Albums APHC Clips Audio Events Prairie Home Archives Songs Writer's Almanac
Writer's Almanac

To subscribe to the Writer’s Almanac Anniversary Episode email, which includes the unedited text and audio from one daily anniversary episode selected from the archive, click here >>>

To browse archived episodes of The Writer’s Almanac from before 2017, click here >>>

• • • • •

To support The Writer’s Almanac Anniversary Episodes newsletter, please consider “buying” a donation here >>>

You can also buy a paid subscription to the Anniversary Episode newsletter here >>>

Checks may be made out to Prairie Home Productions, LLC and mailed to:

Prairie Home Productions
P.O. Box 2090
Minneapolis, MN 55402

(Note: donations to LLCs are not tax-deductible)

• • • • •

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, August 10, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, August 10, 2026

President James K. Polk signed an act establishing the Smithsonian Institution on this date in 1846. James Smithson was an English scientist. He was also the illegitimate son of a nobleman and a widow who was related to the royal family.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 9, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 9, 2026

On this day in 1854, Henry David Thoreau published Walden; or, Life in the Woods. His friend Ralph Waldo Emerson said he saw a “tremble of great expectation” in Thoreau just before publication day.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 8, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 8, 2026

It’s the birthday of the poet Sara Teasdale, born in St. Louis, Missouri (1884). She specialized in brief, rhyming, lyric poems, usually about love, in books such as Rivers to the Sea (1915) and Love Songs (1917).

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, August 7, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, August 7, 2026

It’s the birthday of the Dutch dancer and spy Mata Hari, born Margaretha Zelle in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands (1876). She attended a teachers college and then married an army officer, Captain Rudolph MacLeod, in 1895.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, August 6, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, August 6, 2026

It was on this day in 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. It’s one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation ever passed in this country.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, August 5, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, August 5, 2026

On this day in 1957 a televised dance and music show, popular in Philadelphia, went national, introducing rock and roll to millions of people. Hosted by baby-faced Dick Clark, American Bandstand opened its first national broadcast with Jerry Lee Lewis’s song “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” 

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, August 4, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, August 4, 2026

Today is the birthday of jazz musician Louis Armstrong (1901), who earned the nickname “Dippermouth” as boy singing for pennies on the streets of New Orleans.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, August 3, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, August 3, 2026

It’s the birthday of British crime novelist P.D. James, born Phyllis Dorothy James in Oxford (1920). The child of a civil servant, she was raised to believe in the security of a good job.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 2, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, August 2, 2026

On this day in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by 56 delegates of the Second Continental Congress, although it is popularly believed to have been signed a month earlier on the fourth of July.

Read More
The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 1, 2026

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, August 1, 2026

Today is the birthday of the man who said, “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” That’s the novelist and poet Herman Melville, born in New York City (1819).

Read More