What Was the First Country to Elect a Female Head of State?

Sri Lanka was the very first country to elect a female head of state. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was elected prime minister for the first time in 1960 (and later served two more terms) after her husband, Prime Minister Solomon Bandaranaike, was assassinated.

Thirty-four years after Mrs. Bandaranaike first served as PM, she was re-elected. In 1994, Sirimavo Bandaranaike took the office of prime minister again -- the same year her daughter, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, was elected president of the country. You go, girls!