The 1950s marked the beginning of a time described as a space race between the U.S. and Russia. On July 16, 1963 aboard Vosktok 6, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel to space, completing 48 orbits around Earth. She became president of the Soviet Women’s Committee and addressed the Women’s International Democratic Federation.
Helen Keller lost her vision and became mute February 1882. She worked on behalf of the blind, campaigning that the major cause of blindness in infants was a condition called ophthalma neonatarum.
Nefertiti was relatively young, likely in her early teens, when she married Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten). Together, they introduced monotheism, with the worship of the sun god Aten. As queen, the "King's Great Wife," Nefertiti bore 6 daughters during the span of their marriage: Meritaten, Meketaten, Ankhesenpaaten, Neferneferuaten, Neferneferture, Setepenre. What is best known of Nefertiti is her bust, believed to have been created by Thutmose who is thought to have been the official court sculptor.
As a child, Frida was stricken with polio in her right leg at the age of six. Despite this handicap, she played soccer, boxed, wrestled, and became a champion swimmer. She spoke and wrote English, loved to use foul language in Spanish, loved floor length native Mexican dresses, and similar to Anne Frank, she kept a diary, but written in the last decade of her life.
Physicist/chemist Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the only woman to have won the Nobel Prize twice; for physics in 1903, and chemistry in 1911. During her lifetime, she would discover both polonium and radium. In 1994, a new element, Curium, would be named after her and husband, Pierre Curie.
