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These are interest facts about women that will make you say…

“I did not know that” 

and by the end, you can say…

“and now I know” 

*Today, 70% of moms with kids under 18 work. In 1975, fewer than 47% did.

*Approximately 14% of active members in the U.S. armed forces today are women. In 1950, women comprised less than 2% of the U.S. military.

*Over 60 percent of college degrees awarded in the U.S. every year are earned by women.

*The two highest IQs ever recorded, through standardized testing, both belong to women.

*More American women work in the education, health services, and social assistance industries than any other.

*It is estimated that 6–10% of incarcerated women are pregnant, with as many as 1,400 births in prisons annually in the United States.

*Around the world, one woman dies every 90 seconds from complications of pregnancy or childbirth.

*Women first began to wear heels in order to imitate men, who started donning high heels in the 1600s as a sign of their masculinity and status.

*The nearer a mother lives to the equator, the more likely she is to give birth to a baby girl as opposed to a baby boy.

*The mother is the singular or principal breadwinner in 40% of families with children in the United States.

*A woman will more easily trust somebody who hugs her for at least 15 seconds!

*Women spend nearly a year of their lives deciding what to wear.

*Women who snore during pregnancy are more likely to have smaller babies.

*Only 2% of women describe themselves as beautiful.

*Women in Niger have on average 7 children

*80% of women ask questions they already know the answers to.

*A woman’s brain activity lowers only 10% during sleep, which is why women tend to be lighter sleepers.

*In almost every country in the world, the life expectancy for women is higher than men.

*Although male brains are 9% larger than female brains, both have the same amount of brain cells. The brain cells in women merely pack together more densely.

*Because of the high production of estrogen during puberty, girls’ brains generally mature two years earlier than boys’.

*There are 5 million stay-at-home women in the United States, compared to 209,000 stay-at-home men.

*Women, even from infancy, are generally more interested in facial expressions, emotional tones in voices, and non-verbal cues than men.

*In the North African Tuereg matriarchal society, men wear veils and women do not.

*The anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that weighs options when making a decision, is larger in women than in men.

*Women tend to talk more than men do. A recent study shows that women say, on average, 13,000 more words per day than men.

*On average, women live 2–5 years longer than men, a fact which holds true in every country in the world.

*Women have significantly more nightmares than men and their dreams are usually more emotional.

*Women cry between 30 and 64 times a year while men only cry between 6 and 17 times

*Women are less likely to be involved in car accidents than men — which means we get cheaper car insurance

*In Russia, there are 9 million more women than men

*Women’s hearts beat faster than men’s.

*Women have more taste buds than men.

*Women blink 19 times a minute, while men only blink 11 times

*Female skin is twice more sensitive than male

*Women can hear high frequency sounds better than men.

*A female neck is more flexible. When a woman hears her name called, she turns her head. A man typically turns his entire body.

*Roberta Gibb was the first woman to run and finish the Boston Marathon in 1966.

*Virne “Jackie” Mitchell, a pitcher, was the first woman in professional baseball.

*Mary, Queen of Scots is reported to be the first woman to play golf in Scotland.

*In 1921, American novelist Edith Wharton was the first woman to receive a Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

*In an era when female painters had to struggle for acceptance, Artemesia Gentileschi was the first female to be accepted by the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence.

*Marie Curie is the only woman to ever win two Nobel Prizes.

*Jane Addams was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

*40s movie actress, Hedy Lamarr wasn’t just a pretty face, she was also an inventor. Hoping to find a way to contribute to the war effort during World War II, Lamarr developed a radio-controlled torpedo device which used “frequency hopping” to prevent the signals from the torpedoes from being jammed.

*Susan Kare developed most of the interface elements for Apple Macintosh.

*Wonder Woman (2017) was the first superhero film starring a female lead to be directed by a woman.

*Virne Mitchell, the first professional female baseball player, struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

*Two of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were built by women: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were planted by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis; and the Masoleum of Halicarnassus was built by Artemisia, queen of Caria.

*The first computer programmer was a woman. Ada Lovelace. Love the name!

*No women or girls were allowed at the first Olympics, but the Games of Hera, featuring footraces for women, were held every four years.

*Women were not allowed to compete in track and field events at the Olympics until 1928.

*Donald Walker’s book, Exercise for Ladies, warns women against horseback riding, because it deforms the lower part of the body.

*Women often wrote under pen names in times when it was not seen as appropriate for them to contribute to literature.

*In 1770, a bill proposing that women using makeup should be punished for witchcraft was put forward to the British Parliament.

*In the 1940s, women in the United States advertised products to gain weight and thus become more ideally curvy and beautiful. “Men wouldn’t look at me when I was skinny,” said one advertisement, “but since I gained 10 pounds this new, easy way, I have all the dates I want.

*In Albania, a group of women called burneshas live in mountain villages as men in order to avoid societal restrictions. They cut their hair, wear men’s clothing, practice male gestures and mannerisms, change their names, and swear celibacy.

*Highly refined women of the 19th century refused to say the word “leg,” as it was seen as too promiscuous. They preferred “limb” instead

*In India and Napal, the practice of widow burning (sati) occurred when women burned themselves alive on their husbands’ funeral pyres as a sign of devotion and love. It was meant to be a voluntary act, but occasionally women were drugged or pushed into the fire.

*The term “pin-up girl” came from photos of curvy women that were mass produced and meant to be “pinned up” on a wall during World War II.

*Zeng Jinlian, from China, was the tallest woman in recorded history. She stood an astonishing 8 feet 1 ¾ inches tall. That’s over a foot taller than Shaquille O’Neal!

*A Chinese woman could be abandoned by her husband if she talked too much

*In China, women who are unmarried by their late 20s or 30s are called, ‘Sheng nu.’ Which means the leftover woman.

*In ancient Greece, throwing an apple at a woman was considered a marriage proposal.

*According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Valentina Vassilyeva holds the record for giving birth to the most children. She had 69 kids, including 4 sets of quadruplets.

*Journalist Nellie Bly put Jules Verne’s character Phileas Fogg to shame when she completed an around the world journey in only seventy two days– quite a feat before the invention of the airplane.

*Upon her husband’s death, Cherokee leader Nancy Ward took his place in a 1775 battle against the Creeks, and led the Cherokee to victory.

*In 1777, sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington raced through the night to warn New York patriots that the British were attacking nearby Danbury, CT, where munitions and supplies for the entire region were stored during the heat of the Revolutionary War.

*The first person to make the daring attempt to go over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel was a woman. A 43-year-old female schoolteacher

*During WWII, a female African American performer transported hidden messages to French soldiers through sheet music covered in invisible ink

*There are 1.6 million female veterans in the United States. Women make up around 14% of active U.S. military members.

*On May 15, 1809, Mary Dixon Kies received the first U.S. patent issued to a woman for inventing a process for weaving straw with silk or thread.

*In 1903, Mary Anderson was granted a patent for the windshield wiper.

*Amelia Jenks Bloomer didn’t invent the bloomer, but she helped popularize this new article of clothing in the early 1850’s, which now bears her name, that would help women be more active and free in their movement.

*In 1853 Antoinette Blackwell became the first American woman to be ordained a minister in a recognized denomination.

*The earliest recorded female physician was Merit Ptah, a doctor in ancient Egypt who lived around 2700 B.C.

*Think that factory work was always done by men? In fact, during the 19th century, factory workers were primarily young, single women.

*Between 1970–2010, the percentage of female lawyers in the United States shot up from 4.9% to 33.4%.

*Women currently hold 17% of Congressional and Senate seats and 18% of gubernatorial positions in the U.S.

*Hatshepsut was one of the most powerful women in the ancient world and the one and only female pharaoh in recorded history.

*Martha Wright Griffiths, an American lawyer and judge, pushed through the Sex Discrimination Act in 1964 as part of the Civil Rights Act.

*Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony spent their lives fighting for women’s suffrage, but neither lived long enough to see the Amendment granting them the right to vote.

*The first woman to rule a country as an elected leader in the modern era was Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, who was elected as prime minister of the island nation in 1960 and later re-elected in 1970.

*In 1756, during America’s Colonial period, Lydia Chapin Taft became the first woman to legally vote with the consent of the electorate.

*The first woman to run for U.S. president was Victoria Woodhull, who campaigned for the office in 1872 under the National Woman’s Suffrage Association.

*The first female governor of a U.S. state was Wyoming governor Nellie Tayloe Ross, elected in 1924.

*The first female member of a president’s cabinet was Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under FDR.

*Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, was the first woman elected to serve in Congress.

*Wyoming was the first state to grant women the right to vote.

*The first country to grant women the right to vote in the modern era was New Zealand in 1893.

*In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Japan, women used softened papyrus, lint wrapped around wood, and paper to absorb menstruation bleeding.

*Pornography in the 19th century brought high heels back into women’s fashion.

*Women’s make-up in ancient Rome was made of a wide variety of ingredients, including lead, olive oil, saffron, and the sweat of gladiators!

*An average woman eats about 2 to 3 kilos of lipstick in her lifetime.

*Women spend over 4 years of their lives menstruating.

*30% of pregnant women crave non-food items, an eating disorder called pica. Said to be mainly sand, chalk and some even suck on rocks!

*In Britain, a pregnant woman can wee wherever she wants. Wherever. By law.

*Over 80% of women wear the wrong bra size.

“and now YOU know” 

I Did Not Know That