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The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 28, 2024

Posted on September 28, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1928 that Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming peered into a petri dish at his basement laboratory in London and noticed a blue-green mold growing. The mold, he observed, was killing the staph bacteria he’d been cultivating in that petri dish. He called the mold “penicillin.” Penicillin is now considered the world’s first “miracle drug,” and it sparked the modern era of antibiotic development.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, September 27, 2024

Posted on September 27, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

1905 was a banner year for Albert Einstein: his annus mirabilis. It was the year he completed his doctoral thesis: “A new determination of molecular dimensions.” And he also published four groundbreaking papers in the prestigious German journal Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics). In March, he submitted a paper that proved that light could behave as a particle as well as a wave, and gave rise to quantum theory (“On a heuristic point of view concerning the production and transformation of light”).

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, September 26, 2024

Posted on September 26, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of composer George Gershwin, born Jacob Gershowitz, in Brooklyn, New York (1898). He was born to Russian immigrants and spent his childhood in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. As a young boy, he was more athletic and sociable than he was musical. But he went to work on Tin Pan Alley for the Jerome Remick Company handing out the publishers’ newest sheet music to any potential customers who wandered by. He eventually began composing his own songs.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Posted on September 25, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of children’s author and illustrator Shel Silverstein, born Sheldon Allan Silverstein in Chicago (1930). As a youngster himself, he wanted to play baseball or be popular with girls, Silverstein once said, but he couldn’t play ball and he couldn’t dance. So he wrote and drew to occupy himself, developing a signature style and wit that would delight children all over the world.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Posted on September 24, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of “Blind” Lemon Jefferson, born on a farm in Couchman, Texas, in about 1893. There is a lot of conflicting information about Jefferson and most of it comes from others’ memories of him. Census records and his draft registration don’t agree on a date or even a year of birth. There are only two confirmed photographs of him.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, September 23, 2024

Posted on September 23, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1806 that Meriwether Lewis and William Clark returned to St. Louis, Missouri, after a journey that had lasted almost two and a half years and covered 8,000 miles. Lewis, Clark, and their crew had traveled all the way to the Pacific Ocean and back, exploring the new territory that Thomas Jefferson had added to the nation through the Louisiana Purchase.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, September 22, 2024

Posted on September 22, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1862 that President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring slaves in rebel states free as of January 1 the following year. The war was not going well, and the emancipation of the slaves was meant to build morale in the North. Lincoln waited for a Union victory before he announced it. The Union Army beat back the Confederates at Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the war. Five days later, on this day in 1862, Lincoln read the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, September 21, 2024

Posted on September 21, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of fiction writer Stephen King, born on this day in Portland, Maine (1947). He started in early on the business of writing, when he was six or seven years old, writing stories based on movies he had seen and then selling them to friends.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, September 20, 2024

Posted on September 20, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the 14th poet laureate of the United States, Donald Hall, born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1928. He started writing poems when he was a kid at his grandparents’ farm in New Hampshire. When he was 16, he went to a writing conference and met Robert Frost, and later that year, he published his first poetry.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, September 19, 2024

Posted on September 19, 2024 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1819 that 24-year-old John Keats wrote the ode “To Autumn.” It is one of the most anthologized poems in the English language. He wrote to his friend: “Somehow a stubble plain looks warm — in the same way that some pictures look warm — this struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.”

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