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Writer's Almanac

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The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, October 27, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Today is the birthday of Joseph Medicine Crow-High Bird, best known as Joseph Medicine Crow, who was born in 1913 into the Apsáalooke people — the children of the large-beaked bird — near Lodge Grass on the Crow reservation in southern Montana.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, October 26, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, October 26, 2026

Today is the birthday of former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, born in Chicago (1947), the daughter of a man who sold draperies and was so frugal that even on the coldest winter nights in Illinois, he would turn the heat in the house off, and then wake up early in the morning to warm the house back up before everyone else arose.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, October 25, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, October 25, 2026

It’s the birthday of comedienne Minnie Pearl, born Sarah Ophelia Colley (1912) in Centerville, Tennessee, the youngest daughter of a well-to-do lumberjack.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, October 24, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, October 24, 2026

It’s the birthday of the writer Sarah Josepha Hale, born in Newport, New Hampshire (1788). She had no formal education, but her family encouraged her to read, especially her brother who went to Dartmouth.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, October 23, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, October 23, 2026

On this day in 1920, the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis was published. Lewis had first envisioned a novel about small-town life 15 years earlier.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, October 22, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, October 22, 2026

It’s the birthday of novelist Doris Lessing, born in Kermanshah in what is now Iran (1919). Her father had lost a leg in the British army and was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, October 21, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, October 21, 2026

It’s the birthday of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire, England (1772). Coleridge is the author of poems such as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Christabel,” and “Frost at Midnight.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, October 20, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, October 20, 2026

It’s the birthday of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, born in Charleville, France (1854). He began writing letters to the poet Paul Verlaine, whose work he admired, and Verlaine invited him to stay at his house.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, October 19, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, October 19, 2026

Today is the anniversary of the surrender that ended the American Revolutionary War, in Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781. George Washington had had a difficult spring.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, October 18, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, October 18, 2026

It was on this day in 1954 that the first transistor radio appeared on the market. Transistors were a big breakthrough in electronics — a new way to amplify signals. They replaced vacuum tubes, which were fragile, slow to warm up, and unreliable.

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