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On February 3, 1821, Elizabeth Blackwell was born.
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On July 4, 1824, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
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In 1832, when Blackwell was 11, she and her family emigrated to America after her father needed a better area for his sugar refining business.
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In August of 1832, The United States's first school for the blind opens under the direction of Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe.
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On July 24, 1847, the first Mormons reached the Great Salt Lake.
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In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College, where she became the first woman to recieve a medical degree.
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When Blackwell was treating an infant with ophthalmia neonatorum, she spurted some contaminated solution into her own eye accidentally, and contracted the infection. She lost sight in her left eye and lost all hope of becoming a surgeon.
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In 1852, Blackwell published "The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls", her first work, a volume about the physical and mental development of girls.
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In 1857, Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, along with Blackwell and her sister Emily, who had also obtained a medical degree, expanded Blackwell's original dispensary into the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.
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On January 1, 1859, Blackwell became the first woman to have her name entered on the General Medical Council's medical register.
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On April 12, 1861, at 4:30 a.m., Confederate guns fire on Fort Sumter, a federal installation in South Carolina's Charleston harbor. The fort surrendered after 34 hours of bombardment.
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On November 8, 1864, President Lincoln defeated Democratic candidate George B. McClellan.
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On December 18, 1865, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution abolished slavery.
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On October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire claimed 250 lives and destroyed 17,500 buildings.
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In 1874, Blackwell and Sophia Jex-Blake established the London School of Medicine for Women.
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On February 14, 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone.
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In 1877, Blackwell resigned from her position as lecturer in midwifery, officially retiring from her medical career.
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On October 21, 1879, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
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On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland unveiled the Statue of Liberty.
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On May 31, 1910 Elizabeth Blackwell died at her home in Hastings.
