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The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, May 5, 2025

Posted on May 5, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, born in Copenhagen (1813), the son of a wealthy wool merchant who left his son enough money to be financially independent for the rest of his life. Kierkegaard rarely left Copenhagen, but he enjoyed going to the theater, taking carriage rides out into the country, and chatting with people he met, including servants and laborers, whom wealthy people would ordinarily ignore.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, May 4, 2025

Posted on May 4, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1675, England’s King Charles II commissioned the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the center of time and space on Earth. He also created the position of the Astronomer Royal at the same time, to “apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, May 3, 2025

Posted on May 3, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet, novelist, and memoirist May Sarton, born Eleanor Marie Sarton in Wondelgem, Belgium, in 1912. Her father was a science historian, and her mother was an artist, and the family moved to Boston, Massachusetts, when May was three years old. She received a scholarship to Vassar, but by this time she had fallen in love with the theater and her dream was to act and direct, so she declined the offer.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, May 2, 2025

Posted on May 2, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

On this date in 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was arrested for high treason, adultery, and incest. She was intelligent and outspoken, and had educated opinions about politics and religious reform and came to the court of Henry VIII when she was 20 years old, to serve as lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine of Aragon. She soon caught the eye of the king.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, May 1, 2025

Posted on May 1, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

And on this day in 1956, Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was made available to the public for the first time. Salk’s vaccine used a dead poliovirus, injected into the arm to stimulate the body’s production of antibodies. Another scientist, Albert Sabin, developed an oral version that used a live virus, and development of the two methods led to the first mass inoculations against disease. As a result, polio has been largely eradicated from most countries.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Posted on April 30, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

Anne Frank’s diary was first published in English on this date in 1952. What’s now known as Diary of a Young Girl was first published in Dutch in 1947, under the title The Secret Annex (Het Achterhuis in Dutch). Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp about two weeks before the camps were liberated in 1945.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Posted on April 29, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the man who said, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”: Duke Ellington, born Edward Kennedy Ellington in Washington, D.C. (1899). His father’s job as a butler paid well, his mother dressed him in fancy clothes, and so his friends gave him the nickname “Duke”. When he was seven years old, a piano teacher refused to teach him, because he wouldn’t stop improvising and experimenting with off-tone chords.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, April 28, 2025

Posted on April 28, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist Harper Lee, born Nelle Harper Lee in Monroeville, Alabama (1926). She has written just one novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (1960), but it has sold more than 30 million copies. She hates interviews and speeches, and prefers to live quietly in Monroeville, where she is known as Miss Nelle.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, April 27, 2025

Posted on April 27, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1934 that A Field Guide to the Birds by Roger Tory Peterson was published. The son of Swedish and German immigrants, Peterson grew up in Jamestown, a struggling industrial town near the western border of New York state. He was a smart boy, and he skipped two grades. He didn’t fit in well with his older classmates, who made fun of him for his obsession with wildlife — they called him “Professor Nuts Peterson.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, April 26, 2025

Posted on April 26, 2025 - Writer's Almanac

And it’s the birthday of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1822. Even though he studied such diverse subjects as chemistry, engineering, and agriculture, he wasn’t big on formal education, preferring instead to wander through nature.

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