Facts About the 50 States
50 Fun Facts About Every State in America
Ohio
Victoria C. Woodhull, who actually might be the most interesting woman in the world, was a magazine publisher and women’s rights advocate born in Homer. She was the first woman to run for president in 1872. She campaigned on a platform of “women’s suffrage, regulation of monopolies, nationalization of railroads, an eight-hour workday, direct taxation, abolition of the death penalty and welfare for the poor, among other things.” Famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass was selected as her running mate. He never acknowledged it, however, and in fact campaigned for Republican Ulysses S. Grant. Victoria and her sister, Tennessee, were also the first female stock brokers on Wall Street. They moved to New York City in 1868. Both sisters began working as “clairvoyants for the railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt.” Tennessee apparently became Vanderbilt’s lover and, supposedly, learned some secrets of the stock market. During the 1869 gold panic, the sisters claimed to have netted around $700,000.
