On July 10, the area entered the history books when the mercury climbed to a blistering 134 degrees Fahrenheit (57 degrees Celsius) at Furnace Creek, California, breaking the record for the highest temperature ever recorded.
Carl Stokes, the first black mayor of a major American city: Black History Month. View full sizePlain Dealer file photoCarl Stokes, shown in 1968 in downtown Cleveland, focused many of his efforts as mayor on improving city services and helping Cleveland's poorest residents.
Thurgood Marshall. This NAACP activist and lawyer was appointed to the supreme court by President Lyndon Johnson and thus became the nation's first black to sit on the Supreme Court, he is also famous as the lawyer who won the case Brown v. Board of Education in 1952.