Lauren Bacall, Actress
Lauren Bacall got her start at age 19 as a sultry screen siren alongside future husband Humphrey Bogart, 25 years her senior. She went...
Paul Robeson, Entertainer and Social Activist
Paul Robeson was a renaissance man. Revered for his abilities on stage, on the football field, in the classroom and in the campaign for...
Joseph Heller, Author of “Catch-22”
Brooklyn-born author Joseph Heller is best known for coining the phrase “Catch-22” in his tragicomic World War II novel of the same name.
Joseph Heller’s...
T.S. Eliot, Nobel Prize Winning Writer
As a philosopher, theologian, poet, playwright and essayist working in the early 20th century, T.S. Eliot saw and described the American and European landscape...
Charles Darwin, Developer of the Theory of Natural Selection
Charles Darwin was never a great student—but he was an avid collector of beetles. After graduating from college, the budding naturalist accepted a position...
Sir Laurence Olivier, Stage and Screen Actor
Considered by many to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, Laurence Olivier changed the landscape of theater and film in his time,...
Meriwether Lewis, Western Explorer
Along with William Clark, Meriwether Lewis led the first expedition through the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, revealing the landscape and nature of the...
Carole King, Chart-Topping Singer-Songwriter
Carole King started playing the piano at age 4 and hasn’t stopped since. Out of college in the 1960s King was writing some of...
Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States
Early on, it hardly seemed as if Harry S. Truman—a farmer, an army captain in World War I and a haberdasher—was on track to...
Noah Webster, Educator and Dictionary Writer
Noah Webster was a pioneering thinker devoted to books and learning. After the American Revolution, he set out to help the United States develop...
