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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 22, 2025

Posted on September 22, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

This week,, we celebrate the anniversary of the Norman invasion of 1066. It was this week in 1066 that William the Conqueror of Normandy first arrived on British soil. The French-speaking Normans eventually defeated Old English-speaking Saxons at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066 — which had a larger and more pronounced effect on the development of the English language than any other event in history.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, September 21, 2025

Posted on September 21, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the horror writer Stephen King, born in 1947 in Portland, Maine. His family moved around a lot and ended up in a small town in Maine, and it was there that his official writing career began at age 11, when he and his older brother David decided to begin a town newspaper, and it sold for five cents. In 1957, he was at the local theater watching a matinee of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, and the manager interrupted it to announce that the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 20, 2025

Posted on September 20, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the poet Donald Hall, born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928. He started writing poems when he was a kid at his grandparents’ farm in New Hampshire. When he was 16, he went to a writing conference and met Robert Frost, and later that year, he published his first poetry. He moved around for many years, studying and teaching at various universities, and at the University of Michigan, he met another poet, Jane Kenyon, and they got married and moved back to his grandparents’ farm.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, September 19, 2025

Posted on September 19, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1991 that the body of Ötzi the Iceman was found in the Alps between Austria and Italy. Ötzi was discovered by German tourists who thought they had found a recent corpse, but after a series of tests it turned out that in fact this man was alive more than 5,000 years ago, in about 3300 B.C.E.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, September 18, 2025

Posted on September 18, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Samuel Johnson, born in Lichfield, England, in 1709, who wrote A Dictionary of the English Language (1755). As a young man, he went to Oxford, where he had to walk barefoot because he couldn’t afford to repair his shoes. One night another student left a new pair of shoes outside his door.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Posted on September 17, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

And it’s the birthday of the poet William Carlos Williams, born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883. His father was British and grew up in the West Indies, and his mother was French-Spanish and grew up in Puerto Rico. Williams spent his childhood in Rutherford, but then he went to school at some of the best schools in Switzerland, France, Germany, and the United States. He planned to become a doctor, but he started reading and writing poetry and realized how much he loved it.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Posted on September 16, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the children’s author and illustrator H.A. Rey, born Hans Augusto Reyersbach in Hamburg, Germany, in 1898. When Hans was a boy in Hamburg, he lived near a zoo, and he loved visiting the animals there — he would imitate their noises and paint them.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 15, 2025

Posted on September 15, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the Italian explorer Marco Polo, born in 1254. He grew up in Venice, and he was probably born there too. The Polos were a wealthy family of traders, and when Marco was just six years old, his father and uncle left to explore Asia together. For hundreds of years, Europeans hadn’t been able to travel farther east than the Mediterranean.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, September 14, 2025

Posted on September 14, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1901 that the then Vice President Theodore Roosevelt learned he had become the 26th president of the United States, after the death by assassination of President William McKinley. On September 6, 1901, less than a year into Roosevelt’s role as vice president, President McKinley was visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, when an anarchist walked up to him and shot him in the stomach.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 13, 2025

Posted on September 13, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Roald Dahl, born in Llandaff, South Wales (1916). He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing.

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