Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906). Pioneer suffragette and president of the US suffragist society from 1892 to 1900, Anthony began her campaigning career in the temperance movement. She was also a committed abolitionist, published the New York liberal paper The Revolution (1868-70), and advocated equal pay for women, as well as donning bloomers to protest against the constrictive nature of women's clothing.

Louis Armstrong (1900-1971). New Orleans-based jazz trumpeter, known as Satchmo (from "satchel mouth"). Credited with devising the scat style of improvisational singing, and for his individualistic style, which foregrounded the solo performance above that of the band. Well known for his humor and affability, Armstrong also appeared in a number of Hollywood films.

Benedict Arnold (1741-1801). Revolutionary commander who shifted his allegiance to the British in 1779, but soon lost popularity with loyalists for leaving his British contact, Major John Andre, to be captured and hanged as a spy.

Chuck Berry (born 1926). Rock'n'roll pioneer born in ( Johnny B ) Goode Street, St Louis. Consummate lyricist, red-hot guitarist and sharp businessman.

Billy the Kid (1859-1881). The subject of innumerable Wild West legends, former busboy William Bonney made his name in the Lincoln County Wars in New Mexico. His brief and bloody career ended at the hands of Pat Garrett.

Daniel Boone (1735-1820). Legendary hunter, trapper and explorer. One of the first whites to cross the Appalachians and stake out Kentucky for settlement.

John Brown (1800-1859). Fervent white abolitionist who, as part of a grand plan to set up a free state for escaped slaves, seized the US Armory at Harpers Ferry. After a short battle, Brown was captured, tried and hanged for treason.

Calamity Jane (1852-1903). Bawdy frontierswoman, cook, dancer, prostitute and camp follower, who in 1876 took up as bullwhacker for the Gold Rush camps in South Dakota. "Calam" traveled with Wild West shows but was fired for boozing and brawling.

Al Capone (1899-1947). Bootlegger and gangster who controlled the Chicago underworld during the 1920s, and later died in Florida of syphilis.

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919). Scots-born industrialist and philanthropist, responsible for major innovations in the steel industry. By the close of the nineteenth century, when US steel production outdid that in Britain, most of it came from Carnegie's "vertically integrated" company - which owned the coalfields and the ships and railroads for transport of the supplies to the mills.

Kit Carson (1809-1868). Carson, who moved to Taos in 1826 and became a guide on the Santa Fe Trail and "mountain man," was later instrumental in rounding up the Navajo from Canyon de Chelly.

William "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917). Pony Express rider and Indian scout immortalized by the dime novels of Ned Buntline. His Wild West show toured all over the world.

Francisco Vazquez de Coronado (1510-1554). Spanish explorer who traveled through the Southwest as far as Kansas in search of cities of gold. He threw in the towel in 1542 and returned to Mexico, only to face a series of indictments for his lack of success.

Crazy Horse Ta-Sunko-Witko (1842?-1877). Oglala Sioux leader, and one of the most able and determined Native American warriors. Prominent in the Fetterman Massacre, Battle of the Rosebud and Custer's Last Stand. Murdered at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

Davy Crockett (1786-1836). Frontiersman, Indian fighter and Tennessee politician, who perished at the Alamo with all the other American volunteers. Popularly represented as a backwoods boy in a raccoon hat, with no education but the gift of the gab, Crockett was, in fact, less unconventional than his legend suggests.

George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876). Legendary US Cavalry general whose first big mistake - leading over two hundred troops into an ambush at Little Bighorn - was his last.

John Dillinger (1902-1934). Bank robber whose criminal activities earned him the title of Public Enemy Number One. After being set up by the legendary "Lady in Red," Dillinger was killed by FBI agents outside a Chicago movie theater.

Walt Disney (1901-1966). Inventor of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Disneyland, Disney was also Hollywood's Last Tycoon, singlehandedly controlling a vast media and entertainment empire.

Frederick Douglass (1817?-1895). Escaped slave who rose to prominence as a writer and orator in the abolitionist movement.

W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963). Black intellectual and civil rights activist best known for his debates with Booker T. Washington in the early part of the twentieth century, and his role in forming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A longtime campaigner for the independence of African colonies, he joined the Communist Party in 1961 and emigrated to Ghana, where he renounced his US citizenship.

Bob Dylan (born 1941). North-country Minnesota boy who redefined himself first as Woody Guthrie-style folkie and later as enigmatic rock star. The endearing elliptical games of his youth have long since grown wearisome in a man in his sixties, but he can still write songs to equal his best.

Amelia Earheart (1897-1937). Pioneer aviatrix, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (in 1932), and the first person ever to fly the perilous route from Hawaii to California (1935). Both she and her navigator vanished without trace on an attempted round-the-world flight, and were last contacted just near the international date line.

Thomas Edison (1847-1931). Mercurial inventor and entrepreneur who developed the light bulb, motion pictures and phonograph records. He also founded General Electric, still one of the largest US corporations.

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965). Born beside the Mississippi in St Louis, Eliot reversed the usual American pattern and moved east, first to Harvard and then England, where he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for a body of poetry including The Waste Land and The Four Quartets .

Henry Ford (1863-1947). Michigan farmer's son and industrial genius who pioneered assembly-line production in his car factories. A vehement right-winger, particularly on trade union and racial issues.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). Printer, inventor, diplomat and politician, responsible among other things for publishing Poor Richard's Almanac (a litany of mottoes advocating prudence and honesty), setting up America's first public library, the invention of bifocal glasses and early experiments with electricity. Franklin also helped draft the Declaration of Independence, and went to France to seek aid for the revolutionary cause.

Geronimo (1829-1909). Brilliant Chiricahua Apache leader who battled the US Army in Arizona and New Mexico throughout the 1880s. Despite US promises, after surrendering he and his people were deported to Florida.

Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885). At the start of the 1860s, the 38-year-old Ulysses Grant was finding it difficult to hold down a part-time job in his brother's saddle shop; within ten years he had led the Union armies to victory in the Civil War and become president of the US.

William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951). Publishing magnate and role model for Citizen Kane , whose inflammatory "yellow journalism" kindled public support for the Spanish-American War.

Billie Holiday (1915-1959). Definitive song stylist - not quite blues, not quite jazz - who made her greatest recordings with Lester Young and Duke Ellington.

Buddy Holly (1936-1959). Bespectacled kid from Lubbock, Texas, who died at 22 but was the first and the greatest of rock's singer-songwriters.

Henry Hudson (1565-1611). English explorer whose expedition for the Dutch East India Company to find a route from Europe to Asia through the Arctic led to the discovery of the Hudson River in 1609 - which he mistakenly believed would lead to the Pacific - and formed the basis for Dutch colonization in the New World.

Howard Hughes (1905-1976). Business magnate and Hollywood film producer ( Hell's Angels , 1930; Scarface , 1932), who became increasingly eccentric after a plane crash in 1946. Twenty years later, he sold his majority holding in TWA for $500,000,000 and lived from then on in complete seclusion in sealed-off hotel suites.

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845). Military general who was a major light in the Revolutionary War. His defeat of the British in New Orleans in 1815 led to huge popular support, and he was elected seventh US presi dent (Democrat) in 1829. The first president from west of the Appalachians, Jackson had much grass-roots support in Tennessee, and his election is seen as the first truly democratic choice in the nation's history.

Rev Jesse Jackson (born 1941). Black religious and political leader whose Rainbow Coalition seemed briefly during the late 1980s to represent the most viable progressive alternative to the centrist Democratic Party.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1838). Author of the Declaration of Independence, third US president and slave-owner, Jefferson was a strong advocate of freedom of the press and of religion, as well as being an accomplished architect.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973). Brash Texan Democrat sworn in as president two hours after John Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Johnson pushed through liberal civil rights and social welfare bills, but his failure to deal with the increasingly horrific mess of Vietnam left him obliged not to seek re-election in 1968.

Robert Johnson (1911?-1938). Seminal Delta bluesman, whose songs were imbued with such a brooding aura that he was rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil. The clearest, earliest forerunner of rock'n'roll.

Kamehameha the Great (1760?-1819). The first man to unite the Hawaiian islands - by terror, force of personality and shrewd exploitation of European expertise.

Helen Keller (1880-1968). Despite being struck blind and deaf by scarlet fever as an infant, Keller's writings and activism made her an inspirational early leader in the movement for equal rights for disabled people.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963). When elected in 1960, Kennedy was the youngest ever, and the first Catholic, president. His liberal domestic policies (known as "new frontier" programs) and success in securing the nuclear test ban treaty with the USSR and Britain won him huge popularity, as did his superficially glamorous life with wife Jackie. His assassination in Dallas, on November 22, 1963, might be said to mark the beginning of a long period of disillusionment and hopelessness in the American psyche.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr (1929-1968). Baptist minister who was the main black spokesperson during the Civil Rights years, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after his "I have a dream" speech. Remembered by a public holiday in most states, and a street name in most major cities.

General Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier Lafayette (1757-1834). French aristocrat, known as "the hero of two worlds" for supporting the Americans in the Revolutionary War, who went on to fight with the revolutionary bourgeoisie in France. A great friend of George Washington, Lafayette advocated religious tolerance and the abolition of slavery.

Robert Edward Lee (1807-1870). Confederate Civil War general, considered one of the outstanding military strategists of all time. Enjoyed early success by whipping the vastly superior Union forces under the incompetent McClellan, but crashed to defeat at Gettysburg.

Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838). Jointly famed as leaders of the first exploratory expedition west from the Mississippi to the Pacific in 1804-1805. Lewis's journals and Clark's drawings are invaluable documents of the pre-conquest western US.

Rush Limbaugh (born 1951). Ultraconservative loudmouth turned political powerbroker, with daily talk-radio and TV shows.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). To northerners at least, the most revered of all US presidents. The son of a Kentucky backwoodsman, he taught himself law and later entered Illinois politics, beating better-known opponents for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination. He led the Union through the Civil War, but was shot five days after the Confederate surrender.

Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974). In 1927, Lindbergh became the first person to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic, in the Spirit of St Louis , named for his home town. Ticker-tape parades feted him across the continent, and the "Lindy Hop" dance was named for him. The kidnapping and murder of his infant son was one of the most notorious crimes of the 1930s, but his pronounced Nazi sympathies lost him public support.

Huey Long (1893-1935). Flamboyant, populist governor of Louisiana known as the "Kingfish." His radical social welfare policies and tax reforms boosted the morale of poor rural whites during the Depression, and as senator, in the last three years of his life, he claimed his "Share the Wealth" program would make "every man a king." However, his corrupt and intimidating style of government made him plenty of enemies, and he was eventually assassinated in still-mysterious circumstances in Baton Rouge.

Joe Louis (1914-1981). Black Detroit heavyweight boxer who took the world championship from Mussolini-sidekick Primo Carnera in 1937 and retained it for twelve years.

Malcolm X (1925-1965). Not so successful burglar who in prison came into contact with the teachings of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, rose to become its leading minister and spokesperson, and then broke with the organization after a trip to Mecca and tour of Africa. Malcolm occasionally worked with Dr Martin Luther King Jr during his civil rights campaigns, and for many people his militant approach remains more persuasive than Dr King's.

Joseph McCarthy (1909-1957). Republican Senator for Wisconsin, notorious for his hysterical and unproven charges of Communist subversion in high government circles. President Truman called him a "pathological character assassin" and his career was ended when the Senate censured him for unconstitutional behavior.

J. Pierpoint Morgan (1837-1913). The quintessential New York financier, Morgan achieved sufficient wealth to buy out Andrew Carnegie and served as a broker between world governments.

Muhammad Ali (born 1941). Heavyweight boxer who upon winning the world title from Sonny Liston in 1964 announced that he was a member of the Nation of Islam. Within three years his antiwar stance - "no Vietcong ever called me nigger" - had cast him into the wilderness, but eventually America took him to its bosom once more.

Carry Nation (1846-1911). Temperance activist and suffragette whose tendency to take an axe to saloons after storming in, singing hymns and bellowing biblical insults, won her no popularity with the official temperance movement (although she made lots of money on lecture tours). Frequently imprisoned, she paid her fines from souvenir axe sales.

Richard Nixon (1913-1995). From his earliest days as Eisenhower's vice-president - a position obtained with the help of his maudlin "Checkers" speech, about his little puppy - Nixon was the man American liberals most loved to hate. That he emerged from the turmoil of 1968 as America's president made a mockery of the idea that the 1960s would turn out to be a progressive decade. The seemingly relentless progress of his rehabilitation following the disgrace of Watergate has much to do with the media's enduring and perverse fondness for him.

Annie Oakley (1860-1926). Performer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Nicknamed "Little Miss Sure Shot," she once shot the cigar from the mouth of Kaiser Wilhelm.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986). Prolific painter whose stark, brightly colored abstractions of flowers and the Southwest desert won her acclaim as one of the greatest modern US artists.

Dolly Parton (born 1946). Country singer, movie star, perennial talk-show guest and part-owner of a theme park.

William Penn (1644-1718). British Quaker, often imprisoned in England for his beliefs. He gradually softened towards other doctrines, and campaigned strongly against any form of persecution, eventually establishing the colony of Pennsylvania as a refuge for religious minorities.

Pocahontas (1597?-1617). Daughter of a Native American chief, Pocahontas was instrumental in the successful establishment of the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia. After sparing the life of the captive Captain John Smith, in 1614 Pocahontas married colonist John Rolfe, who brought her (and tobacco) to England, where she died.

John Wesley Powell (1834-1902). After losing an arm in the Civil War, Powell headed west to lead the first group of white men through the rivers and canyons of the Colorado Plateau.

Elvis Presley (1935-1977). Poor white boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, who moved to Memphis and became the first and the greatest white rock'n'roll star. Whether you blame Colonel Tom Parker or Elvis himself, within a couple of years he was throwing away his magnificent voice on empty show-tunes, and embarking on the long road to Hamburger Heaven.

Paul Revere (1735-1818). Silversmith and unofficial political leader of the mechanic class in Boston in the period leading up to the Revolutionary War. As principal rider for Boston's Committee of Safety, in April 1775 he made the famed horseback journey from Boston to Concord to warn the rebels that the British were coming; thus started the War of Independence.

John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937). Petroleum magnate whose Standard Oil company dominated the US and international markets from the 1880s to 1911, when the government dissolved his monopoly. Also a great philanthropist, in his later years he gave away his money - over half a billion dollars.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945). Four-term Democratic president, crippled by polio in 1920, who steered the country through the Depression with the closest the US has ever come to having socialist policies: his "New Deal" provided work for the unemployed and enforced collective bargaining with unions. His wartime leadership was often criticized, especially, with hindsight, his appeasement of Stalin.

Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt (1858-1919). Explorer, writer, soldier and Republican president from 1901 to 1909. His "square deal" policies, which included "trust busting" and government arbitration in wage disputes, were seen to serve the public interest over Big Business, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War. In 1912 he founded the Progressive Party and ran (unsuccessfully) for president as an independent, advocating a strong social service state.

Sacagawea (1788?-1812). A legendary figure in American history, Sacagawea was a young Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition across the continent in 1805. Only seventeen years old, and carrying her newborn baby boy, "Pomp," she and her French fur-trapper husband Charbonneau were indispensable members of the "Corps of Discovery," and their presence helped convince the natives of the explorers' peaceful intentions.

Dred Scott (1795?-1858). Black slave who made constitutional history as the plaintiff in a widely publicized but unsuccessful test case, in which he sought his freedom on the grounds that his master had taken him to live in a free state. The ruling effectively allowed slavery in US territories and was a leading factor in the build-up to the Civil War.

William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891). The Union general who burned Atlanta and laid waste to Georgia, and boasted about it in his memoirs. The bane of his later life was to be greeted at all official functions with Marching through Georgia , a song he detested. His son, a Jesuit priest, had to be forcibly dissuaded from attempting his own march thirty years later.

Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). Italian boy from Hoboken, New Jersey, who made his name thrilling bobby-soxers with New York's Tommy Dorsey Band in the early 1940s and went on to become the most beloved voice of the twentieth century. One of the few singers to turn into a decent movie actor.

Sitting Bull Tatanka Iyotake (1834-1890). Chief of the Dakota Sioux and leader of the Native American forces at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Pursued by the army, he escaped to Canada but surrendered in 1881. He was killed by police in the attempt to suppress the 1890 Ghost Dance movement.

Bruce Springsteen (born 1949). New Jersey singer-songwriter known as "the Boss." His energetic and poignant articulations of white, male, working-class America are often dismissed as machismo; President Reagan missed the point completely in the 1980s and announced his approval of Springsteen's Born in the USA , mistaking its ironic blue-collar disillusionment for reactionary blue-eyed patriotism.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Though she had little firsthand experience of the South, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin aroused the world in fierce opposition to slavery. Abraham Lincoln greeted her with the words "so this is the little lady that made this big war."

Peter (Petrus) Stuyvesant (1592-1672). Early governor of all Dutch colonies in North America, known as "Peg-leg Pete" for his wooden leg. He arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) in 1647, doubling the colony's size and population, but was so unpopular, ignoring all appeals for self-government, that in 1664 he was forced to surrender the colony to the British. His farm, the Bowerie, gave the district in New York City its name.

Harriet Tubman (1820-1913). Escaped from slavery in Maryland in 1849 to become the leading abolitionist voice in the pre-Civil War years. Led hundreds of slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad and served as a nurse and spy for Union forces during the war.

Nat Turner (1800-1831). Black preacher who led five Virginia slaves on a murderous rampage, killing over fifty whites, mostly with knives and axes, in a single day. In reaction, whites murdered hundreds of blacks and enacted an even more repressive regime.

Mark Twain (1835-1910). The great humorist and novelist, whose works provide the most vivid imaginable account of pioneer days across the continent, was also a powerful polemicist for liberal causes, and pioneered white-suit chic long before writer Tom Wolfe. He pursued his desire to typeset his own books, and break free from the evil machinations of self-important publishers, almost to the point of bankruptcy.

George Wallace (1919 -1998). Segregationist three-times Alabama governor; received 13 percent of the popular vote in the 1968 presidential election and looked set to increase his tally in the 1972 race before he was shot and paralyzed. Towards the end of his political career he eschewed his previous racist policies and was re-elected governor in 1982.

Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915). Controversial self-taught black educationalist who founded Tuskegee University. His 1901 book Up from Slavery proposed that blacks should abandon campaigns for voting rights and instead learn skills to work for economic gains.

John Wayne (1907-1979). Alias "the Duke": movie macho man, legendary boozer, Reagan role model and right-wing crank.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Writer and poet whose Leaves of Grass , first published in 1848, is among the most original and passionate works of American literature.

Hank Williams (1923-1953). Country music legend whose compositions ( I Saw the Light, Jambalaya , and others) are still Nashville standards. A drink- and drug-sodden lifestyle accounted for his premature death.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). Prolific architect who came to prominence around 1900 with a series of prototypical suburban houses and went on to design such landmarks as New York's Guggenheim Museum.

Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville (1871-1948) Wright . Bicycle shop proprietors from Dayton, Ohio, who went on to greater things at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when they made the world's first powered flight on December 17, 1903 - it lasted twelve seconds.

Brigham Young (1801-1877). The son of near-illiterate Vermont farmers, Young led the Mormons to Utah following the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, establishing a permanent home for his people.