August 31

Anyone with even the tiniest bit of ambition wants to be known as the first in some endeavor of note. Mary Ann Nichols, a young woman, estranged from her husband and family and suffering from the ravages of alcoholism, who had been reduced to supporting herself as a prostitute as she gamely tried to make her way on the stormy sea of life, was no different. On the 31st in 1888, she became the first victim of England’s most famous serial killer Jack the Ripper. (The comments about Mary’s state in life were taken from the transcript of the inquest which was held investigating her death

This next bit has nothing whatever to do with Mary but it is just too good to leave out: On the 31st in 1920, at 7:00 a.m., Mrs. Marie Ruoff Byrum became the first woman to legally cast a vote under the authority of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution.