Happy Birthday

Born into a life of religion, Martin Luther King Jr. used his faith to help guide a divided nation toward racial equality, breaking barriers and demanding change through a strict code of nonviolence.

Simon Wiesenthal was a Holocaust survivor. After World War II he spent nearly six decades tracking down hundreds of Nazi criminals whom he considered most responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews, gypsies and others during the war.

Some of the most popular and lasting characters in American comics have emerged from the imagination of Stanley Lieber, aka Stan Lee. His attention to emotion and actual feelings, in a genre dominated by action, has made the man behind Marvel comics among the most successful and widely known figures in comics.

I.F. Stone’s reporting career spanned six and a half decades, and eight major publications. He is best remembered for his newsletter, I.F. Stone’s Weekly, wherein he scrutinized the government and the press, exposing injustices of the McCarthy and Vietnam era.

Howard Hughes was a modern day renaissance man. He was a successful aviator, an engineer, an industrialist and a producer of Academy Award-winning films.

Branch Rickey was a brilliant and innovative baseball executive who built championship teams and created the farm system. His legacy extends far beyond baseball, however; his 1947 signing of Jackie Robison—the first black ballplayer in the modern major leagues—left an indelible mark on American society.

King George VI was a reluctant king who inherited the throne only after his older brother abdicated. George ably led his country during World War II and is now best remembered for a wartime speech dramatized in the 2010 Academy Award-winning film “The King’s Speech.”

As she turns 21, Taylor Swift considers one of the most gratifying years a solo artist has ever had, and ponders her future.

Along with his trademark cigar and bristly mustache, Mark Twain has long been remembered for his signature wit, his colorful characters and colloquialisms and his willingness to explore issues that many of the writers of his time politely ignored.

Politician, statesman, military officer, historian and writer, Winston Churchill is one of the most influential figures in modern history. He is most renowned for his leadership of Britain during World War II, when his famed oratory and steadfast defiance to tyranny helped inspire Britain and its allies to victory.

Champion of the imagination, devout Christian and feminist, Madeleine L’Engle changed the lives and hearts of many with her books. “A writer of fantasy, fairy tale, or myth must inevitably discover that he is not writing out of his own knowledge or experience, but out of something both deeper and wider,” she explained when accepting her Newbery Medal.

American composer Scott Joplin, the “King of Ragtime,” composed dozens of legendary ragtime songs in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including such iconic pieces as “Maple Leaf Rag” and “The Entertainer.”

Romain de Tirtoff made his way to Paris in 1912 and established himself as the acclaimed fashion illustrator Erté. In addition to producing more than 250 prints for Harper’s Bazaar, Erté worked as a lithographer and painter, and a costume, set and furniture designer. He has been called the “Father of Art Deco” for his influence on art and design in the 20th century.

Tennis star Billie Jean King spent her career campaigning for gender equality in sports. Her win in 1973’s highly publicized “Battle of the Sexes” match helped to legitimize women’s athletics in the eyes of the world.

Milton Bradley is a household name for his creation of such board game classics as The Game of Life, but he was more than just an inventor. His fascination with the process of learning, coupled with his skill at printing, made him a pioneer in the field of early childhood education as well.

The first woman in France to receive a doctorate degree, scientist Marie Curie is remembered for her discoveries in radioactivity and radioactive elements. Her work won her two Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry, but unfortunately also led to her death.

John Philip Sousa is the American composer behind such marching band classics as “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semper Fidelis.”

Eugene V. Debs spearheaded labor movements, led the American Socialist Party and is remembered today for being an agitator who never shied from passionately expressing his opinions—even when it led to his arrest.

To his colleagues, he was “Old Iron Pants,” and to everyone else, he was “The Most Trusted Man in America.” For more than half a century, CBS newsman Walter Cronkite reported, and to a certain extent, made the news, announcing Kennedy’s assassination and the first steps on the moon as well as influencing a more rapid end to the Vietnam War.

Economist and philosopher Amartya Sen has been called the “Mother Teresa of economics” for helping improve the lives on the poor through his work in welfare economics and the study of famines.

Osamu Tezuka has been called the “god of comics” in Japan. After writing his first comic strip in third grade, Tezuka published his first professional manga while studying at medical school. His innovations to the field of Japanese comics and animation are evident through the 700 works he produced, which include more than 150,000 pages of manga.

The most beautiful daughter of the Austrian emperor, Marie Antoinette was guaranteed a life of privilege. But as the teen bride of French King Louis XVI, her free spending, decadent lifestyle angered the working class, who saw her as the embodiment of all that was wrong with the monarchy.

Although he is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, Stephen Crane’s life and career were cut short before his 30th birthday. His books, essays and poems—the best known of which was “The Red Badge of Courage”—remain among the most revered and referenced today.

Romualdo Pacheco, born Oct. 31, 1831, was the first Hispanic representative of a state in Congress and to date, California’s only Latino governor.

Legendary bodybuilder Charles Atlas became an icon in the 1920s as the man who transformed himself from a skinny weakling into a muscle-bound celebrity.

In honor of her October 29 birthday, we look at the life and career of longtime politician and economist-in-exile Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who became the first elected female president in Africa when she won the 2006 general election in Liberia.

Playing with a skill so dazzling and in so eerie a manner that it was seen as supernatural, violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini is considered to be one of the greatest violin virtuosos of all time.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was Shah of Iran for more than 30 years. His reforms transformed his country into a substantial Middle Eastern economic and military power, but his autocratic rule and corrupt regime eventually led to his downfall.

From his Cubist works to his famous Blue Period, painter Pablo Picasso changed the face of art forever.

The “Father of Microbiology,” Anton van Leeuwenhoek was not a trained scientist, yet he made some of the most astounding scientific discoveries of his time. He is credited with being the first to observe bacteria under his microscopes and discovering the cellular processes underlying sexual reproduction in animals.