Retrobituaries

She made hundreds of movies and owned and operated her own studio. So why has she been all but ignored?

Remembering the man who probably beat Robert Peary to the North Pole, but didn’t get the credit he deserved until years later.

The woman once regarded as the world's greatest female athlete spent her life—and death—trapped between identities.

She was among the first to depict insects interacting with the natural world.

She crafted tiny, intricate dioramas known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

In his day, treating animals humanely was a revolutionary concept.

Marston created Wonder Woman as the embodiment of his version of feminism—and she may owe something to his unusual romantic life.

For William Leonard Hunt, life was a high wire act.

Just like the decade it came to represent, the beehive was revolutionary.

The last surviving member of the Wild Bunch, she died in 1961.

Fanny Crosby—poet, public speaker, activist—wrote so many hymns that publishers had to give her dozens of pseudonyms.

A keen diplomat who used her skills to protect her land while paving the way for the unification of Korea.

The natural foods movement of the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a new way of eating—and one of its pioneers was Michio Kushi.

He was also president of the Procrastination Club of America.

She was hired in 1922, but after J. Edgar Hoover got his way, the Bureau wouldn’t see any more female special agents until the 1970s.

He established the Applegate Trail, a less dangerous route for settlers to take from the Midwest into Oregon.

He majored in physics and philosophy and managed to apply them both to his decades of historic work.

Author of the first major feminist work published in the U.S., her life and work were cut tragically short.

Lois Weber may be the most important filmmaker you’ve never heard of.

Meet the man you should thank for your morning meal (and snack, and occasional dinner).

Why did this brilliant mind end his days in prison?

The modern music video might not be here if it weren't for one secretary's mistakes in the 1950s, and her genius invention.

Even if you’ve never heard his name, you’ve likely benefited from Morgan's most famous invention.

Diogenes of Sinope lived in a wine barrel, urinated in public, and was one of the most beloved philosophers of the 4th century BCE.