The Story of Writing

The first female switchboard operator begins working, and the birthday club includes Johann Pachelbel, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Harriet Shaw Weaver, Liz Carpenter, and Lily Tomlin - with a reading from …

Union forces attack Atlanta, Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his "navigable balloon," Russian and the UK carve up Persia, the U.S. asserts its neutrality, and German soldiers - dressed in Polish unifo…

Ernest Shackleton rescues every crew member who served on his doomed expedition on the Endurance. The birthday club includes Mary Shelley, Virginia Lee Burton, Kitty Wells, Molly Ivins, and Anna Poli…

The Beatles play their last (paid) concert and the birthday club includes John Locke, Charlie Parker, and Temple Grandin - with a reading from Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding."

The oldest magazine continuously published in the U.S. puts out its first issue, and Pepsi-Cola is named. The infamous anniversary of the murder of Emmet Till and the anniversary of the March on Wash…

The French National Assembly approves "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," John Fitch gets the U.S. patent for the steamboat, and Quebec legislates French is the official langua…

The Great Moon Hoax begins, the U.S. National Park Service is created, and the birthday club includes Walt Kelly and Leonard Bernstein - with a reading from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre."

Nesmeterakhem writes in Egyptian hieroglyphics for the last time, the Treaty of Cordoba is signed, and the Panic of 1857 begins. Happy birthdays to Howard Zinn, Paolo Coelho, and Ava DuVernay - with …

England's King George proclaims that the American colonists were revolting, the "Salad Bowl" strike begins in California, and the World Wide Web is opened to the world. It is the birthday of William …

The Siege of Leningrad begins and the birthday club includes Claude Debussy, Dorothy Parker, Ray Bradbury, and Annie Proulx - with a reading from Parker's "Coda."

British explorer James Cook claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Virginia, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates begin. Today's reading is from "Minnie's Sacrifice…

Charles Darwin publishes his theory of natural selection, the end of the U.S. Civil War is declared, and Canada seriously considers its dissolution. The birthday club includes H. P. Lovecraft, Tarjei…

The eastern U.S. learns "there's gold in them thar hills" in California, the liberation of Paris begins, and happy birthday to Ogden Nash - with a reading from "The Bell in the Fog & Other Stories," …

The Spanish language gets its grammar rules, women in the U.S. get the right to vote, Nabokov's "Lolita" is published in the U.S., and anti-Apartheid activist Steven Biko is arrested in South Africa.…

Sir Walter Raleigh tries to create the colony of Roanoke in the New World, George Orwell's "Animal Farm" is published, and the birthday club includes Fredrika Bremer, Mark Felt, and Jonathan Franzen …

The Gurindji get some of their land back, and the birthday club includes T. E. Lawrence, Georgette Heyer, Wallace Thurman, William Keepers Maxwell, Jr., Charles Bukowski, and Diana Wynne Jones - with…

The movie "The Wizard of Oz" hits the silver screen, and the birthday club includes Walter Scott, Oscar Peterson, Stanley Milgram, and Stieg Larsson - with a reading from "Mrs. Dalloway," by Virginia…

U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, and the birthday club includes Ernest Thompson Seton, Ernest Thayer, David Crosby, Steve Martin, and Danielle Steele - with a reading f…

King Louis XVI is arrested, "barbed-wire Sunday," and happy birthday to Lucy Stone - with a reading of Stone's position on speaking out against slavery.