Laura Elizabeth Ingalls Wilder was born in the Big Woods region of Wisconsin, to a settler and pioneer family, who moved across America’s heartland. Ingalls started attending school only when she was 12 years old after the family settled down in De Smet, SD. Later on, the experiences from her early childhood will be depicted in her books. Just before her 16th birthday, she began working as a teacher in one-room schools, in addition to attending high school and working for the local dressmaker. At 18, Ingalls got married, and the young couple had to overcome financial and personal problems, which they managed to do so by farming and cultivating wheat. Over time, Ingalls became an authority in rural living and poultry farming and gave lectures on those topics to groups around Missouri. At the age of 44 she published an article in the ‘Missouri Ruralist’, which led her to get a position as an editor and to write a regular column about various topics such as home, family, travel, WWI and other world events, and personal thoughts about the increasing options women had during that time. Due to the 1929 economic crisis, the death of her mother and sister, and with the encouragement of her daughter, Ingalls started to preserve her memories. This combination of truth and fiction eventually became an 8-book series, known as the ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ The first book, ‘Little House in the Big Woods’, was published in 1932 and have been continuously in print since. The books have been translated into more than 40 languages, adapted into a TV series and became a multi-million-dollar franchise. Read more...

Annie Cohen emigrated from Riga to the United States as a child. She was married to Max Kopchovsky and had three little children, when she stumbled upon an opportunity to become rich and famous, and promote feminism, all together. At the decade of America’s bicycle hype, she took on the challenge presented by two Boston businessmen to be the first woman to cycle around the world. Without prior cycling experience, she set for the road in 1894. 15 months later, she returned home as an international sensation, even though she skipped large parts of the journey by sailing. Her biggest talent was for storytelling: she reported back about a range of exotic and mostly fictitious adventures. Nonetheless, the gift of imagination secured her a series of lectures and a newspaper column upon her return. Another skill which she demonstrated was entrepreneurship: she adopted the name Londonderry as part of a paid sponsorship by a water company and used herself and her bike as a mobile billboard in France. At the end of the 19th century, Annie Londonderry was an icon of the “new woman” – an independent, liberated, and self-reliant person. Her story was soon forgotten, but after her great-grandnephew discovered that her brief death notice in the 1947 New York Times read: “devoted grandmother of Mary”, he published a book about her, 60 years after her death. Read more...

Born to an affluent family near Pearlington, Mississippi, Eliza Jane Poitevent developed her passion for reading from magazines. She started writing and publishing poetry about nature and love under the pen name Pearl Rivers, a tribute to the river which flows not far from where she grew up. Poitevent moved to New Orleans and before the age of 30 became the literary editor of the Picayune newspaper. Soon after, she married the newspaper’s owner Alva Holbrook, who was 29 years her senior. Four years after their marriage, Holbrook died, and Eliza Jane inherited the paper, with its debts. She took on the challenge, made editorial changes, adding book reviews, gossip column, and a serial novel. She also promoted female journalists and ensured they get equal pay. In addition to serving as the owner and publisher, she continued writing essays and poetry. She then married the newspaper’s business manager, George Nicholson, 23 years her senior. Together they turned Picayune into the most popular newspaper in the region. She died at the age of 52 from flu, 11 days after her husband. She was survived by two sons and over 200 poems. In 2018, the Eliza Jane Hotel opened in New Orleans, paying homage to the 20 year career of the country’s first female publisher of a major metropolitan newspaper. Read more...

Born the youngest of 13 children to former slaves, in Wichita, Kansas. When at the age of 7 she moved with her family to Colorado, she was one of only two black children in her class. As a young girl, she used to sing everywhere, and when turning 17, McDaniel left school to become a performer at her brother’s minstrel show. One year later she got married and left her brother’s show to organize an all-women minstrel show and to tour with a black ensemble. After a few years, McDaniel embarked on a radio career as a performer and was among the first African-American women to perform on the radio in the US. In the Great Crash of 1929, McDaniel, 36 years old at that time, had a hard time finding a job, so she started working as a waitress in Milwaukee, and thanks to her persistence, she shortly became a regular performer on the club’s stage. After a few years, McDaniel joined her siblings in Los Angeles, worked with her brother on a radio program and played small roles as an extra on various Hollywood productions. Between one role to another, she worked as a cook and a maid. Only one year later, she had made her first film appearance and eventually joined the Screen Actors Guild, and her career started to take off. She played alongside the biggest actors and filmmakers of that era, including Shirley Temple, John Ford, and Lionel Barrymore. In 1939, at 46, Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to be nominated for an Oscar and the first one to win it. The Academy Awards ceremony took place in a segregated hotel, where McDaniel and her escort were allowed in, but they had to sit in a segregated table. In addition to her acting career, McDaniel was committed to community service. During WW2 she was the chairman of the Hollywood Victory Committee, which entertained soldiers, raised funds for the Red Cross relief programs. McDaniel remained active both in radio and TV, and she was the first African-American to star in her own radio show. During her lifetime, she recorded 16 blues sides, performed on radio programs, and TV shows, and appeared in more than 300 films. Read more...

Oprah Winfrey is a living icon of the American dream, rising to enormous fame and wealth from an underprivileged, impoverished, abusive background. She grew up frequently moving between her parents’ separate homes and her grandmother in rural Mississippi. She learned to read and write in the early age of three, and was a keen learner, being promoted several grades in school. Winfrey found her calling in mass communication when during high school drama rehearsal, a local radio show offered her internship. Her big breakthrough came when invited to host a talk show in Chicago, and its name fast changed to ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and remained so for 25 years, with 30,000 guests, 40 million viewers a week in 150 countries. Thanks to her fresh emotional style, it was ranked the most popular talk show in the world and won multiple awards. In the show’s finale in 2011, Oprah proudly testified not missing a single day of the 4561 days the show was on the air. She proved to be a skilled businesswoman, in addition to an innovative producer and inspirational personality. Today her company owns a cable network, a digital platform, online school, the biggest book club in the world, and a philanthropic foundation. She has a private airplane, five homes, and a magazine called O, with herself starring on the cover of each issue. She even has a law named after her – Oprah Bill – aimed at stopping child abuse. Her life partner since 1986 is Stedman Graham, a best-selling writer of motivational books. She lost a newborn baby at fourteen and declared she does not want children. Read more...

Woodhull was born to a family of ten children in Homer, Ohio. She and her sisters worked on a traveling circus, telling fortune to help the family earn money. When turned 15, she escaped and married Canning Woodhull, with whom she had two children – one with a brain injury for life. After they moved to New York and the couple got divorced, Victoria and her sister worked together as a medium. One of their clients led them to open the first female-owned brokerage house on Wall Street. With the fortune that they made, the two sisters invested in promoting the political and social reforms that they believed in. They published “Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly” – an innovative newspaper with the motto: “Progress! Free thought! Untrammeled lives!” In 1872, to promote women suffrage, Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to address the House Judiciary Committee and declared her candidacy for the presidency of the United States, when she is not even 35 years old. The election day she spent in arrest, for her newspaper was accused of publishing “obscene materials”. The month in arrest and the legal expenses drained her funds until she relocated to England. There, she married for the third time, and published The Humanitarian magazine, together with her daughter. With her actions and words, Victoria challenged many conventions of her time. In addition to women’s right to vote, she advocated for a range of freethinking causes: 8-hour work day, social welfare, free love, sex education, short skirts, vegetarianism, and licensed prostitution. Her opinions are now considered to have been 100-years ahead of her time. Read more...

Born in New York City to an affluent and politically dominant family, she became an orphan at the age of 8 and was raised by her grandmother. At 15 she was sent to London to study languages and arts in a private school, where her headmistress Marie Souvestre inspired her political and social awareness. After returning to New York, she married her distant cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who later became the 32nd president of The United States. By his side, she was a politically active First Lady for no less than 12 years. The couple had six children. In addition to advising her husband in his political career, she was an active member of various organizations promoting equal rights for women, racial and social justice. Her vast activity is said to have been boosted after finding out about her husband’s affair: she decided to stay by his side but availed herself to independent activism, and her own affairs with both women and men. She was the author of several books, contributed content to many publications and radio shows, including the popular newspaper column “My Day,” which was published six days a week for 26 years, and delivered many speeches during her nationwide travels. At 62 she was appointed to the first US delegation to the United Nations, where she was central in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Until her death, she was involved in policy making, notably chairing the President’s Commission on the Status of Women. Read more...

Lucy Stone grew up in a rural household that practiced patriarchy, and so she devoted her life to women’s liberation. She saved money for nine years, by working as a teacher and a housekeeper, to fund her higher education. Stone enrolled in Oberlin Collegiate Institute, Ohio – the first college in the US where female and black students could study together. She co-founded a secret debating society for women, who met in the woods. At the age of 29, she became the first woman from Massachusetts to graduate with a Bachelor degree. Her talent for public speaking took her touring the country, advocating for women’s rights and speaking against slavery. In 1850 she took part in organizing the National Woman’s Rights Convention, attended by more than 1,000 participants. The convention attracted international attention when advocating for the rights of black women. She took her politics home as well, and when marrying Henry Brown Blackwell, she decided to keep her last name. She was the first married woman in the US to keep her maiden name, and those who followed her used the term “Lucy Stoner,” popular for married women who didn’t change their family names after their husbands.’ The couple established and edited the Woman’s Journal, the newspaper of the “American Woman Suffrage Association.” She was the first person cremated in Massachusetts.   Read more...

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born into a wealthy New York family of Italian origin, and was raised in a strict Catholic education. Her dream was to become an actress, but she got nervous in auditions, and ended up getting a 3-second extra gig in The Sopranos TV series. As a plan-B she decided to invest in her music career, which started with playing classic piano from age four. She adopted the nickname “Lady Gaga” given to her by friends based on the 80’s hit song “Radio Ga Ga”. The stage-name allowed her to reinvent herself as a new and extravagant character with uncompromising confidence in her unique personality, expressed in language and appearance. Her musical talent was complemented, and at times overshadowed by her stylish outfits and stage design. She became “the biggest pop star in the world”, a provocative fashion icon, most wanted paparazzi target and social media magnet with more than 30 million followers. She explains that the idea behind her total persona is to create “shock art cultural commentary pieces” – expressing a critical opinion on contemporary society, like the chase after fame. Lady Gaga spoke out about her personal experience of being sexually assaulted and suffering from a mental health disorder, to raise awareness of what later became the #MeToo campaign. She co-wrote and released 7 albums and won more than 100 international and national awards. She featured in the Guinness World Records book as the Most Searched-For Female on the Internet. After a decade of intense music creation she got a leading role in the film “A Star Is Born”, which she wrote original new hits to, coming full circle with her initial desire to be an actress. Read more...