Saint Lucia is the only country in the world named after a woman. The country was named after Saint Lucy of Syracuse by the French.
100 Mind-Blowing Woman Facts
There is a town in Nebraska called Monowi with a population of one. The only resident is a woman who is the Mayor, Bartender, and Librarian.
Rebecca Felton was the first woman to ever serve in the United States Senate – but she only served for one day.
Ron Swanson’s character on Parks and Recreation is based on a real person – a woman who works in a high bureaucratic position and is also anti-government.
A woman was elected to the House of Representatives four years before women even won the right to vote.
A woman faked her entire tragedy and the loss of her husband during the 9/11 attacks and became President of the Support Network in New York.
In Ancient Greece, throwing an apple to a woman was a symbolic declaration of love, and to catch it was to show acceptance of that love.
A woman once tried to commit suicide by jumping off the Empire State Building. She jumped from the 86th floor but was blown back onto the 85th floor by a gust of wind.
Wonder Woman has a black sister, Nubia. She was sculpted from black clay-like Diana was sculpted from white clay.
In 1907, a woman was arrested on a beach in Boston for wearing a one-piece swimsuit.
Polygamy is the practice of having more than one husband or wife at the same time. Polygyny is when a man is married to more than one woman, and Polyandry is when a woman is married to more than one husband.
Somebody has been constipated for 45 days. In 2013, an unfortunate Indian woman had to undergo surgical removal of a faecal mass as large as a football.
A woman in the United Kingdom once called the police when her ice cream didn’t have enough sprinkles.
Kennedy Space Centre, dubbed Florida’s Space Coast, is the only travel destination with a beach that doubles as a launch pad. Artemis 3 is currently planning a lunar landing mission to put the first woman and person of colour on the moon, with an estimated launch date in 2025.
The inventor of the tricycle personally delivered two to Queen Victoria. In 1881, Queen Victoria was on a tour on the Isle of Wight when her horse and carriage could not keep up with a woman riding a tricycle. Intrigued by the bike, the queen proceeded to order two. She also asked that the inventor, James Starley, arrive with the delivery. Though you might associate tricycles with toddlers, Queen Victoria made them cool among the elite at the time.
A woman called the police when her ice cream didn’t have enough sprinkles. The West Midlands police in England released a recording of a woman who called 999 (the U.K. version of 911) because there were “bits on one side and none on the other,” she says in the recording. She was even more upset when the ice cream truck man did not want to give her money back.
Pregnancy tests date back to 1350 B.C.E. According to a document written on ancient papyrus, Egyptian women urinated on wheat and barley seeds to determine if they were pregnant or not, reports the Office of History in the National Institutes of Health. If wheat grew, it predicted a female baby. If barley grew, it predicted a male baby. The woman was not pregnant if nothing grew. Experimenting with this seed theory in 1963 proved it was accurate 70 per cent of the time.
A woman was elected to Congress before women’s suffrage. American women were given the right to vote in 1920, but Jeanette Rankin became the first woman in the U.S. federal office in 1916.
In 2014, there was a Tinder match in Antarctica. Two research scientists matched on the global dating app in the most remote part of the world – a man working at the United States Antarctic McMurdo Station and a woman camping a 45-minute helicopter ride away. What are the chances?!
In 2014, a missing woman on a vacation in Iceland was found in a search party for herself. A missing tourist in the Eldgja Canyon was found in the search party tasked to locate her. She was last seen on the tour bus nearing the volcanic canyon. However, when she changed out of her clothes, she was reported missing. The search progressed from evening until the wee hours of the morning. The tourist group – and likely the tourist herself – were in for the surprise of their lives when they found the missing person in the search party itself.
A U.K. woman has called 911 because of ice cream. The West Midlands police in England once released a recording of a woman who dialled 999 (the U.K. equivalent of 911) because her ice cream didn’t have enough sprinkles.
Cap’n Crunch was once sued for not using real berries. An American woman by the name of Jeanine Sugawara was shocked to find out the cereal was falsely advertising its contents. However, the complaint was quickly dismissed when the judge stated that there was no such thing as Crunch Berry.
The world’s most successful pirate was a woman. She was a 19th-century Chinese pirate known as Ching Shih. She was the widow of Cheng I and easily succeeded her husband’s crew of over 1,800 ships and 80,000 men.
St. Lucia is the only country that is named after a woman. The French named this country after Saint Lucy of Syracuse. Lucy was a Christian martyr who had died during the time of the Diocletianic Persecution.
A woman once found her lost wedding ring growing on a carrot in her garden. In 1995, a Swedish woman lost her wedding ring while preparing a Christmas Eve dinner. 12 years later, the ring re-emergers in her garden wrapped around a carrot.
Greeks once believed that the mother’s milk originated from the uterus. During the Middle Ages, there was a vague understanding of the concept of breast milk. Many believed that this was produced in the uterus and travelled to the breast organ via a special vessel in the woman’s body.
A woman once survived falling from an aeroplane at 33,000 ft high. Vesna Vulovic holds the world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute. The Serbian flight attendant was the only survivor of the JAT Airways plane crash of 1972. Following the crash, she was in a coma and could not walk for 10 months. She managed to live until the age of 66.
A man once hired someone to slap him to avoid checking Facebook. Maneesh Sethi hired a woman to slap him in the face every time he tried checking Facebook at work. He paid the woman $8 an hour.
Lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables. The word originates from the Greek lachno (vegetables) and phobos (fear or aversion). This may be one of the funny facts that sound like we’re just making things up, but there is a medical diagnosis for the fear of veggies. In 2009, a woman was diagnosed with the condition. However, since she had a baby to care for, she overcame her phobia.
A woman who lost her wedding ring found it over a decade later on a carrot in her garden. In 1995, a woman in Sweden lost her wedding ring while cooking for Christmas. One of the more feel-good WTF facts: 16 years later, the woman found the ring around a carrot in her garden. Turns out, the ring was lost in the vegetable peelings that were made into compost.
One man’s sperm can impregnate every woman on Earth. In two weeks, a single human male produces enough sperm to impregnate every fertile woman on the planet.
A 70-year-old woman once completed one marathon for each continent in a week. For Chau Smith’s 70th birthday, she celebrated by completing one marathon for each continent in just a week.
A woman was once constipated for nearly two months. After 45 days without a bowel movement, a 28-year-old woman from India had to have surgery to remove a “football-sized” mass of faeces.
Dead women can still give birth. In a phenomenon called “Coffin Birth,” a pregnant woman may deliver a child spontaneously after her death. Post-mortem birth occurs due to the gases that build up in the abdominal area forcing the baby out of the womb.
The longest distance covered while lifting a table with teeth is 38 feet. Georges Christen of Luxembourg ran 38 feet and 8 inches while carrying an 11.79 kg table (with a 50 kg woman sitting on it) using in his mouth in Spain, on February 9, 2008.
The longest fingernails ever grown on a woman reached over 28 ft. Lee Redmond of the U.S. took nearly 30 years to grow her nails out to 28 feet and 4.5 inches in February 2008. The longest nail was her right thumb, which reached lengths of 2 feet and 11 inches. However, her nails snapped off in a car accident in 2009.
There is a town in Nebraska called Monowi with a population of one. The only resident is a woman who serves as mayor, bartender, and librarian.
The largest number of children born to one woman is recorded at 69. From 1725-1765, a Russian peasant woman gave birth to 16 sets of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.
Jane Barbie was the woman who did the voice recordings for the Bell System.
Sally Ride was the first American woman to fly in space, on June 18, 1983.
Manon Rheaume is the only woman to have played in an NHL game.
The longest veil in history worn at a wedding was in 2018. A woman from Cyrpus wore a veil that was 22,843 feet long or the equivalent of 63.5 football fields.
A woman who lost her wedding ring found it 16 years later on a carrot in her garden. She lost her wedding ring after accidentally throwing it out with the compost in 1995. In 2012, she found it around a carrot in her garden.
The oldest person ever to have lived (whose age could be authenticated), a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment, was 122 years old when she died in 1997.
In 2014, a missing woman on vacation in Iceland was found when it was discovered that she was in the search party looking for herself.
The Boston Marathon didn’t allow female runners until 1972. The first woman to finish the Boston Marathon, Roberta Gibb, actually ran the race a few years earlier in 1966. She hid in some bushes until the race started to avoid detection and then ran the marathon without any official sanction. Another woman, Katherine Switzer, didn’t declare herself a woman when she competed in 1967 and was allowed to enter the race. When it became apparent that she wasn’t a man, the officials unsuccessfully tried to stop her from competing. It wasn’t until the fall of 1971 when the Amateur Athletics Union allowed women to compete, which made 1972’s marathon the first to officially allow female entrants. Eight women competed in the 1972 Boston Marathon, and all eight completed it, with Nina Kuscsik claiming the first official female victory.
The oldest prosthetic. In 1997, an excavation near the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes revealed the oldest prosthesis ever discovered: an engraved wooden toe, fitted to the right foot of an Egyptian noblewoman who lived 3,000 years ago. The ‘Cairo toe’ was practical, modified over time to accommodate the woman’s gait. But it was also designed with aesthetics in mind, intended to be worn in open-toe sandals, not concealed.
‘Groaning ale’. In early modern Europe and colonial America, a ‘groaning ale’ would be brewed when a woman became pregnant. The ale would mature throughout the pregnancy, imbibed by the mother and midwife as labour began, and then the remnants of the sterile, 8% liquid washed over the newborn.
Martha Washington Is the Only Woman to Appear on a US Bill: America’s first First Lady, Martha Washington, is to this day, the only woman to have her likeness on a U.S. paper currency note. Her image appeared on the $1 Silver Certificate, first issued in 1886 and discontinued in 1957. It was the country’s second-longest issued paper money.