Mildred Loving, Activist for Interracial Marriage

Mildred Loving, a black woman married to a white man, missed her home in Virginia. But a state ban against interracial marriage prevented the...

Walt Whitman, “America’s Poet”

Walt Whitman helped transform the literary scene in the United States during the 19th century, becoming one of the most influential poets of his...

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...

Alberto Giacometti, Sculptor

Famous for his sculptures of stick-thin figures with razor-sharp, fine features, Alberto Giacometti was an artist who defied categorization. His work flirted with nearly...

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...

Anne Frank, Holocaust Diarist

Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank lived 15 years, yet her legacy has lived on for decades. In the book known in English as...

Osamu Tezuka, Japan’s “God of Comics”

Osamu Tezuka has been called the “god of comics” in Japan. After writing his first comic strip in third grade, Tezuka published his first...

D.H. Lawrence, Author of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”

At the end of his life, D.H. Lawrence wrote, “For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be...

Erté, the Father of Art Deco

Romain de Tirtoff made his way to Paris in 1912 and established himself as the acclaimed fashion illustrator Erté. In addition to producing more...

Mary Lyon, Champion of Women’s Higher Education

Mary Lyon was a progressive educator and pioneer of women’s higher education. In 1837 she founded the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley,...