#i didn't list any Pittsburgh or Philadelphia examples because that's probably worthy of its own post

[good-morning-czernobog]

The general American knowledge about famous or notable or Pennsylvanians is so boring. I don't care that Biden and Taylor Swift are from PA. You know who else was from PA?

Admittedly a lot of these will be coal region specific examples since that's where I'm from. I'll try to include some non-coal region examples at the end. There's also way more than what I'm actually listing because I'm only listening the ones I personally find really cool.

Coal Region

-Robert Spencer, a doctor who provided abortions in a time BEFORE Roe vs Wade. He is easily one of the most interesting historical people in the medical field to me personally besides Martin A Couney (Ashland)

-John Walson, a pioneer in cable television. He also founded Service Electric, which is a company a lot of people in eastern PA and New Jersey use still today for cable and Internet. (Mahanoy City)

-Jozef Murgaš (also anglicized as Joseph Murgas), a Slovakian immigrant who was a pioneer in radio broadcasting. He was considered something of a Renaissance man at the time. (Wilkes-Barre)

-Janet Asimov, a science fiction writer. If her surname sounds familiar, then the reason is probably what you think it is. She also had a degree in psychoanalysis and worked worked in that field on top of her writing. (Ashland)

-Ellen Dow, an actress, mostly famous as the rapping granny from 1998's The Wedding Singer (Mount Carmel)

-Pete Gray, Player for the St Louis Browns, he was the first one-armed baseball player in the MLB (Nanticoke)

-the band Crobot, specifically Brandon (vocalist) and Chris (guitarist) (Pottsville)

-Ralph E Brock, first black forester in the United States (Pottsville)

-James Hepburn, creator of the Hepburn Romanization system. If you see Japanese written in the Latin alphabet, it's probably using the Hepburn system (Milton)

-Rose O'Neil, cartoonist, creator of Kewpies (Wilkes-Barre)

-Jane Jensen, video game designer, creator of the Gabriel Knight series (Palmerton)

Outside the Coal Region

-Rachel Carson, biologist and conservationist, author of Silent Spring (Springdale)

-Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (Latrobe)

-Steve Burns, first host of Blue's Clues (Boyertown)

-Joseph Rothrock, environmentalist, considered the father of forestry (McVeytown)

-Howard Zahniser, environmental activist and writer of the 1964 Wilderness Act (Franklin)

-Henry Deringer, gunsmith, creator of the Deringer Pistol (Easton)

-Robert Fulton, creator of the first commercially successful steamboat (Little Britain)

-Todd Howard, as in Bethesda's Todd Howard. This is the single funniest entry on this list to me for absolutely no reason. (Lower Macungie)