Elizabeth Seifert in 1938. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Pearl Boucher Matthews Scrapbook, C4587]

Elizabeth Seifert published her first book in 1938 when she was forty-one years old. As one of thirteen…

Floyd Calvin Shoemaker. [State Historical Society of Missouri Photographs Collection, P0137-014054]

When Floyd Calvin Shoemaker retired as secretary, librarian, and editor of publications of…

Edgar Snow. [University of Missouri–Kansas City Special Collections, KC.19.2.9-11-00002]

Edgar Snow grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was born on July 17, 1905. After a…

St. Louis Browns players and owner Donald Lee Barnes celebrate the team’s lone American League pennant in 1944. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N45028]

The St. Louis Browns were a professional baseball team that played in the American League…

Frisco logo

The St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, popularly known as the Frisco, was a regional freight and passenger carrier…

Leonor Sullivan. [Official Manual of Missouri, 1993–1994]

Leonor Alice Kretzer Sullivan was the first woman elected to the US Congress from a…

Gladys Swarthout with costar Jan Kiepura from the movie Give Us This Night (1936). [New York Public Library Digital Collections, Billy Rose Theatre Collection, psnypl_the_5262]

Gladys Swarthout, a concert and operatic mezzo-­soprano, was born in Deepwater, Missouri,…

Ted Drewes Frozen Custard on Chippewa, which was once part of Route 66 in St. Louis. [Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, photo by Philip Leara]

When pundits make lists of the foods most associated with St. Louis, they usually highlight such…

Virgil Thomson. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-42533]

Pulitzer Prize–winning composer and music critic Virgil Thomson was born in Kansas City,…

Melvin Tolson. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-134556 DLC]

Through most of his life, Melvin B. Tolson claimed he was born with the twentieth century…