It was on this day in 1981 — 28 years ago — that the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sandra Day O’Connor, (books by this author) making her the nation’s first female Supreme Court justice. The confirmation vote was unanimous, 99-0, and she took the bench four days later, on September 25.

She was nominated on July 7 by President Reagan, who’d promised in his 1980 campaign that he would appoint a woman to the court.

Sandra Day O’Connor went to law school at Stanford, graduating third in her class — the very same class in which future Chief Justice William Rehnquist graduated first. While at Stanford Law, the two future justices dated briefly. In 1993, a dozen years after O’Connor’s appointment, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (appointed by Clinton) became the second female Supreme Court justice.

image via library.law.columbia.edu