Talitha Dina Pol was born on October 18, 1940, in Mojokerto, Java, in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, the daughter of Dutch artists Willem Jilts Pol and Arnoldine Adriana “Adine” Mees Pol. Art belonged to Talitha’s world from the beginning. Her mother had studied at the academies of art in Rotterdam and The Hague and worked in drawing, painting, lithography, and woodcut, while her father pursued his own career as a painter. Talitha’s earliest childhood was overtaken by

Dorothy Cadwell Taylor was born on February 13, 1888, in Watertown, Jefferson County, New York, the daughter of Bertrand LeRoy Taylor and Nellie Cadwell Taylor. At the time of her birth, her parents were living in the former home of Judge Robert Lansing, although the circumstances into which Dorothy was born would become considerably more prosperous as she grew. Her mother came from the Cadwell and Woodruff families, while her father built substantial business interests in le

Ida Alice Shourds was born on July 4, 1848, at Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, the daughter of the Reverend John Howard Shourds and Margaret Shourds. Her father was an Episcopal clergyman, and Ida was raised with her brothers and sister in a family far removed from the immense wealth and social prominence that would later surround her. She spent part of her early life in Philadelphia, and later accounts describe her as having briefly pursued the stage before entering nursing.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair: The Most Hated Woman in America On the morning of August 28, 1995, employees arriving at the American Atheists headquarters in Austin, Texas, found the doors locked. A typewritten note had been left behind explaining that the Murray-O’Hair family had been called out of town on an emergency and did not know when they would return. At the nearby home shared by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, her son Jon Garth Murray and her granddaughter Robin Murray O’Hair, there

There are few places in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that leave visitors as awestruck as the Vélez Blanco Patio. Bathed in natural light, its delicate marble arches, intricate carvings, and graceful Renaissance proportions seem almost impossible to believe were once part of a sixteenth-century Spanish castle. Every day, thousands of visitors pause beneath its colonnades, admiring one of the museum's greatest architectural treasures. Most never realize that before it became

Howard Allen Frances O’Brien was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 4, 1941, the second of four daughters born to Howard James O’Brien and Katherine Rita Allen O’Brien. The name was unusual for a little girl, and from the beginning it seemed to place her between expectation and invention. Her father worked for the United States Postal Service, and her mother, remembered as imaginative and emotionally vivid, helped shape the inner world of the child who would one day b