Born in Missouri in 1928, Maya Angelou had a difficult childhood. Jim Crow laws segregated blacks and whites in the South. Her family life was unstable at times. But much like her …
Born into a close knit family in Chicago, Michelle Robinson was a star student who graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law. Then in 1992, she married another promising young …
Born into slavery in Maryland in 1818, Frederick Douglass was determined to gain freedom--and once he realized that knowledge was power, he secretly learned to read and write to …
As a child, Charles Dickens worked in a shoe polish factory where his gritty surroundings inspired some of the most memorable characters and settings in literary history. Known for …
Known as the keepers of modern-day fairy tales, The Brothers Grimm are as legendary as their stories. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were born in 1780s Germany and were inseparable …
Stanley Lieber was just seventeen when he got his first job at Timely Comics in 1939. Since then, the man now known as Stan Lee has launched a comic book empire, made Marvel Comics …
Almost 100 years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, Sojourner Truth was mistreated by a streetcar conductor. She took him to court and won! Before she was Sojourner …
Marco Polo was seventeen when he set out for China ...and forty-one when he came back! More than seven hundred years ago, Marco Polo travelled from the medieval city of Venice to …
As a child he dreamt of changing South Africa; as a man he changed the world. Nelson Mandela spent his life battling apartheid and championing a peaceful revolution. He spent …
Describes how Charles Darwin's passion for the natural world fueled his groundbreaking ideas on evolution and changed people's understanding of the natural world for years to come. …
