October 10, 1983: Dr. Barbara McClintock receives the Nobel Prize for Medicine for her discovery in genetics about mobile genetic elements
October 11, 1984: Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan is the first U.S. woman astronaut to perform a spacewalk during Challenger flight
October 15, 1948: Dr. Frances L. Willoughby is the first woman doctor in the regular U.S. Navy
October 16, 1916: Margaret Sanger opens the U.S.'s first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York
Important October Birthdays:
October 6, 1917: Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights leader and voting rights crusader, helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer (1964)
October 7, 1920: Kathryn Clarenback, founding member of the National Organization for Women, executive director of the National Committee on the Observance of International Women's Year (1977)
October 11, 1884: Eleanor Roosevelt, civil rights advocate, feminist, author, world diplomat, former First Lady (1933-45)
October 18, 1951: Terry McMillan, author of 13 novels including her first, Mama (1987), and most popular, Waiting to Exhale (1992)
October 22, 1834: Abigail Scott Duniway, early western author and Pacific Northwest suffrage leader, (1871-1915), she was successful in winning woman suffrage in Oregon (1912)
October 26, 1947: Hillary Clinton, former U.S. Secretary of State (2009-13), former Senator from New York (2001-09), former First Lady (1993-2001), and the historic first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party (2016)
October 31, 1860: Juliette Low, founder and first president of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.