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On March 8, women’s day is celebrated throughout the world. That date is believed to commemorate a dressmakers’ strike in New York City in 1857. There is, however, no evidence of a workers’ movement at that time in American history. The International Conference of Socialist Women, which decided upon this annual celebration in 1910, neither referred to such an event nor set the date of March 8. Only later, in the 1950s, did the legend of New York dressmakers take shape and become wide-spread. This article outlines the steps and results of the investigation that set the records straight. It also questions the motivations of socialist women in 1910, and those of other women who gave this time-honored celebration a new origin.