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on her 80th birthday Nancy Astor said " years ago I thought old age would be dreadful because I should not be able to do the things I want to do. Now I find that there is nothing I want to do after all"

HER NAME IS N...........

* Nadedja Degtereva ( also called Nadeshda)

 ..... born in Kiev in the Ukraine she joined the Russian Air Force disguised as a man and flew on the Galacian Front. In 1915 she was wounded in aerial combat and when her sex was discovered she became a national heroine.  When she recovered she joined the air force on the Caucausis front. Although she may not have been the FIRST woman to fly in combat she was certainly the FIRST to be wounded while doing so ( from Dave Lam)

* Nadia Boulanger

 born 1887 died 1979

..... FIRST woman to conduct a symphony orchestra in London (1937) FIRST woman to conduct the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1936), the Royal Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra and in 1963 the FIRST woman to conduct the Halle Orchestra. Among her many other honours and awards were doctorates from Oxford and Harvard and a commandership of the Legion d'Honneur

* Nadia Comaneci

..... FIRST person to gain a perfect 10 for floor exercises which she received in the 1976 Olympics. She also won 3 gold medals and contributed to her team's silver medal

* Nadine Gordimer

..... South African who became the FIRST woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 25 years when she received the award in 1991 for her  ' great epic poetry' . She was the seventh woman to received the award since it was instigated in 1901

* Nafis Sadik

..... FIRST woman executive director of a UN organisation

* Najma Akhtar

..... FIRST Asian artist to appear at Ronnie Scott's jazz club

* Nan Collins and Jean Rogers

..... Salford's (UK) FIRST female bus drivers who passed their Public Service Vehicle driving test after a three week course in 1970

* Nan MacDonald

  neé Margaret Annie

  born May 24th 1908 died 1995

..... FIRST in-house employee to attend the BBC Staff Training College. From 1937 to 1949 she was organiser of the Northern Children's Hour and she also devised Listeners Forum in which children were encouraged to discuss programmes. She produced some 100 plays a year and recruited the services of the BBC Northern Orchestra.  She left Manchester at the end of 1949 and for a while was a producer in Children's Television but returned to Children's Hour in 1953

* Nan Arrington Peete

..... in 1988 she became the FIRST woman priest to address the Lambeth Conference in 1988 and received a standing ovation

* Nan Winton

 ..... on 20th June 1960 she became the FIRST woman to read the national news on BBC television

* Nan Youngman

  neé Nancy Mayhew Youngman

  born June 28th 1906 died 1995

..... English painter and a pioneering figure in British art education and in 1947, as chairman of the newly formed Society for Education through Art she organised the FIRST 'Pictures for Schools' exhibition. It was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum and was a great success with further exhibitions being held at the Tate Gallery, the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the Royal Academy

* Nana Mouskouri

..... Greek singer and the FIRST woman Member of the European Parliament for Greece

* Nancy Astor

 born May 19th 1879 died May 2nd 1964

..... FIRST woman MP to take her place in the House of Commons and the only woman MP from 1919 until 1921. She was a titled American socialite backed by the Astor millions and fought and won her husband's Plymouth seat when he went to the Lords.  It caused a rift between them and in the 1945 election he forbade her to stand.  She triumphed in a man's world and did much for the practical emancipation of women. Her three causes were - down with Socialism, down with booze and up with the rights of women.  She was the FIRST woman to have a Private Members' Bill become law - The Intoxicating Liquor (Sale to Persons Under 18) which prevented the sale of liquor to the under 18s and the guardianship of children, legitimacy laws and women police were among her interests. She served in parliament for 25 years and retired to Plymouth with her husband as Mayor and Mayoress.  Their main home was Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire which was built in 1850 and bought by the Astor family in 1893. They employed 40/50 gardeners, 12 stablemen, 6 housemaids and 6 laundry maids and during the First World War the tennis court and bowling alley were adapted by the Canadian Army as a military hospital. She was a great political hostess and gave lavish formal parties at their London home and more informal weekends at Cliveden and in the inter-war years the famous 'Cliveden Set' was in full swing. In 1942 the house was given to the National Trust but they continued to live there until Lord Astor died in 1952. Their son lived there until his death in 1966 and it ceased to be the family home. Cliveden Hotels Ltd turned it into Britain's only five red AA star hotel with a Michelin Star restaurant that is also a stately home

* Nancy Balfour

 born May 17th 1911 died 1997

..... a well known figure in the British contemporary art world she was one of the FIRST women members of the Reform Club. From 1954 she was an assistant editor of the Economist and as editor of the American Survey she created a series if international importance, which reported events from all over America. She retired from the paper in 1972 but remained on its arts committee. In 1965 she was appointed OBE and in 1978 was a founding member and trustee of the British American Arts Association.  She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1985

* Nancy Bord

..... successful American businesswoman and  formerly economic policy adviser to the Bush Administration she was the FIRST woman dean of a US business school and in 1996 the FIRST woman director of a UK business school when she took up her post at the Liverpool Business School

* Nancy Carroll

..... Irish woman who was the FIRST woman star to sing into a movie microphone and to tap dance on a sound stage

* Nancy Evans

 born 19th March 1915 died 2000

..... English mezzo-soprano who gave her first solo recital in Liverpool in 1933 and made her London debut the following year.  In 1935 she was signed by Decca to sing the title role in the FIRST ever recording of Dido and Aeneas and in 1946 she shared the lead in the FIRST production of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia with Kathleen Ferrier

* Nancy Green

  ..... American who became the FIRST living trademark in 1893 as "Aunt Jemima" cooking pancakes for the Aunt Jemima Mills Co

* Nancy Mace

..... American who was the FIRST woman to graduate from the Citadel in May 1999, the 156-year-old military college in South Carolina. She joined in 1996 with three other women, a year after Shannon Faulkner. Two dropped out after a few months and the third will graduate in the year 2000. Miss Mace received her diploma from her father, also a graduate of the Citadel, and received the longest applause of any cadet. There are now 42 women among the Citadel's 1,700 cadets

* Nancy Sinatra

..... owner of the FIRST pink Thunderbird car in the United States when she received it on her 17th birthday

* Nancy Swift

 neé Nancy Iris Crammond

 born July 18th 1915 died 1990

..... psychotherapist who was the FIRST woman appointed to the consultant staff at the Maudsley Hospital in 1964 even though she lacked a formal training in psychoanalysis

* Nancy Walker

..... as a result of her work and commitment as a Supervisor in San Francisco (equivalent to a city councillor in England) it became the FIRST city in the U.S. with a law that required developers of major new commercial office space to provide rent free accommodation or money in lieu, for child care

* Nancy Wansbrough

 neé Joy

 born July 22nd 1915 died 1997

.....  one of the FIRST group of lay women to preach at All Saint's Church, Margaret Street, London

* Naomi Campbell

..... FIRST black cover girl for British and French Vogue magazine

* Naomi James

  born March 2nd 1949

..... international yachtswoman who was the FIRST woman to sail single-handed round the world via Cape Horn in 1978. In 1979 she was made DBE and the following year competed in the single-handed Transatlantic race and set a record for a female competitor

* Naomi Uemura

  ..... Japanese who was the FIRST person to reach the North Pole solo in 1978

* Natalia Cole

..... FIRST woman dog-handler in the Devon and Cornwall force in 1989 and only the fifth in Britain at the time

* Natalia Makarova

 born 1940

..... FIRST dancer in exile to appear with her home company, the Kirov in 1988

* Natalia Sats

.... at the age of 15 years she was head of the FIRST theatre for children in Moscow in 1918

* Natalie Campbell

..... Manchester prostitute who became the FIRST in the UK to be legally barred from plying her trade at a railway station, when British Transport Police were granted an anti-social behaviour order in August 2003 banning her from Piccadilly station and its surrounding streets, unless she was catching a train

* Natalie Du Toit

..... on August 4th 2002 she became the winner of the FIRST David Dixon award for the outstanding athlete at the Commonwealth Games when she was presented with the award in the closing ceremony of the 17th Commonwealth Games in Manchester. She was also the FIRST artist lacking a limb to make the Commonwealth Games able-bodied finals in any sport in Manchester

* Natasha Jeary

..... FIRST person in Britain found to have been discriminated against for agoraphobia when she won £7000 compensation from her employers MIE Ltd in 1999. She was sacked after her fear of public places caused her to become terrified of travelling by train or alone by car and it was ruled that the company had breached the Disability Discrimination Act

* Nawal El Moutawakel

..... FIRST Arab/Muslim/African woman to win an Olympic gold medal when she became the winner of the women's 400 metres hurdles at the Los Angeles Olympic Games and set an Olympic record of 54.61 secs

* Nell Jefferson

..... one of the world's FIRST women radar operators - 1938 - Bawdsey Manor, Suffolk, where many of the initial experiments into radar were first carried out. Her husband Sid joined Watson-Watt in April 1936 about a year after the pioneering team set up shop at Orford Ness, a remote isthmus a dozen miles north-east of Bawdsey. He was a designer of domestic radio sets at EMI and his first task was to redesign the radar receivers sited along the English coast. Nell arrived a year after Sid as one of Watson-Watts secretary's. However in 1939 when she and Sid married, her involvement with Bawdsey came to an end as it was a strict rule that husbands and wives could not work together. It is believed that Nell and her husband were the first couple to meet and marry through working in radar. Her short career in radar helped pave the way for thousands of WAAFs to do the job for real when the time came

* Nell Mitchell

.....  FIRST woman clerk at the Midland Bank in the 1950s

* Nellie Bohanna

..... FIRST woman police Superintendent in the Manchester area and the FIRST woman to hold the rank of Chief Inspector in the Manchester City Police Force

* Nellie Jarman

..... FIRST international beauty contest winner in 1908

* Nellie Mooney McClung

born October 20th 1873 died September 1st 1951

..... member of the Famous Five of Canada in 1927, it was through her work that Manitoba became the FIRST province to enfranchise women

* Nellie McGrail

..... the FIRST big pools winner when she won £205,305.00 in 1957

* Nellie Melba

  neé Helen Porter Mitchell

  born 19th May 1861 died 23rd February 1931

..... opera singer immortalised in Peach Melba and Melba Toast she was the FIRST Australian performer to be made a DBE. On June 15th 1920 music was broadcast from England by wireless-telephony for the FIRST time and all over Europe and on ships at sea, listeners tuned in to hear her sing

* Nellie Stewart

..... FIRST British screen artiste to work on a %age when she received £1000 and a percentage of the gross for her role in Sweet Nell of Old Drury

* Nellie Wallace

 died 1948

..... one of the FIRST female pantomime dames

* Netta Rheinberg /Audrey Collins /Rachel Heyhoe Flint /Betty Archdale /Edna Barker /Carole Cornthwaite /Jackie Court /Sheila Hill /Norma Izard and Diana Rait Kerr

..... the FIRST 10 women members of Marylebone Cricket Club in 1999. Betty Archdale captained the FIRST England women's touring team to Australia and New Zealand in 1934 

* Nettie Maria Stevens

 born 1861 died 1912

..... American who was one of the FIRST to show that sex is determined by a particular chromosome - X for female and Y for male

* Nicci Harold

..... at the Royal Corps of Transport HQ at Aldershot she became the FIRST woman to command an all-male passing-out parade in the British Army

* Nichelle Nicholls

..... FIRST African-American woman to be given a role in a major series when she starred as Lt Uhuru in Star Trek and was the female half of the FIRST inter-racial kiss on television

* Nichola Goddard

..... FIRST female Canadian soldier to be killed in action

* Nicky Cole

..... Englishwoman who was the FIRST woman to reach the North Pole on foot. She was the only woman in the eight-strong party of walkers which was led by Robert Swan

* Nicky Smale, Jan Sutherland, Andrea Draper and Louise Bird

..... four of Britain's FIRST all-woman team of British Rail gangers in 1991 when they were put to work repairing tracks on the company's Western Region

* Nicky Smith

..... the RAF's FIRST Squadron leader when she became responsible for the prestigious helicopter group 84 Squadron in April 2002.  In 1992 she was one of the FIRST in line to apply for training and became the FIRST woman to earn her wings as a military helicopter pilot.  Although there are higher-ranking women in the RAF they are ground-based.  As squadron leader she had responsibility for 57 people with four aircraft and her unit was the last to use the Wessex helicopters

* Nicola, Natalie and Natasha Baison

..... identical triplets who were the FIRST triplets to attend Wentworth High School in Eccles, nr Salford, where they joined their older sister Gemma

* Nicola Castle and Debbie Murphy

..... in 1998 Nicola was the FIRST solicitor to rise from trainee to partner with the firm of Alexander Harris and specialised in cases involving children with cerebral palsy. Debbie was among the FIRST ever associates with the same firm and worked as a medico-legal assistant in the medical negligence department

* Nicola Gray

..... FIRST woman dog handler in the Metropolitan Police in England to go on street patrols after completing a 14 week course at Keston in Kent

* Nicola Lowes, Gillian Ridley and Christel Wilson

..... made history when they became the FIRST girls in Britain to join the Scouts when they enrolled in the 1st Wark and District Scouts and in 1990 they took part in the movement's FIRST mixed camping trip in the UK

* Nicola Stroud

..... FIRST girl to join the squad at Nerris Wood College, Worplesdon, Surrey to study for an HND in Golf Studies . She was the FIRST and only girl in the intake of 32 young, aspiring golfers on the new three-year residential course in 1991. In 1995 she became the FIRST woman in Europe to have qualified from the specialist course pioneered by the Professional Golfers Association

* Nicola West

..... FIRST time that PMS was used as a mitigating factor in a criminal case in 1978 when she was charged with committing arson twice, once "with intent to kill". She was incarcerated in Holloway and was being moved to Broadmoor but the courts were persuaded to give her a second chance after her plea and she walked free from court. She later wrote a book about her fight called PMS, A Second Chance To Live

* Nicola Young

..... one of the FIRST female trainee engineers with the Royal Navy and was one of the FIRST ones at sea after the Navy changed its rules to allow women on ships

* Nicole Lavelle

..... believed to be the FIRST child to use Scottish family law to sue for tuition fees when she took her father to court in November 2000 to force him to pay £700 in school fees for her

* Nicole Niquille

 ..... Swiss who was the FIRST woman mountain guide

* Nicole Sauve + 8 other females

..... Canadians who were the FIRST all-female crew to take a passenger plane across the Atlantic in 1996 when they brought a Boeing 757 from Toronto and landed at Manchester Airport.  Nicole captained the Canadian 3000 flight carrying 235 passengers

* Nicolete Mary Gray

 neé Binyon

 born July 20th 1911 died 1997

..... historian and teacher of lettering who organised the FIRST international exhibition of abstract art in Britain in 1936 and was the FIRST woman elected to the Double Crown dining club of printers and typographers

* Nicolette Marsden

..... at the age of eight she became the FIRST girl in Urmston, Manchester, to join the Cub Scouts when she joined the all-boys 3rd Davyhulme Troop

* Nina Baker

..... FIRST woman accepted into the ordinary OND Deck Cadetship scheme in the British Merchant Navy  and at the time was the only woman living in the hall of residence with 250 deck and engineering male cadets. She passed everything first time and won 2 prizes and then worked for a further year as a Third Mate with BP before moving to work on general cargo ships. In 1978 she got her 1st Mate's Certificate and worked on a cable ship for a few months before leaving the Merchant Navy altogether. She then went to University and got a BSc in Engineering Design with Appropriate Technology and then did a PhD in building materials. (P/L)

* Nina Bang

 born 1866 died 1928

..... F1RST woman to be a member of the Landsting in Denmark's FIRST social Democratic government after the achievement of woman suffrage in 1918.  In 1924 she became Minister of Education and tried to thoroughly reorganise Danish public schools. Two years later she was made Minister of Commerce

* Nina Boucicault

 born 1867 died 1950

..... FIRST to play Peter Pan when the play was premiered in London in 1904

* Nina Elizabeth Cameron Coltart

 born November 21st 1917died 1997

..... Director of the London Clinic of Psycho-Analysis where analysts give their time free of charge to administer the organisation and to arrange the treatment of patients. She was the FIRST woman editor of St Bartholomew's  Journal

* Nina Krasavina

 born 1935 died 1996

..... Russian clown, acrobat and aerialist who, with her husband, created one of America's FIRST officially recognised circus schools - The Circus Arts School, which was approved as a private vocational school by the New Jersey Department of Education

* Nina Lowry

..... FIRST resident woman judge at the Central Criminal Court, London (P/L)

* Nina Pulliam

 died 1997

..... FIRST woman admitted to the Society of Professional Journalists. With her husband Eugene, she was co-founder of Central Newspapers Inc., the holding company for the Indianapolis Star, the Indianapolis News, the Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette, among many others

* Nina Temple

..... FIRST woman General Secretary of the Communist Party when she took over the 7,500-strong party in 1990

* Nita Barrow

 neé Ruth Nita

 born November 15th 1916 died 1995

..... FIRST woman Governor- General of Barbados. She played an important part in the development of nursing in the West Indies and won international recognition for her work with the Young Women's Christian Association and the World Council of Churches. She was also the only woman, apart from his immediate family, to visit Nelson Mandela during his 27 years of imprisonment

* Nita Pearson

..... FIRST ever recipient of the That's Esther Award for bringing the benefits of line dancing to the attention of doctors in her area of N W Leicestershire

* Nobuko Takahashi

..... FIRST woman Ambassador for Japan. In 1980 she signed the Convention on behalf of Japan at Copenhagen and during her career also served as the Chief of Women and Juvenile Bureau in the Japanese Ministry of Labour, as Assistant Secretary-General of the International Labour organisation and as Director of INSTRAW

* Noel Dyson

 born 23rd December 1916 died 1995

..... actress who played the part of Ida Barlow in the television soap Coronation Street and was the FIRST character to be 'killed off' when she was run over by a bus. She specialised in downtrodden housewife roles and later appeared as the housekeeper in Father, Dear Father. From 1979 she was in the BBC series Potter

* Nona Coxhead

 born December 22nd 1914 died 1998

..... Australian novelist, author of the best seller The Richest Girl in the World, and creator of the FIRST fiction courses for the Westport Famous Writers School, a correspondence school for would-be writers

* Nora Beloff

 born January 24th 1919 died 1997

..... dedicated journalist on the Observer and the FIRST woman foreign correspondent in Washington and the FIRST person to expose the 'lobby system' in politics. She began her career as a journalist at Reuter's News Agency, joined the Economist in Paris in 1946 and then joined the Observer where she stayed for 30 years

* Nora Blatch

..... FIRST American woman to graduate in Civil Engineering. Her mother was  Harriet Stanton Blatch, a famous American suffrage leader, who led the FIRST big suffrage parade in New York City. Her grandmother was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who also worked for the suffrage movement both in the US and in England and was the FIRST President of the National Women's Suffrage Association

* Nora Inayat Khan

born 1914

..... she was born in the Kremlin, daughter of a descendant of the last mogul Emperor of Southern India and in 1943 became the FIRST woman wireless operator to be sent into France by the SOE ( Special Operations Executive)

* Norah Mary Phillips

 neé Lusher

 born August 12th 1910 died 1992

..... FIRST woman Government Whip in the House of Lords when appointed in 1965 and in this capacity had to answer for a number of departments in the Lords. For many years she served as a JP in the county of London and from 1978 to 1985 was Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London. She was a champion of the consumer and in 1965 founded the Housewives Trust to help shoppers obtain the best value for money. In 1977 she became director of the Association for the Prevention of Theft in Shops

* Norah Wilmot

..... FIRST woman to officially train a winner of a race - 1966

* Norcross - Miss

..... in 1788 she was the FIRST woman to score a century in cricket

* Noreen Kershaw

..... FIRST actress to have both directed and appeared in the soap opera Coronation Street

* Noreen Murray

..... on June 14th 1995 UMIST awarded honorary degrees to a husband and wife team for the FIRST time when science degrees were given to Professor Noreen and her husband molecular biologist Professor Sir Kenneth Murray of Edinburgh University

* Norma Barzman

..... FIRST "girl" reporter on William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner. When he found out that she was a communist he refused to fire her saying that he didn't care if she was a Red, he never fired a good reporter

* Norma Dalrymple-Champneys

 neé Norma Hull Lewis

 born October 8th 1902 died 1998

..... Librarian of Somerville College and a distinguished bibliographer she was the FIRST woman to be elected an honorary fellow of Oriel College, Oxford in 1988

* Norma Talmadge

 died 1957

.....  FIRST star to have her footprints in cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Legend has it that the tradition started by accident when she accidentally stepped into some wet concrete that had just been laid outside the cinema in May 1927. She was one of the most popular stars of the silent era but when sound arrived her Brooklyn accent helped to destroy her career.  She retired from films and then went on radio where she was reasonably successful

* Norma Whitehead

..... in January 1992 she was the FIRST woman to win the annual conker battle at the Brown Cow in Edenfield Road, Rochdale

* Nouchka Van Brakel

 born 1940

..... FIRST woman to study at the Dutch Film Academy

* Nur Jahan

 born 1571 died 1634

..... FIRST and only woman ruler of India to issue coins in her own name. She took over most of the administration of the Empire after her husband became addicted to drink and opium and held power for almost 16 years

* Nyimasata Sanneh-Bojang

..... in April 1982 she became the FIRST woman Member of Parliament for Gambia and was determined to encourage and promote women's involvement in politics there. She was parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Education, Youth, Sports and Culture and was one of 35 elected MPs, five Chief Representatives and eight nominated members (one of whom was also a woman) which formed the Gambian government

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