She later marries future President John F. Kennedy. American flier Jacquelin Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier. Ruth Page, choreographer and ballerina, founds the Chicago Ballet. Bette Clair Nesmith Graham invents Liquid Paper. The Beatnik style begins.
Women start to wear hair long and clothing long and loose.
A Raisin in the Sun is the first play by a black woman to appear on Broadway. It wins the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Eleanor Roosevelt is appointed by President Kennedy to the chair of the Commission on the Status of Woman. Biologist Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring in which she warns of the dangers of insecticides and weed killers. Jean Slutsky Nidetch founds Weight Watchers, which will become the world's most successful diet business.