Sally Ride is Out of This World (June 18)

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

On this day in pop culture history, Sally Ride went to space, Susan B. Anthony got fined for attempting to vote and ten women performed in a pageant-style dating show for ABC. Two out of three isn’t bad, right?

1983 – Sally Ride is the First American Woman to Travel in Space

Astronaut Sally Ride aboard the Challenger Space Shuttle. *(Wikimedia Commons)*

On this day in 1983, Sally Ride, an astronaut and physicist became the first American woman to travel into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger’s STS-7 mission. And at the age of 32, she broke a record for being the youngest American astronaut to have flown in space.

Sally’s six-day adventure included operating the shuttle’s robot arm, a feature that she helped create while here on earth. She was one of 3,000 applicants who applied for the role back in 1978. Sally however was not the first woman in space. That title goes to cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova from the Soviet Union who went up into the stars 20 years earlier on June 16, 1963.

2018 – The Proposal: I Don’t

"The Proposal" TV Series
A group of bachelorettes stand behind the show's host. — Host Jesse Palmer and a group of bachelorettes for the show *The Proposal. (TVDB)*

NFL quarterback Jesse Palmer has done a lot since his days playing football. After being ABC’s Bachelor for season 5 in 2004 (he got the girl, but they didn’t get married), Palmer returned to the TV dating world to host The Proposal. He probably regretted that decision.

The Proposal was a sped-up dating show that felt like a mashup of The Bachelor and The Dating Game. Each episode contained 10 men or women competing in a pageant-like contest which began with Palmer stating, “Let the soulmate pageant begin!” The winning prize? The chance to web a complete stranger who stayed hidden within a “shadowed pod” until only one contestant remained. It both parties agreed, they would get married by the end of the show.

Caroline Framke from Variety called The Proposal a “bizarro world” show that was “painfully boring”. She also said, “This reality show isn’t some magical solution to the nightmare that is dating. It’s a ‘get married quick’ scheme – and we all know how that usually ends.” Fortunately, Palmer has found better work since then.

1872: Susan B. Anthony is Fined $100 for Voting

Susan B. Anthony was born to a family of rebels on February 15, 1820. They were a Quaker family who thrived on social equality for all. At the age of 17, she collected anti-slavery petitions. In 1852, she and her friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, founded the New York Women’s State Temperance Society. This was done in retaliation for the refusal of letting her speak at a temperance conference because she was a woman.

In 1856, Anthony became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society and in 1863, she and Stanton founded the Women’s Loyal National League.

Three years later in 1866, the pair initiated the American Equal Rights Association which campaigned for equal rights for both African Americans and all women. Then in 1869, they created the National Woman Suffrage Association and in 1872, Anthony was arrested for attempting to vote in her hometown of Rochester, New York. On this day in 1873, Anthony was fined $100 for voting. She refused to pay the fine and the authorities declined to take further action against her.

In 1878, Anthony and Stanton presented Congress with an amendment giving women the right to vote. It became the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920.

In 1979, the United States honored Anthony by allowing her image to appear on the one-dollar U.S. coin. In 2020, President Donald Trump pardoned the suffragist. However, Deborah L. Hughes, the executive director of the National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House located in Rochester, N.Y. declined the offer since Anthony never thought she had done anything wrong.