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The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Posted on November 7, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Polish physicist and chemist Marie Curie (1867). Curie discovered radium, without which we wouldn’t have X-rays or certain cancer therapies. Curie was born in Warsaw, which is now Poland, but used to be part of the Russian Empire. She went on to win two Nobel Prizes, but she always donated her prize money and remained humble about her achievements. She once summed up her potential biography as, “I was born in Poland. I married Pierre Curie, and I have two daughters. I have done my work in France.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, November 6, 2023

Posted on November 6, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the March King, John Philip Sousa, born in Washington, D.C. (1854). His father was a U.S. Marine Band trombonist, and he signed John up as an apprentice to the band after the boy tried to run away from home to join the circus. By the time he was 13 years old, Sousa could play violin, piano, flute, cornet, baritone, and trombone — and was a pretty good singer, too. At 26, he was leading the Marine Band and writing the first of his 136 marches, including “Semper Fidelis,” which became the official march of the Corps, and “The Washington Post March.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, November 5, 2023

Posted on November 5, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of American journalist Ida Tarbell (1857), best known for The History of the Standard Oil Company, a 19-part series of articles in McClure’s in 1902 that exposed the questionable business practices of the Standard Oil Company. The series eventually led the Supreme Court to break Standard Oil’s monopoly. Tarbell’s tenacious exposure of political and economic greed became known as “muckraking” and she was frequently referred to as “the terror of the trusts.” Tarbell is considered an early pioneer in investigative reporting.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, November 4, 2023

Posted on November 4, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Will Rogers (1879), also known as “America’s Cowboy Philosopher.” He got his start as a circus performer and cowboy, and became one of the most famous humorists in the world. He once said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, November 3, 2023

Posted on November 3, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879), the Canadian-born American explorer and ethnologist who spent years exploring vast tracts of the Arctic. Stefansson spent a year living with the Inuit (1906–07), coming to the conclusion that Europeans could easily “live off the land” of the Arctic if they adopted Inuit ways. About life in the Arctic, he wrote, “It is chiefly our unwillingness to change our minds which prevents the North from changing into a country to be used and lived in just like the rest of the world.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, November 2, 2023

Posted on November 2, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of George Boole (1815), the English mathematician responsible for Boolean algebra, whose three basic operations of AND, OR and NOT, became the basis of comparing sets of things mathematically. He also composed all-important algebraic identities like: (X or Y) = (Y or X); not (not X) = X; not (X and Y) = (not X) or (not Y), which became the stuff of nightmares for many teenagers.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Posted on November 1, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the sports writer Grantland Rice, born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee (1880). The most popular sports writer of his day, he wrote an estimated 67 million words in his 53-year career. In 1925, when other newspapermen were happy with a weekly salary of $50, Grantland Rice was making $1,000 a week, about the same as Babe Ruth. He was known for the extravagant style he used to describe sporting events; he once compared four Notre Dame football players to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And in addition to his newspaper articles, he also wrote many poems about sports.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Posted on October 31, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

The Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, sometimes known as “Jan,” was baptized in Delft on this date in 1632. Not much is known about the first 20 years of Vermeer’s life. His father, Reynier, was an art dealer, and he also ran a tavern. Reynier died in 1652, and Jan inherited both of these businesses. The following year, he married Catharina Bolnes. He also registered as a “master painter” with the Guild of Saint Luke. Not much is known about when, why, or how he became an artist. He began his career by painting large-scale biblical scenes, but he’s beloved for his small, intimate glimpses into the daily life of a 17th-century Dutch household.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, October 30, 2023

Posted on October 30, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility was first published on this date in 1811. Austen began writing the book in 1795, when she was about 19 years old. She called it Elinor and Marianne, after the Dashwood sisters who are the novel’s main characters. In its original incarnation, Elinor and Marianne was an epistolary novel, told entirely through letters. A couple of years later, Austen revised it into a narrative format, but then she set the book aside for more than a decade.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, October 29, 2023

Posted on October 29, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the folk artist and quilt maker Harriet Powers, born into slavery outside Athens, Georgia (1837). She was married at 18 and gave birth to nine children. She lived most of her life in Clarke County, where in 1897, she began exhibiting her quilts at local cotton fairs. She was believed to have been a house slave and first learned to read with the help of the white children she cared for.

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