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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, October 21, 2023

Posted on October 21, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1879 that the inventor Thomas Edison finally struck upon the idea for a workable electric light. People had been trying to make electric lights since the 1820s to replace kerosene and gas lamps, but they had chosen the wrong material for the filament: platinum. And Edison tried carbonized cotton thread, carbon filament that worked much better. He later improved the design with a tungsten filament that lasted longer and glowed brighter.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, October 20, 2023

Posted on October 20, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of musician Jelly Roll Morton, born Ferdinand Joseph La Menthe in New Orleans (1890). He grew up listening to French and Italian opera, hymns, ragtime, and minstrel songs. He was a great piano player, and he apprenticed in the seedy bars and brothels of New Orleans. In addition to being a talented performer, he was a pool shark, a gambler, and a pimp. He wore a turquoise coat, a Stetson hat, and tight striped pants. He said: “I was Sweet Papa Jelly Roll with the stovepipes in my hips, and all the women in town was dying to turn my damper down.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, October 19, 2023

Posted on October 19, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

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. His troops were low on supplies and food, their clothing was in shreds, and there had been a steady stream of desertions from his ranks. By summer, Washington had only a few thousand troops camped at West Point, New York. The British expected Washington to attack New York City, which he had been planning to do for most of the spring. But when he learned that the British forces under the control of Lord Cornwallis were building a naval base on the Yorktown Peninsula in Virginia, he decided impulsively to march his army from New York to Virginia, in the hopes of trapping Cornwallis and capturing his army.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, October 18, 2023

Posted on October 18, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

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. During World War II, there was a big funding push to try to update vacuum tubes, since they were used in radio-controlled bombs but didn’t work very well. A team of scientists at Bell Laboratories invented the first transistor technology in 1947. But the announcement didn’t make much of an impact because transistors had limited use for everyday consumers — they were used mainly in military technology, telephone switching equipment, and hearing aids.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, October 17, 2023

Posted on October 17, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Arthur Miller, born in New York City (1915). He wrote Death of a Salesman (1949). It’s the story of a salesman named Willy Loman and the last 24 hours of his life with his wife, Linda, and his sons, Biff and Happy. He comes home from a business trip, carrying a case of samples, and tells his wife that he decided to cut the trip short because he’s not feeling well. He spends the next day trying to figure out how to pay off his debts. In the end, he decides to kill himself in a car accident, in the hopes of getting his family the insurance money.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, October 16, 2023

Posted on October 16, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Irish writer Oscar Wilde, born Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, in Dublin (1854). He’s the author of the plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1893), A Woman of No Importance (1893), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895); and he’s one of the most quotable authors in the English language. His mother was a famous poet, journalist, and Irish nationalist; his father was a noted ear and eye doctor. He went to college at Oxford, where he began affecting an aristocratic English accent and dressing in eccentric suits and velvet knee breeches.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, October 15, 2023

Posted on October 15, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the poet Virgil, born Publius Vergilius Maro near Mantua, Italy (70 BC). His father was a peasant farmworker who raised his own social status by marrying his boss’s daughter. Virgil was sent to Milan, Rome, and Naples for his education in philosophy and rhetoric. He planned to become a lawyer, but he was too shy to speak in public. He also found that he missed the rural Italian countryside, so he returned to the family farm and wrote poetry.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, October 14, 2023

Posted on October 14, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet E.E. Cummings (Edward Estlin Cummings), born in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1894). He spent most of his life unhappy and irritable in New York, struggling to pay the bills, ostracized by other writers for his unpopular political views, yet he wrote many poems in a naïve style about the beauty of nature and love. In the first edition of his Collected Poems, he wrote in the preface, “The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for most people — it’s no use trying to pretend that most people and ourselves are alike. […] You and I are human beings; most people are snobs.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, October 13, 2023

Posted on October 13, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1881, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda held the first-known conversation in modern Hebrew. Hebrew had not been spoken in a mother tongue since the second century CE. It had endured for more than a millennium until 135 CE and was then only used in literature or prayer. He said, “The Hebrew language will go from the synagogue to the house of study and from the house of study to the school, and from the school it will come into the home and … become a living language.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, October 12, 2023

Posted on October 12, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1892 that the Pledge of Allegiance was recited en masse for the first time, by more than 2 million students. It had been written just a month earlier by a Baptist minister named Francis Bellamy, who published it in Youth’s Companion and distributed it across the country. It was recited on this day to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. It was slightly shorter in its 1892 version: “I pledge allegiance to my flag and the Republic for which it stands — one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

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