Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States

Some consider Ronald Reagan the greatest president in contemporary American history: under his watch, the country saw the longest period of peacetime prosperity in...

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...

Leo Szilard, Physicist and Contributor to the Manhattan Project

Leo Szilard, the Hungarian Jewish physicist, molecular biologist and inventor, worked on the Manhattan Project but expressed himself as a “scientist of conscience,” using...

Hedy Lamarr, Actress and Inventor

Hedy Lamarr was a woman perpetually ahead of her time. She shocked the world with some racy roles in the 1930s, and a decade...

Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese Walt Disney

Animator Hayao Miyazaki is often called the Japanese equivalent of Walt Disney. His prodigious imagination has given rise to Japan’s most popular manga, animated...

Tom Ford, Fashion Designer and Director

The American designer Tom Ford made his mark as the head designer of Gucci, transforming the brand in the late 1990s from a passé...

Louis XV, King of France

King Louis XV of France was known as “the Well-Beloved,” although he apparently did little to earn the name. He reigned for nearly 60...

James Audubon, Artist, Ornithologist and Naturalist

Many a bird watcher will recognize the name of John James Audubon, the famous naturalist who made a name for himself by painting and...

Jimmy Stewart, Award-Winning Actor and War Hero

Whether playing a sardonic journalist, earnest politician, recalcitrant cowboy or a man at his wit’s end, Jimmy Stewart stuttered and shuffled his way into...

William Faulkner, American Novelist

William Faulkner, revered modernist writer, historian and sociologist, is known for capturing the raw beauty of the rural South in all its dark complexity....