| Who | That's Who |
| Babe (Mildred) Didrikson (Zaharias) | In high school, she scored 104 points in one basketball game. At the 1932 Olympics, she won gold medals for both the 80-meter hurdle and the javelin. She switched sports to become a golfer, winning over a dozen tournaments form 1946 to 1947. An Associated Press poll in 1950 voted her one of the greatest female athletes of the first half of the 20th century. |
| Barry Goldwater | He suffered one of the worst losses in the history of presidential elections, but remained influential in American politics as the Senator of Arizona. The leading conservative voice in America, he was very anti-communist and supported the Vietnam War. Although he retired in 1986, he continued to speak against infringing on individual rights, and is a supporter of gay and lesbian rights. |
| Mata Hari | Although her stage name is forever linked with being a spy, she was born Margaretha Geertruida Zelle in Holland, in 1876. A dancer, she traveled across Europe befriending German officers. The French accused her of passing information to the Germans during World War I and had her executed in 1917. |
| Jonas Salk | Graduating from New York University as a doctor, he researched the influenza virus at the University of Michigan, leading to his study of polio. The vaccine he devised against polio greatly reduced the number of cases in the United States although the oral vaccine created by Albert Sabin is more commonly used today. He was working on the AIDS virus at the La Jolla, California institute at the time of his death in 1995. The institute carries his name. |
| Emma Lazarus | A poet with a social conscience, she was born in New York in 1849. In protest of the pogroms occurring against other Jews living in Russia, she wrote the 1882 Songs of a Semite. Her best-known work is the poem "The New Colossus," which has since been engraved on the Statue of liberty’s base. |
| John Hancock | A New England merchant during the 1700s, the trade restrictions the British made drew him into politics. He was the president of the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. Of all the Declaration’s signers, he is one of the most famous because of his noticeable signature. |
| Crazy Horse | His fellow Sioux called him “Strange One,” but non-Native Americans knew him another name. He was a warrior in many fights against white settlers and, in his most famous battle, joined Sitting Bull in defeating General Custer at Little Bighorn. He has since been immortalized as a giant sculpture carved out of South Dakota’s Black Hills. |
| Toni Morrison | Born in Ohio in 1931, she was called Chloe Anthony Wofford. She was teaching at Howard University when she began writing fiction novels. Her novels Jazz and Song of Solomon tell of the black experience in America from slavery to the renaissance in Harlem. One of her novels, Beloved, won the Pulitzer Prize and was later made into a film which starred Oprah Winfrey. |
| William S. Paley | He made a name for himself in broadcasting, but his first job was at his father’s cigar company. His radio station was responsible for introducing Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby to the public. Recognizing television’s potential, he started the CBS network in 1939, which became the leading network in the 1950s. He continued on at CBS as the CEO or chairman into the 1980s. |
| Marilyn Monroe | An Army photographer spotted her working in a defense plant during World War II and convinced her to model on a poster for the troops. She continued to model and eventually got bit parts in several movies until starring in Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. One of her husbands was a baseball legend and the other was a playwright who wrote the last film she was in. Her most famous off screen performance was a breathy version of "Happy Birthday." |
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