Born on September 12

A Spanish writer of the Golden Age (1590–1661), María de Zayas is one of the few women of letters of her era to have published under her own name. Her story collections, Novelas amorosas y exemplares (1637) and Desengaños amorosos (1647), boldly denounce male domination and champion women's education.

French physicist and chemist, daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie. With her husband Frédéric Joliot-Curie, she discovered artificial radioactivity in 1934, which earned them the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935.

Jesse Owens was an American athlete who specialized in sprinting and the long jump. He became a legend of track and field by winning four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, publicly defying the racist Nazi ideology.

Michael Ondaatje is a Canadian writer and poet of Sri Lankan origin, born in 1943 in Colombo. He is known worldwide for his novel The English Patient (1992), which won the Booker Prize and was adapted into a film.

Nan Goldin is an American photographer born in 1953, famous for her intimate, unvarnished portraits of those close to her, of the New York underground scene, the LGBT community, and the ravages of drugs and AIDS. Her work redefined autobiographical and documentary photography.

First Iranian woman and first private space tourist to travel to space in 2006. An Iranian-American businesswoman, she funded the Ansari X Prize to encourage space tourism.

Tarana Burke is an American civil rights activist and founder of the #MeToo movement in 2006. She has dedicated her life to supporting survivors of sexual violence, particularly in underprivileged Black communities.