1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
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Alice Sanger, a stenographer with President Benjamin Harrison’s law firm in Indianapolis, became the first female to serve on a president’s executive staff as a clerk typist on Jan. 2, 1890. Sanger first appeared on the White House payroll in 1889 and was a personal friend of First Lady Caroline Harrison and a fellow member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It’s uncertain whether Sanger’s appointment was meant to appeal to the growing women’s suffrage movement — that same year two of the most influential such organizations combined forces and became the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which demanded stronger female property rights, employment and educational opportunities for women, improved divorce and child custody laws and reproductive freedom. Sanger’s own opinions on the movement are unknown. She can be seen in the above photo at the second desk from the left in the back.
(Library of Congress via White House Historical Association/History.com)
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