Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and activist, serving as president of the National Association of Colored Women and founding the National Council of Negro Women.
Jacques Futrelle was a journalist and mystery writer who created the character Professor Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, also known as "The Thinking Machine." He died in the Titanic disaster.
D.W. Griffith was one of cinema's earliest directors and producers, known for his innovations and for directing the 1915 film Birth of a Nation.
British actor Edmund Gwenn's claim to fame was his unforgettable role as Santa Claus in the classic Miracle on 34th Street.
German novelist, short-story and essay writer Thomas Mann won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. One of his best-known novels is Death in Venice.
J.C. Penney was best known as an American businessman who founded a retail chain under the same name. His stores today sell general merchandise for the home.
Ferdinand Porsche founded the Porsche car company in 1931. In the early 1920s, he oversaw the development of the Mercedes compressor car, and later developed the first designs of the Volkswagen car with his son, Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche.
Maurice Ravel was a 19th and early 20th century French composer of classical music. His best known works are Bolero and Daphnis et Chloé.
Syngman Rhee became South Korea’s first president in 1948. He was re-elected twice after the Korean War, but was overthrown by a 1960 student uprising.
Carter G. Woodson was an African-American writer and historian known as the "Father of Black History Month." He penned the influential book The Mis-Education of the Negro.