Entries from Now @ MPL... tagged with 'birthdays'
Birthday of Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow, the most renowned American lawyer of the early 1900's, was born on April 18, 1857. He became famous as a defender of labor after representing Eugene V. Debs and other union officials who were arrested for supporting the...
The Birthday of Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on February 22, 1892 to a mother who raised her three daughters on her own after asking her husband to leave the family home in 1899. Following her attendance at Vassar...
The Birthday of Jules Verne
Jules Verne, the author sometimes referred to as the father of science fiction, was born on February 8, 1828 in Nantes, France. Although his works were written before the invention of the airplane, they predicted not only planes, but television,...
Octavia Butler's Birthday
Author Octavia Butler, the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, was born on June 22, 1947. Her works include Parable of the Sower, Wild Seed, and Kindred, a powerful and moving novel which uses the...
Happy Birthday Maurice Sendak!
Maurice Sendak, famous author and illustrator best known for Where the Wild Things Are, was born on June 10, 1928. From an early age Sendak wanted to be an illustrator, and his love of books was intiated by several...
Funny - She Doesn't Look 52!
When the Barbie doll first went on display on March 9, 1959 at the American Toy Fair in New York City, she was the first mass-produced toy doll in the United States to sport an adult figure and features. Over...
Quoth the Raven, "Happy Birthday to You"
Edgar Allen Poe, one of America's most famous men of letters, was born on January 19th, 1809 to a pair of travelling actors. His father abandoned the family while Poe was an infant, and his mother died before his third...
Birthday of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Romantic poet Percy Bysse Shelley was born on August 4, 1792. An advocate of justice for the lower classes, nonviolence and vegetarianism, he was married twice, the second time to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. In honor...
Beatrix Potter's Birthday
English author and illustrator Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866. As a child, she and her brother collected bugs, toadstools, dead birds and snakeskins, which they spent many hours observing and drawing. Although best known for her charming...
Happy Birthday, Ernest Hemingway
Author and journalist Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, Hemingway left for the Italian front to become an ambulance driver during World War I; his experiences there became the basis for...
Wilma Rudolph's Inspirational Accomplishments
Wilma Rudolph was born on June 23, 1940, two months early and weighing just over four pounds. As a child, she contracted polio, and it was feared that she might never walk again. She kept moving any way she could,...
What is one thing that Charlotte Bronte and Queen Elizabeth II have in common?
Charlotte Bronte, famed 19th century English novelist, and Elizabeth II, reigning Queen of the United Kingdom, were both born on April 21, the former in 1816; the latter in 1926. Bronte, best known for her novel Jane Eyre, was the...
"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe..."
Thus begins Jabberwocky, one of the greatest nonsense poems in the English language. Its author was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on January 27, 1832, but the world has come to know him better as Lewis Carroll, creator of such memorable...
Horatio Alger, Jr. - Honesty, Frugality and Hard Work
Horatio Alger, Jr. was born on January 13, 1832. He wrote over 100 novels for boys, using his experiences helping orphans and runaways as fodder for his stories. Although his works are now considered by many to be formulaic and...
Happy Birthday, Carl Sandburg
On January 6, 1878, Carl Sandburg, American author, editor and son of the Midwest, was born. Much of Sandburg's poetry focused on Chicago, a city he famously described as "Hog Butcher for the World...City of the Big Shoulders." He received...
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