Born: June 26, 1911, Port Arthur, Texas, U.S.Died: September 27, 1956, Galveston, TexasBabe Didrikson Zaharias was an American athlete, named the greatest woman athlete of the first half of the 20th century by an Associated Press poll in 1950. She was born Mildred Didrikson in Port Arthur, Texas. She excelled in many sports, including basketball, […]
Died: 756, Mawei, Sichuan province, ChinaYang Guifei was famous concubine of Xuanzong, emperor of China’s Tang (T’ang) dynasty from 712 to 756. Daughter of a high official, Yang Guifei was originally the concubine of one of Xuanzong’s sons, but the emperor, who favoured large women, found her so attractive that in 745 he took her
Born: April 19, 1969, Budapest, Hungary Zsuzsa Polgar is a Hungarian international grandmaster who won the women’s world chess championship in 1996 from Xie Jun of China. In 1999, Polgar was stripped of her title by the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE; the international chess organization) for failing to agree to match conditions.At four years
Born: July 23, 1976, Budapest, Hungary The youngest of three chess-playing sisters (see Zsuzsa Polgar). She became an international master at the age of 12 and the youngest international grandmaster in history at the age of 15 years and 4 months, eclipsing Bobby Fischer’s record by a month.Apart from her gold-medal-winning appearances for the Hungarian
Born: Aug 7, 1876, Leeuwarden, NetherlandsDied: Oct 15, 1917, Vincennes, near Paris, France Mata Hari, professional name of Gertrud Margarete Zelle (1876-1917), was a Dutch courtesan and alleged spy during World War I (1914-1918). Born in Leeuwarden and educated in a convent, she married Campbell MacLeod, a British-born captain of the Dutch army, when she
Born: Sept 28, 1913, Plumes county, California, U.S.Died: Dec 13, 1990, Palm Springs, California Alice Marble was an American tennis player and four-time winner of the singles title at the United States Nationals tournament (1936, 1938-1940), which became the U.S. Open in 1968. Marble was born in Plumas County, California and began competing in her
Born: May 24, 1899, Compiègne, FranceDied: July 4, 1938, Paris Suzanne Rachel Flore Lenglen was a French tennis player, whose popularity in the 1920s helped establish women’s tennis as a spectator sport. In an era when female tennis players wore elaborate and concealing costumes on the court, Lenglen became celebrated for her tennis apparel, which
Born: July 24, 1963, Benton Harbour, Michigan, U.S. Julie Krone is an American jockey, the first woman to win the prestigious Belmont Stakes.Krone grew up on a horse farm in Eau Claire, Michigan. Her mother, Judi, was a prize-winning show rider, and Julie was only 5 years old when she began winning horse shows in
Born: March 3, 1962, East St. Louis, Illinois, U.S. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is an American track-and-field athlete, who won the heptathlon event (an all-around event) at the Olympic Games in 1988 and 1992. She is considered one of the greatest female athletes.She was born Jacqueline Joyner in East Saint Louis, Illinois, and educated at the University
Born: April 8, 1912, Kristiania [now Oslo], NorwayDied: October 12, 1969, in an aeroplane en route to Oslo Sonja Henie was Norwegian figure skater and movie actress who helped increase the popularity of competitive figure skating. She won the gold medal for figure skating at the 1928, 1932, and 1936 Winter Olympics.Born in Oslo, Norway,
Born: March 17, 1972, Selma, Alabama, U.S. Mia Hamm is an American soccer player, one of the greatest female players ever. In 1999 Hamm scored her 108th career goal, making her the all-time leading scorer in international soccer-women’s or men’s.Mariel Margaret Hamm was born in Selma, Alabama. Her father served in the military, and Hamm’s
Born: September 4, 1937, Balmain, near Sydney,New South Wales, Australia Dawn Fraser is an Australian swimmer, who was the first swimmer to win a gold medal in the same event at three consecutive Olympic Games. Dawn Lorraine Fraser was born in Adelaide and began to be coached in swimming by Australian Harry Gallagher at the
Born: October 23, 1906, New York, U.S.Died: November 30, 2003, Wyckoff, New Jersey Gertrude Caroline Ederle was an American swimmer, the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Born in New York City, Ederle learnt to swim as a young child and began competing as a teenager. Between 1921 and 1925, she broke many
Born: May 3, 1942, Prague, Czechoslovakia[now in Czech Republic] Vera Caslavska is a Czechoslovak gymnast, the first of the great present-day stylists. She won a record 21 world, Olympic, and European gold medals from 1959 to 1968; she also won eight silver and three bronze medals.At the 1964 and 1968 Olympics Caslavska was an overall
Born: December 26, 1954, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.Susan Butcher is an American sled-dog racer, four-time winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the most demanding race of its kind. Butcher was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school in 1972, she moved to Boulder, Colorado, and became involved in sled-dog racing or mushing.