1845

Newspaperman Horace Greeley publishes a landmark book by journalist and social reformer Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century. The work argues for women's equality in all aspects of life.

1848

American women move further into the public sphere; the first Women's Rights Convention is held at Seneca Falls, New York.

1849

Amelia Bloomer begins her crusade to reform American women's fashions.

1854

P.T. Barnum's efforts to launch a live beauty contest are unsuccessful. Respectable women do not parade their beauty in public. He launches a picture-based beauty contest sponsored by local newspapers. It is highly successful and imitated.

1861-64

The nation is divided in two as North and South clash in the U.S. Civil War.

1863

January 1: President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation.

1880

The first recorded bathing beauty contest takes place at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Inventor Thomas Edison is a judge. A bridal trousseau is the prize. Contestants must be under 25, not married, at least 5 feet 4 inches tall, and weigh no more than 130 pounds.

1889

November 18: Journalist Nellie Bly sets off to travel around the world in under 80 days.

1890

An umbrella organization, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, is formed. Women's clubs are venues for women's education and development, and will increasingly focus on community service.

In a second wave of U.S. immigration, people from Eastern Europe and Italy come to America.

1893

The Chicago Columbian Exposition features a Congress of Beauty.

1895

The National Federation of Afro-American Women is formed. A year later it joins with the League of Colored Women to become the National Association of Colored Women.

1896

U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson rules that segregation is not unconstitutional. The doctrine treating African Americans as "separate but equal" holds for the next half century.

1898

American soldiers fight the Spanish American War in Cuba and the Philippines.