Jeannette Pickering Rankin (June 11, 1880 – May 18, 1973) was the first woman in the US Congress. A Republican, she was elected statewide in Montana in 1916 and again in 1940. A lifelong pacifist, she was one of the 50 members of Congress who voted against the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917 and the only member of Congress who voted against declaring war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (World War II) in 1941. She is the only woman to be elected to Congress from Montana.

Jeannette Pickering Rankin is most widely known as the first woman elected into Congress. A Republican, she was first elected by her home state of Montana in 1916, and then again in 1941. Her domestic and foreign politics lie within the strict lines of Pacifism, and despite overwhelming unpopularity at the time, have resulted in a legacy that helped propel the second wave of feminism and pacifism during the 1960s and 1970s.

Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin (January 29, 1761 – August 12, 1849) was a Swiss-American ethnologist, linguist, politician, diplomat, congressman, and the longest-serving United States Secretary of the Treasury. In 1831, he founded the University of the City of New York. In 1896, this university was renamed New York University; it is now one of the largest private, non-profit universities in the United States.

Born in Switzerland, Gallatin immigrated to America in the 1780s, ultimately settling in Pennsylvania. He was politically active against the Federalist Party program, and was elected to the United States Senate in 1793, but was removed from office by a 14–12 party-line vote after a protest raised by his opponents suggested he had fewer than the required nine years of citizenship. In 1795 he was elected to the House of Representatives and served in the fourth through sixth Congresses, becoming House Majority Leader. He was an important leader of the new Democratic-Republican Party, its chief spokesman on financial matters, and led opposition to many of the policy proposals of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. He also helped found the House Committee on Finance (later the Ways and Means Committee) and often engineered withholding of finances by the House as a method of overriding executive actions to which he objected. While Treasury Secretary, his services to his country were honored in 1805 when Meriwether Lewis named one of the three headwaters of the Missouri River after Gallatin.

Stan Lauryssens (born 1946) is a Belgian writer. He lives in Antwerp and London.

As a journalist in the 1970s and 1980s, Lauryssens travelled the world and interviewed Jack Higgins Harold Robbins, Catherine Cookson, Konsalik, Thor Heyerdahl, Charles de Gaulle and Andy Warhol. He had prolonged meetings with Hitler’s henchmen: Karl Dönitz, Sir Oswald Mosley, Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Eichmann’s family, and Otto Günsche and has written five books about the Nazis.

Lauryssens wrote the book Dalí and I about his experiences with the surrealist painter. Room 9 Entertainment in Hollywood bought film rights. Academy Award nominee Andrew Niccol rewrote the screenplay and will direct the film, entitled Dali & I: The Surreal Story. Lauryssens will be played by Cillian Murphy, with Al Pacino as Dalí.

His non-fiction books were serialised in The Mail on Sunday and are published in English, French, Italian and Polish and have gained cult status in Japan. His first thriller, Black Snow, won him the Hercule Poirot Award 2002 for best crime fiction of the year, and was followed by Dead Corpses (2003) and Red Roses (2004), Deader Than Dead Too (2005), More than Naked (2005), No Time for Tears (2006)and "The Sooner You Die". Translation rights for "Dalí & I: The Surreal Story" have been sold in some 30 languages. The book is also out as an Amazon Kindle Edition and on CD, from Tantor Media.

Barbara Jean Lee (born July 16, 1946) is the U.S. Representative for California's 9th congressional district, serving since 1998. She is a member of the Democratic Party. She is the first woman to represent that district. Lee was the Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and was the Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Lee is notable as the only member of either house of Congress to vote against the authorization of use of force following the September 11, 2001 attacks. This made her a hero among many in the anti-war movement. Lee has been a vocal critic of the war in Iraq and supports legislation creating a Department of Peace.

Congresswoman Lee was born in El Paso, Texas. She moved from Texas to California in 1960 with her military family parents, and attended San Fernando High School in San Fernando, California. She was a young single mother of two receiving public assistance when she began attending college. Lee was educated at Mills College and received an M.S.W. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975.