African-American chemist Percy Julian was a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs such as cortisone, steroids and birth control pills.

An originator of big-band jazz, Duke Ellington was an American composer, pianist and bandleader who composed thousands of scores over his 50-year career.

A short story by Ernest Hemingway has been published for the first time nearly six decades after his suicide. “A Room on the Garden Side” is about an American writer named Robert, very likely based on the author himself, just after Allied soldiers freed Paris from the Nazis in 1944.

A child from an Italian immigrant family, Al Capone, also known as "Scarface," rose to infamy as the leader of the Chicago Outfit, an organized crime syndicate during the Prohibition era.

Director George D. Cukor made films for 50 years. He was a dialogue director in the early days of films with sound, and received an Academy Award in 1964 for My Fair Lady.

Actor Humphrey Bogart became a legend for his roles in 1940s-era films like Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and To Have and Have Not.

Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was nicknamed the "Master of Suspense" for employing a kind of psychological suspense in his films, producing a distinct viewer experience.

Fred Astaire was an American dancer of stage and film who is best known for a number of successful musical comedy films in which he starred with Ginger Rogers.

Writer E.B. White was a contributor to 'The New Yorker,' co-author of 'The Elements of Style' and author of 'Charlotte's Web.'

Mysterious and prickly, author P.L. Travers created the beloved governess Mary Poppins, further popularized by the Disney film and stage musical of the same name.

Author C.S. Forester was best known for his character Horatio Hornblower, a fictional British naval officer. Forester wrote 12 novels about Hornblower’s adventures.

Lavrentiy Beria, who was compared to Hitler's Heinrich Himmler, was Stalin's marshal of the Soviet Union and the ruthless head of the secret police.

DeFord Bailey was a mesmerizing harmonica player known as one of country music's first African-American icons and linked to the naming of the Grand Ole Opry.

E.D. Nixon was a Pullman porter and civil rights leader who worked with Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to initiate the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Alma Reville, also known as "Lady Hitchcock," was Alfred Hitchcock's lifetime partner, assistant director and closest collaborator.

Louise Nevelson was an iconoclast artist known for her monochromatic abstract expressionist sculptures. She rose to be an internationally known artist and worked into her 80s.

John Bodkin Adams is best known for standing trial in the suspicious deaths of 163 former patients in England.

British serial killer John Christie murdered at least six women, including his wife, before being arrested and hanged in 1953.

Rufino Tamayo was a 20th century Mexican artist who focused on printmaking, paintings and sculpture, utilizing influences outside of his home country.

Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian novelist and critic known for the intricate literary devices employed in such novels as Lolita.

Suzanne Lenglen was a French tennis player who won 31 championship titles between 1914 and 1926. She is largely credited as the first female tennis star.

Anglo-American stage and film actor Charles Laughton starred in The Old Dark House and Mutiny on the Bounty. He also directed The Night of the Hunter.

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese writer whose melancholic lyricism echoes an ancient Japanese literary tradition in the modern idiom.