Some proposals are more memorable than others. Take, for instance, Thomas Edison’s second marriage, which began in an appropriately scientific manner when the inventor proposed to Mina Miller via Morse code — and she said “yes” in the same way. The two used Morse code to speak in secret even in the presence of others, and it’s believed that he tapped the proposal on her hand. 

The two were wed on February 24, 1886, when she was 20 and he was 39; Edison had previously been married to Mary Stilwell from 1871 until her death in 1884. Miller became the stepmother of three children upon the nuptials, though it wasn’t an easy adjustment. Edison’s daughter Marion, who was only seven years her stepmother’s junior, described Miller as “too young to be a mother but too old to be a chum.” Edison and Miller went on to have three more children: Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore. (Edison’s affinity for Morse code didn’t end with his marriage proposal: Marion’s nickname was Dot, while her brother Thomas was known as Dash.) 

While falling in love with Miller, Edison referred to her as the “Belle of Akron” and once wrote in his diary, “Got thinking about Mina and came near to being run over by a street car.” She referred to herself as the “home executive” and was the legal owner of their house in order to protect it from potential seizure due to Edison’s debts. Their marriage lasted nearly half a century until Edison’s death in 1931.

As a teenager during World War II, Maya Angelou took a job that might seem unexpected for the future renowned author: working as a streetcar conductor in San Francisco. She was just 15 years old when she climbed onto the back platform of an electric streetcar in 1943, wearing a tailored blue uniform and a change belt, collecting fares and urging riders to move forward.

Angelou later described herself as San Francisco’s first Black streetcar conductor, including in her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. While the claim is often repeated, later research suggests the full picture is more complex. At least one Black man had been hired by the city’s transit system earlier, in 1941. And because employment records from the era were discarded long ago, it’s difficult to prove definitively that Angelou was the first Black female streetcar conductor. But she was certainly among the very first.

Getting the job took determination. After seeing an ad for female conductors placed by the Market Street Railway Company during the labor shortages of World War II, Angelou went to apply — and was repeatedly refused an application. Encouraged by her mother, Vivian Baxter, she returned day after day for about two weeks, arriving before the office staff and waiting them out. When she was finally allowed to apply, Angelou lied about her age, writing down 19. She also invented prior work experience, saying that she had been “companion and driver for Mrs. Annie Henderson (a White Lady) in Stamps, Arkansas.”

Angelou worked the job for roughly five months before returning to high school. To keep her daughter safe on predawn routes, Baxter reportedly followed the streetcar in her own car, a pistol on the seat beside her. Angelou later said the experience taught her something lasting: With persistence and courage, she could go anywhere.

Frederick Douglass once said, “It is evident that the great cheapness and universality of pictures must exert a powerful, though silent, influence upon the ideas and sentiment of present and future generations.”

He would know: The abolitionist, author, and civil rights leader was the most photographed American of the 19th century, having sat for more portraits than the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, and Thomas Edison. There are more than 160 pictures of Douglass taken during his lifetime, reflecting his unique stature in America’s cultural fabric.

Born into slavery in 1818, Douglass escaped at age 20 and later wrote that in freedom he “lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.” He saw photography as a great leveler, a means of presenting himself in a dignified manner that undercut any preconceived notions his critics and peers might have of him. He illustrated this idea in his 1861 speech “Lecture on Picture,” saying, “The humbled servant girl whose income is but a few shillings per week may now possess a more perfect likeness of herself than noble ladies and court royalty.”