The earliest female head of a computer games design studio is Mie Kumagai, Head of Research and Development at Sega’s Amusement Software labs. She was responsible for the development of the Crazy Taxi, Virtual On and Virtua Tennis series, plus the racing game Initial D Arcade Stage.
Graca Machel was married to Samora Machel (1933-86), President of Mozambique from 1975 to 1986. President Machel was killed in a plane crash on 19 October 1986. On 18 July 1998 she married Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa, making her the first woman to be `First Lady’ of two different countries.
Female athletes competed in the Olympics for the first time at the 1900 Games held in Paris, France. Alongside the 975 male athletes, a total of 22 women competed for glory in sports such as tennis and golf.
In the syndicated series Sheena Queen of the Jungle (US 1955-56) actress Irish McCalla played the distaff Tarzan who had first appeared in comic strips in the 1930s.
The first woman to orbit the Earth was Junior Lt Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (b. 6 Mar 1937, USSR). She was launched in Vostok 6 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at 9:30a.m. GMT on 16 Jun 1963. Vostok 6 landed at 8:20a.m. on 19 June, after a flight of 2days 22hr 50min and 48 orbits (1,971,000km 1,225,000miles). It passed momentarily to within 5km 3 miles of Vostok 5. Like Gagarin, Tereshkova ejected, after 2days 22hr 40min and landed six minutes later. Tereshkova was born to a
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Spacewalks – first, woman The first woman to perform an EVA was Svetlana Savitskaya from Soyuz T12/Salyut 7 on 25 Jul 1984.
Kim Clijsters (Belgium) became the the first female wildcard player to win a tennis grand slam with her memorable singles victory at the 2009 US Open.
Britain’s first female-led cop show was The Gentle Touch (ITV, 1980–84), starring Jill Gascoigne as Detective Inspector Maggie Forbes.
British rower Roz Savage is the first woman to cross the Pacific Ocean single-handed, completing her epic journey on board her vessel Brocade in three stages: San Francisco, California, USA, to Waikiki, Hawaii, USA, in 99 days from 25 May to 1 September 2008; Hawaii to Kiribati in 104 days from 24 May to 6 September 2009; Kiribati to Madang, Papua New Guinea, in 46 days from 18 April to 3 June 2010.
US Paralympic rower Angela Madsen is the first woman to complete three ocean rows: the Atlantic east to west, with Franck Festor (France) in Row of Life, from La Gomera in the Canary Islands to Antigua, West Indies, in 66 days 23 hr 24 min between 2 December 2007 and 7 February 2008; the Indian Ocean east to west, in the eight-man Aud Eamus, from Geraldton, Western Australia, to Port Louis, Mauritius, in 58 days 15 hr 8 min between 28 April and 25 June
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