Willa Cather, novelist, documented many periods of American culture, including the settling of the pioneer west.
Josephine Baker was an exotic dancer who found fame in Paris, helped with the Nazi resistance, was accused of communist sympathies, worked for racial equality, and died shortly after her 1970s comeback.
Janet Reno was the first woman to hold the office of U.S. Attorney General, she's remembered for her toughness and for several controversies during her tenure.
Emily Post first published her
Etiquette book in 1922, and her family has continued her legacy of flexible, common sense advice on good manners.
Queen Isabella: but which Queen Isabella? Perhaps Net searchers were looking for
Isabella of Castile, the erudite ruler who helped unite Spain, supported Columbus' voyage, drove the Jews from Spain and instituted the Spanish Inquisition? Were some looking for Isabella of France, queen consort of Edward II of England, who helped arrange his abdication and murder, then ruled with her lover as regent for her son? Or Isabella II of Spain, whose marriage and behavior helped stir up Europe's 19th century political turmoil? Or another Queen Isabella ...?
Maria Montessori was the first woman to earn a medical degree from the University of Rome, She applied learning methods she developed for mentally retarded children to children with intelligence in the normal range. The Montessori method, still popular today, is child-centered and experience-centered.
Katharine Hepburn, a twentieth century film actress, often played strong women at a time when conventional wisdom said that traditional roles were all that would sell movie tickets.
Abraham Lincoln suggested that Harriet Beecher Stowe was the woman who started the Civil War. Her
Uncle Tom's Cabin certainly stirred up a lot of anti-slavery sentiment! But she wrote on more subjects than abolitionism.
Ancient Greece's best known poet, Sappho is also known for the company she kept: mostly women. And for writing about her passionate relationships with women. She lived on the island of Lesbos -- is it fair to call her a lesbian?
Sojourner Truth was best known as an abolitionist but she was also a preacher and spoke for women's rights. She was one of the most in-demand speakers of the mid-19th century in America.
