Jean Renoir, French Filmmaker

Lauded after his death as one of cinema’s greatest directors, Jean Renoir earned comparatively few words of praise during his lifetime. From a childhood...

Pelé, Brazilian Soccer Star

Pelé turned a childhood of playing soccer in a small Brazilian village into athletic stardom. Known as “The King of Football,” he spent his...

Michael Jordan, Basketball Icon

Michael Jordan was perhaps the most dominant player in NBA history, leading the Chicago ff it, Jordan’s image was marketed to a global audience...

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....

Claude Monet, Leader of the Impressionist School of Painting

French painter Claude Monet was the central figure of the Impressionist movement in the late 19th century, producing colorful, vibrant studies of natural and...

Sandra Day O’Connor, First Female Supreme Court Justice

Sandra Day O’Connor endured a great deal of gender-based prejudice before she became the first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice. During...

Thurgood Marshall, Civil Rights Lawyer and Supreme Court Justice

Before Thurgood Marshall became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court, he was also the most successful person to argue cases before the...

H.L. Mencken, Reporter Who Covered Scopes “Monkey Trial”

H.L. Mencken, the “Sage of Baltimore,” was an outspoken journalist whose caustic tongue and scathing criticism of many segments of American society inspired anger...

Tony Kushner, Writer of “Angels in America”

“My day job is playwright. My citizen job is activist...I succeed and fail at both my jobs, but I try to do them both.”...

Katharine Hepburn, Legendary Actress

For more than six decades, Katharine Hepburn mesmerized audiences with her regal accent, classic beauty and exceptional acting. Her fiercely independent, unconventional persona and...