Category: snapshot biography

Ida B. Wells was sixteen years old when her parents and a younger brother passed away from yellow fever in 1878. As she coped with their death, Ida also challen...

Born in New York City in 1862, Edith Wharton grew up in the comforts of a family of wealth and prestige, but as part of a high society of strict rules that encu...

Josephine Baker was described as “The most sensational woman anybody ever saw. Or ever will.”  Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, Josephine exper...

Claude Monet loved art from a young age. While classmates were doing classwork, he was filling his workbooks with drawings. His father, however, wanted Claude t...

Anne Sullivan experienced much suffering in childhood. She became partially blind after contracting trachoma at five years old. Her mother passed away when Anne...

It was the summer of 1938. For Lise Meitner, a Jewish scientist in Germany, the time had come to escape. Emigrating was no longer an option. A group of scientis...

The world knew him as “Blind Tom” Wiggins, a musical prodigy, one of the best-known American performing pianists of the 19th century. Born in Harris...

James HermJames Herman Banning was twenty years old when he took his first airplane ride at an air circus in 1920. With that experience, he fell in love with fl...

Leonie von Meusebach–Zesch became a dentist at nineteen in 1902, starting her career in San Francisco, where she helped people after the 1906 earthquake. Over t...

Susan Ahn Cuddy grew up with parents deeply involved in helping Korea achieve independence. Her father would lose his life after sustaining injuries from tortur...