RETROBITUARIES

The woman once regarded as the world's greatest female athlete spent her life—and death—trapped between identities.

She was among the first to depict insects interacting with the natural world.

She crafted tiny, intricate dioramas known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

The last surviving member of the Wild Bunch, she died in 1961.

Fanny Crosby—poet, public speaker, activist—wrote so many hymns that publishers had to give her dozens of pseudonyms.

A keen diplomat who used her skills to protect her land while paving the way for the unification of Korea.

He majored in physics and philosophy and managed to apply them both to his decades of historic work.

Author of the first major feminist work published in the U.S., her life and work were cut tragically short.

Lois Weber may be the most important filmmaker you’ve never heard of.

Diogenes of Sinope lived in a wine barrel, urinated in public, and was one of the most beloved philosophers of the 4th century BCE.

In the Middle Ages, Ibn Battuta left to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at age 22, and didn't come home for almost 30 years.

He traveled thousands of miles, carried a stick topped with owl feathers, and was crowned “Grand Patriarch of the Hobos.”