# Which American most deserves their own national holiday?

> The calendar already honours one or two of these people. The rest are still waiting on a bill that never came.

*By YPB Team · Published August 19, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/which-american-most-deserves-their-own-national-holiday*

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## Current results (2 votes)

1. **Abraham Lincoln** — 50% (1 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Several states mark his 12 February birthday; the federal calendar never has.
2. **Harriet Tubman** — 50% (1 votes · score 1000/1000)
   Escaped slavery, then went back nineteen times to lead others out.
3. **Amelia Earhart** — 0% (0 votes · score 709/1000)
   First woman to fly the Atlantic alone, and aviation's most enduring open question.
4. **Booker T. Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 709/1000)
   Born enslaved, founded Tuskegee and built it into a national institution.
5. **Nikola Tesla** — 0% (0 votes · score 709/1000)
   The naturalised American whose alternating current lit the country.
6. **Benjamin Franklin** — 0% (0 votes · score 600/1000)
   Printer, diplomat and inventor who signed every founding document that mattered.
7. **Rosa Parks** — 0% (0 votes · score 600/1000)
   Her refusal to move seats in Montgomery in 1955 started a 381-day bus boycott.
8. **Eleanor Roosevelt** — 0% (0 votes · score 600/1000)
   Redefined the role of First Lady, then drove the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
9. **Thomas Edison** — 0% (0 votes · score 600/1000)
   1,093 US patents, and the laboratory model that made invention an industry.
10. **Frederick Douglass** — 0% (0 votes · score 466/1000)
   The escaped slave who became the most photographed American of the 19th century.
11. **Jonas Salk** — 0% (0 votes · score 466/1000)
   Developed the polio vaccine and refused to patent it.
12. **Jackie Robinson** — 0% (0 votes · score 466/1000)
   Broke baseball's colour line in 1947 under instructions not to answer back.
13. **George Washington** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Already has one on paper — the February federal holiday is legally Washington's Birthday.
14. **Susan B. Anthony** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   Spent fifty years campaigning for a vote she died fourteen years too early to cast.
15. **Neil Armstrong** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   The first person to stand on the Moon, and the least interested in saying so.
16. **Mark Twain** — 0% (0 votes · score 300/1000)
   The writer who gave American English its own literary voice.

Tags: usa, holidays