HISTORY MADE : Hillary Clinton Shatters Glass Ceiling, Officially Clinches Democratic Presidential Nomination She’s the first woman ever to top a major party’s presidential ticket.

07/26/2016 06:38 pm ET

Eight years ago, Hillary Clinton famously said her first White House bid had put“about 18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling, one for each voter who’d cast a ballot for her in the 2008 primary.

On Tuesday, that glass ceiling finally came down.

Hillary Clinton nominated as President of  USA

Clinton was formally named the Democratic nominee for president at her party’s convention in Philadelphia, making her the first woman ever to top a major party’s ticket for the White House.

More than 200 other women have sought the presidency since 1872, but none have come this far. The female Democratic leaders gathered in Philadelphia this week have waited their entire lives to see one of their own reach this point, just a step away from the Oval Office. To them, Clinton’s nomination represents the culmination of decades of work devoted to tearing down the barriers women have faced seeking high office in America.  

“Yes, we do break barriers,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who was the first woman to win a Senate seat not previously held by her husband, said in her nomination speech. “On behalf of all the women who’ve broken down barriers for others, and with an eye toward the barriers still ahead, I proudly place Hillary Clinton’s name in nomination to be the next president.”

The former senator and secretary of state locked up the necessary delegates to become the nominee in early June, and she has already plucked Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) as her running mate. But it wasn’t until Tuesday’s roll call vote by the party’s state delegations that her nomination against Republican Donald Trump became official and history was made.

“We tend to want to emulate what we can see,” Wendy Davis, the Texas Democrat, told The Huffington Post of the possibility of a woman president. “We need to see ourselves in office so we can aspire to those things. Having [Clinton] there, I think, is going to open up for little girls ― and not-so-young girls ― the aspirations that they may not have had for themselves previously.”

Clinton will not speak at the convention until Thursday, when she delivers perhaps the most anticipated speech of her political career. So far, all the speaking has been done by Democratic stars making the case for a Clinton presidency, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), first lady Michelle Obama, and Clinton’s primary foe, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, was slated to speak Tuesday after his wife’s nomination. more