Hillary Clinton by Annie Leibovitz

In 1969, Hillary Clinton made history as the first student ever to give a commencement address at Wellesley College in its then- 94-year existence. When Hillary gave her commencement speech — always questioning and challenging the status quo — she received a standing ovation after shocking the audience by criticizing the first speaker, Republican Senator Edward W. Brooke. Life magazine took notice and published her speech, while her fellow students predicted that she would one day become the first woman President of the United States. As we can see now, Hillary has been making history ever since.

She started off as a Republican in college, but quickly changed her political alliances to the Democratic party and, as such, has become an international champion and symbol for social justice, especially advocating for the rights of women and girls in every part of the world.

Today, as The United States Secretary of State, she is the head of the United States Department of State, and advises the President on all matters regarding foreign affairs and she participates in high-level negotiations with other countries, which includes the negotiation of international treaties and agreements.

In the Huffington Post’s article “Hillary Clinton’s 65th Birthday: 65 Reasons to Love Her On Her 65th”, the piece notes that Hillary — after being accepted to both Yale and Harvard law schools — chose Yale because, according to Hillary, “One of my friends said, ‘Professor So-and-So, this is Hillary Rodham, she’s trying to decide between us and our nearest competitor. And he looked down at me and he said, ‘Well, first, we don’t have a nearest competitor. And secondly, we don’t need any more women.”’ Today, Forbes ranks the Yale Law School alumna as the 2nd most powerful woman in the world and 16th most powerful person in the world.

Yes, that bitter, narrow-minded professor cost Harvard the honor of claiming one of the most influential, internationally known and accomplished women in American history as their alumni. Suffice to say, today, Hillary doesn’t even remember Professor So-and-So’s name, but everybody knows Hillary’s name.

On her birthday, may she have more fun than she did in Columbia earlier this year.

And, yes, Hillary is the kind of person you can have a beer with!

In the words of Beyoncé “All the women who are independent, throw your hands up in the air”

For a good laugh, check out Texts from Hillary, where founders, Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe, created a Tumblr site where they created hypothetical texts between Hillary and everyone from President Obama, Oprah, Ryan Gosling, Sara Palin and Jay Z & Beyoncé. The idea behind Texts from Hillary has become such phenom that new ideas for Hill-arious texts are continuously popping up on random sites all over the net. The site became so popular that The Hillary, herself, submitted a text, sending the site’s popularity in the stratosphere.

On a more serious note, if you’d like to learn more about Hillary through a series of candid and intimate photos from her childhood and college years through her now-historic and storied marriage to former President Bill Clinton, along with cute and sweet photos of Chelsea through the years, this is a fabulous photographic book to add to your library:  “The Clintons: Their Story in Photographs”