Who Are the Most Influential Americans in History?

To celebrate the 250 years since America’s founding, HISTORY.com curated three lists of 250 people, 250 events and 250 objects that shaped U.S. history or help tell the American story.

In 250 People Who Shaped America, we feature Founding Fathers, American presidents and first ladies, famous scientists, entrepreneurs and activists, groundbreaking artists, actors and authors and many more who have left their mark on the nation.

We tell the stories of famous Native Americans like all-star athlete Jim Thorpe, former Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller and Vine Deloria Jr., who helped launch the “Red Power” movement. Among those who shaped American culture are poet Robert Frost, country singer Loretta Lynn, comic book legend Stan Lee, writer Zora Neale Hurston and TV host Johnny Carson.

Suffragist Susan B. Anthony, pioneering astronomer Maria Mitchell, actor Judy Garland and haircare entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker are some of the famous women featured on the list. Mitchell became the first professional woman astronomer in the U.S. after discovering a comet in 1847. The orphan of a formerly enslaved couple, Walker embodied America’s entrepreneurial spirit when she launched a line of hair products for fellow Black women in 1905 and became the country’s first recognized female self-made millionaire.

Some need no introduction, including Elvis Presley, Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Amelia Earhart, John D. Rockefeller, Mark Twain, Ralph Lauren and Steve Jobs.

Others are lesser known. Their names might be unfamiliar, but their contributions to American life aren’t. Ermal Fraze invented the pull-tab beverage can after improvising a way to a beer with his car’s bumper. Norman Borlaug’s agricultural breakthroughs helped feed millions. And Jovita Idár refused to stop writing about the civil rights abuses Mexican Americans faced in the early 20th century, even after Texas Rangers smashed her newspaper’s printing press.

Get a preview below, with a look at the lives and contributions of four Americans on the list: Alexander Hamilton, Sacagawea, Harriet Tubman and George Washington Carver.

Alexander Hamilton is best known for writing 51 of the Federalist Papers, a series of impassioned essays supporting ratification of the U.S. Constitution that stand among the most important political documents in American history. An orphaned immigrant and one of the Founding Fathers, Hamilton also served as the nation’s first treasury secretary and established a national banking system, despite the opposition of his political archrival, Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton was famously killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804.

Sacagawea was a Shoshone woman who served as an interpreter and guide on the Lewis and Clark expedition. With an infant and husband in tow, the teenager set out with the Corps of Discovery in April 1805 after the group had arrived in what is present-day North Dakota. Her familiarity with the landscape and bilingual ability—she spoke Shoshone and Hidatsa—helped the Corps navigate difficult terrain, trade with local Native Americans and negotiate safe passage through their lands. After more than a year, Sacagawea and her family returned home. She received no compensation for her role (though her husband was paid) and died in 1812 at age 25 from illness.

After escaping slavery in 1849, Harriet Tubman became one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad and spied for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Exactly how many enslaved people she helped reach freedom on the Underground Railroad is debated, but historians believe it was around 70 people across 13 trips. Her spy work during the war proved foundational to the success of the June 1863 Combahee River Raid in South Carolina, in which Tubman and Union soldiers freed more than 700 enslaved people. She eventually settled in upstate New York, where she died in 1913.

Throughout his career as an agricultural scientist, George Washington Carver invented 325 uses for peanuts; 108 products from sweet potato, such as dyes, paints, ink and flour; 75 uses for pecans; and the Jesup wagon, a type of mobile classroom and laboratory from which he popularized a crop-rotation technique. The revolutionary growing method led to a surplus of peanuts and sweet potatoes in the South, leading Carver to explore alternative uses for the crops. His peanut inventions included milk, cooking oils, paper, cosmetics, soaps, wood stains and medicines, such as laxatives and goiter medications (but not peanut butter as is often said). The work and his 1921 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives earned him the nickname “The Peanut Man.”