Breaking Barriers: 27 Remarkable ‘Firsts’ for Women That Defied Expectations

The first woman to serve in the US Senate was Rebecca Latimer Felton in 1922. She was 87 and served for only one day. She championed prison reform, women's rights, and education. She was the last member of Congress to have owned slaves, was a white supremacist and openly supported lynching.

Setara Hussainzada became the first woman to ever sing in a TV program in Afghanistan after the fall of Taliban in 2004. For this, she received numerous death threats and has been forced to live in exile.

Opha May Johnson was the first woman known to have enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. She joined the Marine Corps Reserve in 1918, officially becoming the first female Marine.

In 1969, Charlotte Reid became the first woman to wear pants to Congress. Women were forbidden to wear pants onto the floor until 1993.

Penny Marshall, who played Laverne on Laverne & Shirly, directed Big movie and was the first woman to gross over $100 million at the box office.

Bayard Wootten was a pioneering documentary photographer from North Carolina. She was the first woman to take an aerial photograph and she was the one who named and created the logo for Pepsi Cola.

Toni Stone was the first woman to ever play professional baseball as a regular on a big-league teams with men in Negro leagues. She played second base and maintained a .243 batting average.

Alice Huyler Ramsey was the first woman to drive coast-to-coast across the USA in 1909. The 22-year-old housewife and mother completed the 3,800-mile journey from New York to San Francisco in a green Maxwell 30. The 59-day drive took 3-weeks longer than planned and 96% of the route was unpaved.

The first woman elected president of a country was Vigdís Finnbogadóttir of Iceland, who won the 1980 presidential election as well as three others to also become the longest-serving non-hereditary female head of state in history (almost exactly 16 years in office).

In 1999, Tori Murden McClure became the first woman and American to row a boat alone across the Atlantic Ocean. She was also the first woman and first American to ski to the geographic South Pole.