Latino & Hispanic History & Heritage

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Lin-Manuel Miranda

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Lin-Manuel Miranda is the Tony-winning composer-lyricist of Broadway’s In the Heights. In the Heights received four 2008 Tony with Lin-Manuel receiving a Tony Award for Best Score, as well as a nomination for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. Lin-Manuel’s […]
Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Painter and muralist Diego Rivera sought to make art that reflected the lives of the working class and native peoples of Mexico. Born on December 8, 1886, in Guanajuato, Mexico, Diego Rivera sought to make art that reflected the lives […]
Ellen Ochoa

Ellen Ochoa

Selected by NASA in 1990, Ellen Ochoa became the world’s first Hispanic female astronaut in 1991. Born on May 10, 1958, in Los Angeles, California, Ellen Ochoa received her master of science and doctorate degrees at Stanford University. She was […]
Corky Gonzales

Corky Gonzales

Corky Gonzales became an important leader for young and poor Mexican Americans in the 1960s. In Denver, he started The Crusade for Justice, a group that pushed for civil rights and equality for Mexican Americans. Gonzales wrote the poem I […]
Severo Ochoa

Severo Ochoa

Severo Ochoa was a Spanish-American biochemist and molecular biologist who was co-awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering an enzyme that enables the synthesis of RNA. Born in 1905, Severo Ochoa was a Nobel Prize-winning scientist […]
Sonia Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor

Nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history. Sonia Sotomayor was born June 25, 1954, in the Bronx borough of New York City. Her desire to be […]
Joan Baez

Joan Baez

Joan Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter and activist who is best known for her distinctive voice and for her role in popularizing the music of Bob Dylan. Joan Baez was born in Staten Island, New York, on January […]
Aida Giachello

Aida Giachello

Latinos are three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to suffer from potentially life-threatening diabetes. They are far more likely to be plagued by asthma and hypertension too. Aida Giachello, 59, founded the Midwest Latino Health Research, Training and Policy […]
Mario Molina

Mario Molina

At the University of California at Berkeley in 1973, Molina and Sherwood Rowland began researching chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), then widely used in refrigerators, spray cans, and cleaning solvents. They discovered that the release of CFCs could destroy the ozone layer in […]
Alberto Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales

Lawyer, and former U.S. attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales made history in 2005 as the first Hispanic appointed U.S. attorney general. Alberto R. Gonzales was born August 4, 1955, in San Antonio, Texas. The son of a construction worker, he […]