Stanley Baldwin, future prime minister of Great Britain during the nineteen twenties and thirties, was born on this day in Bewdley, in the English county of Worcestershire, the son of a prosperous steel manufacturer. He studied history at Cambridge University and became a Conservative Party member of Parliament in 1908 in the local seat his father had previously held. He worked his way up party ranks and by 1922 had become Chancellor of the Exchequer.  The following year, due to Andrew Bonar Law's retirement on health grounds, Baldwin completed his swift rise and began the first of his three terms as Prime Minister.  He died in 1947 and is buried in Worcester Cathedral.  (By John Osborne)

Madam C.J. Walker, the country's first successful black female entrepreneur, was born this day as Sarah Breedlove close to Delta, Louisiana, the youngest child of freed slaves and herself the first of her family born free.  She married several times and took various jobs until she became involved in the business of haircare products for African-American women.  Centered for a several decades in Indianapolis, Indiana, she built a small cosmetic empire and eventually moved to New York where she died in May 1919.  She was touted as the first African-American millionaire and certainly was the most successful female entrepreneur of her time in the western world, black or white.  (By John Osborne)

British writer and Nobel laureate John Galsworthy was born on this day to wealthy parents in Kingston-on-Thames in England.  Educated at Oxford and qualified in the law, he took up a writing career and from 1897 onwards became a prolific publishing success, notably with his best known work, The Forsythe Saga, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932. When he died in 1933, he was cremated and his ashes scattered from an aircraft over scenic southern England.  (By John Osborne)

Laura Ingalls Wilder, who became one of the most famous children's writers in American history, was born this day near Pepin in rural Wisconsin.  She lived an incident filled childhood and young married life as her pioneer family moved from Wisconsin to Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, and South Dakota before she settled with her husband in Mansfield, Missouri. At the encouragement of her daughter, a professional writer, she began her career in autobiographical fiction at age sixty-five and her Little House House on the Prairie series made her world-famous.  She died on February 10,1957, having just turned ninety.  (By John Osborne)

Maria Salomea Skłodowska Curie was born on this date in Warsaw, Poland to educator parents. Growing up in difficult circumstances due to her family's anti-Russian activities, she eventually moved to Paris to continue her scientific studies at the University of Paris where she met and married Pierre Curie, another researcher.  The two went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 before Pierre Curie was killed in a traffic accident.  She had been the first woman to earn a Nobel, became the first female professor ever at the University of Paris, and went on to add a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on radium.  She died in 1934.  (By John Osborne)