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The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Posted on June 25, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist George Orwell, born Eric Blair in Motihari, India, in 1903. He won a scholarship to Eton and didn’t fit in because he was poor. Instead of going to a university, he escaped England to join the Imperial Police in Burma, but he quit after five years because, he said, “I could not go on any longer serving an imperialism which I had come to regard as very largely a racket.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 24, 2024

Posted on June 24, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of essayist and short-story writer Ambrose Bierce, born near Horse Cave Creek, Ohio (1842). He became the second person in his county to volunteer for the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. He wrote bleak short stories about the Civil War, his most famous is “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” about a spy condemned to die by hanging, only to escape when the rope snaps.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 23, 2024

Posted on June 23, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1868 that the typewriter was patented, by Christopher Sholes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In 1873, he sold the patent to the Remington Arms Co., a famous gun maker, for $12,000. There had been typewriters before, but they weren’t very practical — it took longer to type a letter than to write it by hand. The first commercial typewriter based on Sholes’ design went on the market in 1874.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 22, 2024

Posted on June 22, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet and essayist Anne (Morrow) Lindbergh, born in Englewood, New Jersey (1906). In 1927, she met Charles Lindbergh, and they liked each other so much that he took her flying with him. She wrote in her diary: “Clouds and stars and birds — I must have been walking with my head down looking at puddles for twenty years.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 21, 2024

Posted on June 21, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of American critic and novelist Mary McCarthy, born in Seattle, Washington (1912). Both of her parents died from the flu epidemic in 1918, when she was six years old. She and her three younger brothers were sent to Minneapolis to live with “a severe great-aunt and her sadistic husband.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, June 20, 2024

Posted on June 20, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

Eighteen-year-old Alexandrina Victoria became Queen of England on this date in 1837. “Drina,” as she was known to her family, had a fairly quiet childhood. She kept a diary, so we know a lot about her private life. She was a lively and sometimes mischievous child, and she was well educated, but her mother was overprotective and kept her isolated at Kensington Palace in London.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Posted on June 19, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of mathematician, physicist, and theologian Blaise Pascal, born in Clermont-Ferrand, France (1623). A child prodigy, by the time he was 19 he had already perfected the first mechanical calculator for sale to the public. In the field of physics, he discovered that air has weight, and he conducted experiments to prove that vacuums could exist, which led him to formulate the hydraulic principle that “pressure exerted on a fluid in a closed vessel is transmitted unchanged throughout the fluid.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Posted on June 18, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It is the birthday of musician and songwriter Paul McCartney (1942), born in Liverpool, England. When he was 14, he learned to play a left-handed guitar and met a local art student named John Lennon. The Guinness Book of World Records lists McCartney as the best-selling composer in popular music history. His song “Yesterday” is the most recorded ever, with 2,200 versions.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 17, 2024

Posted on June 17, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of poet Ron Padgett, born in Tulsa, Oklahoma (1942). When he was growing up, Oklahoma was a dry state, and his father made a living as a bootlegger. Padgett read voraciously as a child and began jotting down poems in spiral notebooks when he was 13. He went to Columbia University and studied at the Sorbonne in France on a Fulbright scholarship.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 16, 2024

Posted on June 16, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Joyce Carol Oates, born in Lockport, New York (1938). She’s the author of books such as Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990) and We Were the Mulvaneys (1996).

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