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Writer's Almanac

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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, July 9, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, July 9, 2021

Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks was born on this day in 1933. He wrote about complicated medical mysteries of the brain to appeal beyond academia.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, July 8, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, July 8, 2021

Today is the birthday of columnist and best-selling novelist Anna Quindlen (1953), author of “How Reading Changed My Life” and “A Short Guide to a Happy Life.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Today is the birthday of American genetics pioneer Nettie Stevens (1861) who discovered that the combinations XX and XY in chromosomes determined the sex of an organism.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, July 6, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Louis Pasteur successfully tested his rabies vaccine on this day in 1885 on a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Meister who was bitten by a rabid dog.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, July 5, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, July 5, 2021

“Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work… then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.” — Jean Cocteau, born 1889.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, July 4, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, July 4, 2021

It’s the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1804. Author of “The Scarlett Letter” one of the first mass-produced books in America.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, July 3, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, July 3, 2021

It’s the birthday of Franz Kafka (1883), author of “The Metamorphosis” which reads “Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, July 2, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, July 2, 2021

It was on this day in 1937 that pilot Amelia Earhart was last heard from, somewhere over the Pacific. Her last transmission was,”We are running north and south.”

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The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, July 1, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, July 1, 2021

It’s the birthday of the “father of gospel music,” Thomas A. Dorsey, born in Villa
Rica, Georgia, in 1899.

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The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 30, 2021

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz was born on this day in Lithuania, 1911. He once said, “Language is the only homeland.”

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