The wide world of sports has never belonged only to men. Women played polo in ancient China, and Polynesian women boxed in the 19th century. Hawaiian women surfed as far back as 1873, and Venetian women raced gondolas in 1600.

Women even played rugby, as this 1899 Ainslee's magazine advertisement illustrates. The image comes from "The Sporting Woman," an exhibit that kicked off a year-long celebration of the 100th anniversary of women at Carolina. The prints and drawings in the collection show images of women in athletics from antiquity to 1930, countering the stereotype that sports were a man's domain until very recently, says exhibit curator Sally Fox of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fox, an independent picture researcher, spent two years compiling the images for the exhibit.