Historical Figures You Didn't Know Were Friends

When we learn about famous historical figures, we often hear about a spouse, rival or colleague, but rarely about their friends. Yet people in the public eye have a tendency to cross paths—even if they’re known for different contributions to society and don’t live near each other. This can lead to some unlikely friendships. Here are six examples of famous pairs you probably didn’t know were friends.

The friendship between physicists Marie Curie and Albert Einstein began with a letter he wrote to her in 1911, at a time of great personal and professional upheaval in her life. First, Curie wasn’t accepted to the prestigious French Academy of Sciences. Then, word got out that she had an affair with a younger married associate, and public opinion turned against her. In his letter, Einstein offered her words of support, which led to a close friendship. 

“Einstein wrote to her when she faced a scandal over her personal affairs, and as a woman in a male-dominated world, Curie understandably appreciated that,” says Michael Green, the chair of the history department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Additionally, according to Neri Karra Sillaman, professor at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and author of Pioneers: 8 Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs, both Curie and Einstein understood what it meant to be immigrants and outsiders. 

“Curie was a Polish immigrant in France—a woman in a field that didn’t even want her there, and Einstein, of course, was Jewish, moving constantly across borders in search of a place where he could be both safe and taken seriously,” she explains.

Thomas Edison first met 33-year-old Henry Ford at a meeting of the Association of Edison Illuminating Companies in Brooklyn, New York in 1896, when he was 49. Edison, one of the world’s most famous inventors, was Ford’s boyhood hero, and the industrialist brought a camera along to the conference to snap a few photos of his idol. 

The two exchanged letters and birthday greetings over the years, and traveled together to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, and on annual camping trips between 1916 and 1924, accompanied by Harvey Firestone (founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company), and naturalist John Burroughs. In 1916, Henry and Clara Ford purchased "The Mangoes"—the Fort Myers, Florida property adjacent to Edison’s winter home. “Ford idolized Edison, and the two of them met and gravitated toward each other—both were innovative, and both were strongly opinionated, but had so much in common in business that it worked out for them,” Green says.

For years, abolitionist Frederick Douglass and suffragist Susan B. Anthony worked campaigning for universal suffrage and the abolition of slavery, and became friends. Though they met in Rochester in 1849, Anthony knew of Douglass from his participation in women’s rights conventions and the fact that he was friends with her father. 

However, a rift in the friendship and professional working relationship occurred in the late 1860s, when Douglass supported the 15th Amendment which granted Black men the right to vote, while Anthony was holding out for an amendment which granted all men and all women the right to vote at the same time.

Following the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, Douglass resumed his work for women’s suffrage, and his friendship with Anthony. He visited her when he was in Rochester, and she called on him when she was in Washington, D.C. “Douglass and Anthony both were reformers and committed to their reforms,” Green says. “They were powerful forces individually and together.”

Samuel L. Clemens—better known by his pen name, Mark Twain—had a lifelong fascination with technology and invention. This is what drew him to Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla, who moved to New York from Croatia in 1885. In 1888, before their friendship even began, Twain wrote that Tesla’s alternating current motor would “revolutionize the whole electric business of the world.” Meanwhile, Tesla had been a fan of Twain’s writing since he was a child, even crediting his books for assisting in his “miraculous recovery” when he was bedridden. 

“Tesla loved Twain's writing, and Twain loved technology, which probably can be traced to his boyhood interests and to actually becoming Mark Twain as a newspaperman on Nevada's Comstock Lode, which was a hotbed of mining innovation,” Green says.

The pair became friends in the 1890s, and Twain visited Tesla at his laboratory on Fifth Avenue, where he even occasionally participated in some of his friend’s experiments. This included Tesla taking a photograph of Twain with his new phosphorescent light in January 1894. Tesla and Twain continued their friendship by letter, corresponding when they weren’t in the same city. Twain even invited Tesla to his daughter’s wedding in 1909.

Although he’s best known for inventing the telephone, Scottish-born Canadian American inventor and scientist Alexander Graham Bell also spent much of his time trying to improve the lives of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals—especially education for deaf children. Deafness touched Bell’s life personally: his mother was hard of hearing, and his wife, Mabel Hubbard Bell, was deaf and a skilled speech reader. 

Helen Keller and Bell met in 1886, when Keller was 6 and Bell was 39. Keller, who was both deaf and blind, had difficulty communicating, and Bell referred her to the Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, and made arrangements for her to meet her future teacher and lifelong companion, Anne Sullivan. 

“Bell had worked with the hearing-impaired, and actually introduced Annie Sullivan to the Keller family,” Green says. Keller was grateful to Bell for his help, and the two developed a close friendship, visiting each other and traveling to events like the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago together. Bell also paid for Keller to attend college and Keller became the first DeafBlind person to earn a bachelor’s degree when she graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College. Keller and Bell maintained their friendship until his death in 1922. 

Pilot Amelia Earhart and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt were not only two of the most visible women of the 1930s, they were also friends. “In a time when women were often expected to be seen and not heard, here were two incredibly public women,” Green says. Both were committed to advancing women’s position in society, and admired the other’s work. 

The pair met at a White House dinner on April 20, 1933. “Eleanor loved airplanes and one night at a White House dinner, they sneaked away so that Earhart could take her up,” Green says. Roosevelt was so inspired by Earhart that she wanted to get her own pilot’s license. Earhart even offered to give her flying lessons. But the Secret Service and President Franklin D. Roosevelt put a stop to their plans. Between 1933 and 1937 (the year of her final flight), Earhart regularly visited Roosevelt at the White House, getting involved in the first lady’s causes, including improving the lives of working women and promoting world peace.