Margaret Chase Smith of Maine becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate without completing another senator's term.

Margaret Madeline Chase Smith was an American politician. A member of the Republican Party, she served as a U.S. representative (1940–1949) and a U.S. senator (1949–1973) from Maine. She was the first woman to serve in both houses of the United States Congress. A Republican, she was among the first to criticize the tactics of Joseph McCarthy in her 1950 speech "Declaration of Conscience".