BY THE LEARNING NETWORK

 JANUARY 12, 2012 4:03 AM

Library of Congress George Grantham Bain Collection Two suffragists holding a National Woman Suffrage Association banner in 1913. The United States did not amend the Constitution to grant women the right to vote until 1920.

On Jan. 12, 1915, the United States House of Representatives voted, 204-174, to reject a constitutional amendment to give women the right to vote.

The New York Times recounted the House’s 10 hours of debate in front of galleries packed with suffragists. The Times noted that it was a “solemn day in the galleries” as the “women there were slow to laugh, and they seemed too much awed by the speaker’s call for order to applaud even their strongest champion.”

The speaker ordered silence from the galleries three times, once for hissing during a speech made by anti-suffrage Representative Stanley Bowdle of Ohio. Mr. Bowdle proclaimed: “The women of this smart capital are beautiful. Their beauty is disturbing to business; their feet are beautiful; their ankles are beautiful, but here I must pause — for they are not interested in the state.”

The vote was the second defeat for a suffrage amendment in less than a year, as the Senate had voted against one in March 1914. Nonetheless, suffragist leaders were pleased to have had the issue discussed in Congress, which had gone 46 years without voting on whether women should be allowed to vote. The only other time was in 1868, when the suffrage amendment was first brought before Congress.

The optimism of the suffragists was well founded. In 1918, a suffrage amendment was passed in the House, but fell two votes short in the Senate. The next year, the House and the Senate voted in favor of suffrage, passing the 19th Amendment, which declared that the right “to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Hattie Caraway succeeded her husband as an Arkansas senator and then won re-election with more votes than her six male opponents combined. She’s pictured at her desk in 1943. Universal History Archive / Universal Images via Getty Images

Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, a Democrat from Arkansas, becomes the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. Caraway, born near Bakerville, Tennessee, had been appointed to the Senate two months earlier to fill the vacancy left by her late husband, Thaddeus Horatio Caraway. …read more

image from smithsonianmag.com

49 BC – Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River signaling a war between Rome and Gaul.

1519 – Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I died.

1773 – The first public museum in America was established in Charleston, SC.

1866 – The Royal Aeronautical Society was founded in London.

1875 – Kwang-su was made emperor of China.

1879 – The British-Zulu War began when the British invaded Zululand.

1882 – Thomas Edison’s central station on Holborn Viaduct in London began operation.

1895 – The first performance of King Arthur took place at the Lyceum Theatre.

1896 – At Davidson College, several students took x-ray photographs. They created the first X-ray photographs to be made in America.

1904 – Henry Ford set a new land speed record when he reached 91.37 miles per hour.

1908 – A wireless message was sent long-distance for the first time from the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

1915 – The U.S. House of Representatives rejected a proposal to give women the right to vote.

1915 – The U.S. Congress established the Rocky Mountain National Park.

1926 – “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuted on WGN Radio in Chicago, IL.

1932 – Hattie W. Caraway became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

1938 – Austria recognized the Franco government in Spain.

1940 – Soviet bombers raided cities in Finland.

1942 – U.S. President Roosevelt created the National War Labor Board.

1943 – The Office of Price Administration announced that standard frankfurters/hot dogs/wieners would be replaced by ‘Victory Sausages.’

1945 – During World War II, Soviet forces began a huge offensive against the Germans in Eastern Europe.

1948 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not discriminate against law-school applicants because of race.

1949 – “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends” was debuted on CBS-TV. The show stayed on the network for seven years.

1949 – “Kukla, Fran and Ollie”, the Chicago-based children’s show, made its national debut on NBC-TV.

1955 – Rod Serling’s career began with the TV production of “Patterns.”

1960 – Dolph Schayes of the Syracuse Nationals became the first pro basketball player in the NBA to score more than 15,000 points in his career.

1964 – Leftist rebels in Zanzibar began their successful revolt against the government and a republic was proclaimed.

1966 – U.S. President Johnson said in his State of the Union address that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there was ended.

1966 – “Batman” debuted on ABC-TV.

1967 – “Dragnet” returned to NBC-TV after being off the network schedule for eight years.

1970 – The breakaway state of Biafra capitulated and the Nigerian civil war came to an end.

1970 – Nigeria’s civil war ended.

1971 – “All In the Family” debuted on CBS-TV.

1973 – Yassar Arafat was re-elected as head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

1986 – Space shuttle Columbia blasted off with a crew that included the first Hispanic-American in space, Dr. Franklin R. Chang-Diaz.

1991 – The U.S. Congress passed a resolution authorizing President Bush to use military power to force Iraq out of Kuwait.

1995 – Northern Ireland Secretary Patrick Mayhew announced that as of January 16 British troops would no longer carry out daylight street patrols in Belfast.

1998 – Tyson Foods Inc. pled guilty to giving $12,000 to former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. Tyson was fined $6 million.

1998 – 19 European nations agreed to prohibit human cloning.

1998 – Linda Tripp provided Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s office with taped conversations between herself and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

1999 – Mark McGwire’s 70th home run ball was sold at auction in New York for $3 million to an anonymous bidder.

2000 – The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, gave police broad authority to stop and question people who run at the sight of an officer.

2000 – Charlotte Hornets guard Bobby Phills was killed in a crash during a drag race.

2005 – NASA launched “Deep Impact”. The spacecraft was planned to impact on Comet Tempel 1 after a six-month, 268 million-mile journey.

2006 – The U.S. Mint began shipping new 5-cent coins to the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks. The coin has an image of Thomas Jefferson taken from a 1800 Rembrandt Peale portrait in which the president is looking forward. Since 1909, when presidents were first depicted on circulating coins, all presidents had been shown in profile.