October 3, 1922: The 1st Female U.S. Senator

October 3, 1922: Rebecca Felton is appointed the 1st female U.S. Senator, by the Governor of Georgia, Thomas Hardwick, to replace the late Senator Thomas Watson. The special election to fill Watson’s seat was held on November 21, and she was sworn in on that day; and the winner of that election, Walter George, was sworn in the next day. So she served all of one day.

At 87, she was the oldest "freshman" Senator ever. And she was the most progressive politician in Georgia at the time, favoring women's right to vote, educational reform and prison reform. Which should tell you just how bad Georgia was at the time, because the State's most progressive politician was the last former slave owner to serve in Congress, and spoke in favor of lynching. (She was 26 when the American Civil War began.)

She died in 1930. Not until Kelly Loeffler in 2020 would Georgia have another female Senator.

In 1931, Hattie Caraway won a special election for U.S. Senator from Arkansas, succeeding her late husband. Unlike Senator Felton, she was elected to a term in her own right in 1932. She was re-elected in 1938, but was defeated in the Democratic Primary in 1944.

In 1978, Nancy Kassebaum became the first woman ever elected to a full term in the Senate without her husband having previously served in Congress. However, she was the daughter of Alfred M. Landon, who had been Governor of Kansas, and the Republican Party's nominee for President in 1936. She was elected to 3 terms before retiring.

If you're thinking about Margaret Chase Smith, Republican of Maine, who was the 1st woman to serve in both houses of Congress -- the House of Representatives from 1940 to 1949, and then the Senate until 1973 -- she was elected to the House to succeed her husband, Clyde Smith, who had died in office.

Here's a list of each State's 1st female Senator -- if any -- and the year they took office:

1. 1922, Georgia: Rebecca Felton

2. 1931, Arkansas: Hattie Caraway

3. 1936, Louisiana: Rose Long

4. 1937, Alabama: Dixie Graves

5. 1938, South Dakota: Gladys Pyle

6. 1949, Maine: Margaret Chase Smith

7. 1954, Nebraska: Eva Bowning

8. 1960, Oregon: Maurine Neuberger

9. 1978, Minnesota: Muriel Humphrey

10. 1978, Kansas: Nancy Kassebaum

11. 1981, Florida: Paula Hawkins

12. 1987, Maryland: Barbara Mikulski

13. 1992, North Dakota: Jocelyn Burdick

14. 1992, California: Dianne Feinstein (the 1st Jewish female Senator)

15. 1993, Illinois: Carol Moseley-Braun (the 1st black female Senator)

16. 1993, Washington: Patty Murray

17. 1993, Texas: Kay Hutchison

18. 2001, Missouri: Jean Carnahan

19. 2001, New York: Hillary Clinton

20. 2001, Michigan: Debbie Stabenow

21. 2002, Alaska: Lisa Murkowski

22. 2003, North Carolina: Elizabeth Dole

23. 2009, New Hampshire: Jeanne Shaheen 

24. 2013, Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin (the 1st openly gay Senator of any gender)

25. 2013, Hawaii: Mazie Hirono (the 1st Asian-American female Senator)

26. 2013, Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren

27. 2015, Iowa: Jodi Ernst

28. 2015, West Virginia: Shelley Moore Capito

29. 2017, Nevada: Catherine Cortez Masto (the 1st Hispanic female Senator)

30. 2018, Mississippi: Cindy Hyde-Smith

31. 2019, Tennessee: Marsha Blackburn

32. 2019, Arizona: Kyrsten Sinema & Martha McSally (sworn in simultaneously)

33. 2021, Wyoming: Cynthia Lummis

None yet: Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia.

UPDATE: In 2025, Delaware became the 34th State with a female U.S. Senator.

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October 3, 1922 was a Tuesday. Baseball was between the regular season and the World Series. Football was in midweek. The NHL season was 2 months away. And there was no professional basketball league yet. So there were no scores on this historic day.