Bell Telephone Company made Alexander Graham Bell a rich man. But he spent his whole life continuing to study and invent. Bell experimented with devices that could find bullets and other metal in the body. He developed a machine to aid breathing. He was also interested in vehicles that could move in air and on water. Alexander Graham Bell died in Nova Scotia, Canada, in nineteen twenty-two. He was seventy-five.

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Lena Horne

DOUG JOHNSON: Celebrated performer Lena Horne died Sunday at a hospital in New York City. The singing star broke racial barriers in movies and live theater. In the nineteen forties, she was the first black woman to sign a long-term agreement with a major Hollywood movie studio. The deal included a famous agreement. It said she would never have to play a maid.

Faith Lapidus has more on Lena Horne, her music and her rich life.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Lena Horne was born in nineteen seventeen in Brooklyn, New York. She was the great-granddaughter of a freed slave. Her mother was an actress. Lena’s grandmother helped raise her. Her grandmother was a social worker and an activist for women’s voting rights.

At sixteen, Lena began dancing and singing in the famous Cotton Club in the Harlem area of New York. A few years later she went to Hollywood. She starred in an African-American musical film called “Stormy Weather” in nineteen forty-three. “Stormy Weather” also became Lena Horne’s best known song.