting' for when they're on their period. To capitalize on this, the creators of Sailor Moon released an officially-licensed range of character-themed menstrual pads.

19. On the night of May 27, 1991, a drugged, naked, bleeding boy of 14 was found on a Milwaukee street. When police arrived, they returned the boy to the control of Jeffery Dahmer, who almost immediately killed and dismembered the boy. 2 women who argued with the police were threatened with arrest.

20. A group of women called "The 9 Nanas" kept a secret for decades that not even their husbands knew about. For 30 years, they met at 4 am and anonymously paid bills and bought clothes for people in need. Each care package came with a homemade pound cake and a note that read "Somebody loves you."

Google paid a fine of $22.5 million for illegal data collection, $500 million for knowingly allowing fraudulent pharmacies to advertise on their site, and were accused of profiting from women sex trafficking by 38 different anti-trafficking organizations.

22. There is an episode of The Cosby Show, where after consuming Cosby's "special barbecue sauce", women stop fighting, become passive, and become more affectionate towards their lovers.

23. The Vlasic Pickle Stork mascot was an attempt to capitalize on pregnant women's craving for pickles.

24. In 1965, a patent was filed for a 'birthing apparatus' which would spin pregnant women around at as much as 7G until their baby was flung out from the centrifugal force.

25. The legend that Athens' first female physician dressed as a man to help women during childbirth. Male physicians accused her of seducing the women, leading to her appearing in court, where she revealed herself as a female and Athenian law was changed to allow female physicians.