On this date in 1916, Margaret Sanger, a public health nurse, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn, N.Y. More than 150 women stood in line waiting for the doors to open. Sanger, despite several early run-ins with the law, became a life-long advocate of birth control after serving as a nurse in the slums of New York City. She founded the National Birth Control League in 1914 and served as first president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1953. She died in 1966 at the age of 86.

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