Born: October 23, 1906, New York, U.S.Died: November 30, 2003, Wyckoff, New Jersey Gertrude Caroline Ederle was an American swimmer, the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Born in New York City, Ederle learnt to swim as a young child and began competing as a teenager. Between 1921 and 1925, she broke many […]
Born: May 3, 1942, Prague, Czechoslovakia[now in Czech Republic] Vera Caslavska is a Czechoslovak gymnast, the first of the great present-day stylists. She won a record 21 world, Olympic, and European gold medals from 1959 to 1968; she also won eight silver and three bronze medals.At the 1964 and 1968 Olympics Caslavska was an overall
Born: December 26, 1954, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.Susan Butcher is an American sled-dog racer, four-time winner of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the most demanding race of its kind. Butcher was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school in 1972, she moved to Boulder, Colorado, and became involved in sled-dog racing or mushing.
Born: April 26, 1918, Baarn, NetherlandsDied: January 25, 2004, Amsterdam Fanny Blankers-Koen was Dutch track-and-field athlete, who won four gold medals at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. She is considered one of the greatest female athletes in history. Born Francina Elsje Koen in Amsterdam, Netherlands, she first participated in the Olympics at the 1936
Born: April 16, 1755, Paris, FranceDied: March 30, 1842, Paris Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was a French portraitist, who supported herself as an artist beginning at the age of 15. A painting of Marie-Antoinette (1779, Versailles), the first of many Vigée-Lebrun did of the queen, established her reputation. In 1783, she became a member of the Académie
Born: August 3, 1941, Jersey City, New JerseyStewart was an American entrepreneur and domestic lifestyle innovator who built a catering business into an international media and home furnishing corporation, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc.Raised in Nutley, New Jersey, Stewart grew up in a Polish American household where the traditional arts of cooking, sewing, canning and
Born: August 22, 1902, Berlin, GermanyDied: September 8, 2003, Pöcking Leni Riefenstahl was a German motion-picture actress and director, best known for her documentary films of the 1930s on the National Socialist movement in Germany. Born Helena Bertha Amalie in Berlin, she trained as a painter and dancer. She began her career in cinema with
Born: September 23?, 1899/1900, KievDied: April 17, 1988, New York CityLouise Nevelson was Russian-American sculptor, best known for her abstract vertical wood sculptures.Born September 23, 1900, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Nevelson studied at the Art Students League in New York City from 1928 to 1930 and with the German painter Hans Hofmann in Munich in 1931.
Born: July 28, 1609, Haarlem, NetherlandsDied: Feb 10, 1660, Heemstede, near Amsterdam Judith Leyster was the most renowned Dutch female artist of her era. Leyster specialized in portraits, still life and genre scenes (scenes of common people and everyday life). She is often associated with Dutch painter Frans Hals, with whom she is thought to
Born: July 8, 1867, Königsberg, East Prussia [now Kaliningrad, Russia]Died: April 22, 1945, near Dresden, Germany Käthe Schmidt Kollwitz was a German graphic artist and sculptor, born in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), and educated in Berlin and Königsberg. In 1898, her illustrations for Die Weber (The Weavers), a play by the German playwright Gerhart Hauptmann,
Born: July 6, 1907, Coyoacán, MexicoDied: July 13, 1954, Coyoacán Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter, who produced mostly small, highly personal self-portraits using elements of fantasy and a style inspired by native popular art. Kahlo was born in Coyoacán, Mexico, near Mexico City. While a student at Mexico City’s National Preparatory School in 1925,
Born: Nov 29, 1843, LondonDied: Dec 8, 1932 Jekyll was an English landscape architect who was the most successful advocate of the natural garden and who brought to the theories of her colleague William Robinson a cultivated sensibility he lacked.Born of a prosperous family, Jekyll was educated in music and painting and travelled in the
Born: July 1, 1873, Paris, FranceDied: March 24, 1968, Mahwah, New Jersey, U.S. Pioneer of the French and American film industries, Guy was the first woman director; she is also generally acknowledged to be the first director to film a narrative story.Hired as Léon Gaumont’s secretary, Guy directed her first moving picture, La Fée aux
Born: 1593, Rome, Papal States [Italy]Died: 1652/53, Naples, Kingdom of Naples Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian baroque painter, one of the few well-known female artists of her era, and an influential artist who developed the compositions of great expressive power and originality. Gentileschi was known for her inventive adaptation of the techniques of Italian artist
Born: 1552, Bologna, Papal StatesDied: Aug 11, 1614, Rome Lavinia Fontana was an Italian painter, one of the most successful women artists of her era. During her career, Fontana executed a series of major public commissions, including the paintings of both religious and mythological subjects. This was an unusual accomplishment as most women painters at