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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, January 5, 2023

Posted on January 5, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1643 the first legal divorce recorded in the American colonies was finalized between Anne and Dennis Clarke of Massachusetts Bay Colony on the grounds of adultery and abandonment. The court’s record read: “She is garunted to bee divorced.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Posted on January 4, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Louis Braille (1809) who developed a written language for the blind before he was 15 years old. It is also the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton (1643) who defined the three laws of motion. And finally the birthday of the bestselling presidential biographer Doris Kerns Goodwin (1943).

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Posted on January 3, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

“The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of women, the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.” – Lucretia Coffin Mott, born on this day in 1793 – Abolitionist and women’s rights reformer.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, January 2, 2023

Posted on January 2, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Author Isaac Asimov was born on this day in 1920. He was born in Russia, and immigrated to the United States when he was three years old. Best known for Science Fiction, his 500+ books are found in all 10 categories of the Dewey Decimal System.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, January 1, 2023

Posted on January 1, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Author of “The Catcher in the Rye”, J.D. Salinger, was born on this day in New York City (1919). He first began writing stories as a child “under the covers [at night], with the aid of a flashlight.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, December 31, 2022

Posted on December 31, 2022 - Writer's Almanac

Thomas Edison demonstrated his first incandescent light bulb on this date in 1879. While he didn’t invent it, he did own the company that employed the inventors. After 14 months of testing, 1,200 experiments, and $40,000, he was finally ready for his first public demonstration. He hung strings of lights inside his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, and switched them on and off repeatedly, to the awe and delight of his 3,000 spectators. He said, “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, December 30, 2022

Posted on December 30, 2022 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the the birthday of short-story writer, poet, and novelist (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling, born in Bombay, India (1865). He settled in Vermont. It was there, in a rented cottage surrounded by snow, that he began to reimagine the India of his childhood, and he wrote the book for which he’s best known today, “The Jungle Book “(1894), about a boy raised by wolves, who grows up with the other jungle animals until a tiger forces him to go back and live with people.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, December 29, 2022

Posted on December 29, 2022 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1890 that federal troops killed almost 300 Lakota men, women, and children in the massacre at Wounded Knee. One of the survivors was Black Elk, the famous medicine man, who was 27 years old at the time of the massacre. He wrote: “… I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream. And I, to whom so great a vision was given in my youth, — you see me now a pitiful old man who has done nothing, for the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer, and the sacred tree is dead.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Posted on December 28, 2022 - Writer's Almanac

“You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make all of them yourself.” — The words of humorist Sam Levenson, born on this day in 1911.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Posted on December 27, 2022 - Writer's Almanac

Astronomer Johannes Kepler was born on this day in 1571. In addition to defining the three laws of planetary motion Kepler was also the father of modern optics. He had poor vision himself and developed lenses to correct nearsightedness and farsightedness. He also explained how both eyes work together to produce depth perception.

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