The Story of Writing

The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, and the birthday club includes Jean Pierre-Bloch and Loretta Lynn - with a reading from "The Origins of Totalitarianism," by Han…

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded, and the the birthday club includes Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, Seamus Heaney, and Christopher Hitchens - with a reading from Beckett's "Waiting for Godot.…

Jonas Salk's polio vaccine is found to be "safe and effective," and the birthday club includes Beverly Cleary, Tom Clancy, and Amy Ray - with a reading from Baruch Spinoza's "Ethics."

F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" is published, Alcoholics Anonymous, or the “Big Book” is published, and the Good Friday Agreement is signed. Happy birthdays to David Halberstam and Anne Lamo…

Franklin D. Roosevelt freezes wages and prices across the U.S., techies gather to create a new computer programming language and fortunately Grace Hopper was there. Today's reading is from Charles Di…

The Teapot Dome scandal erupts, it's National Beer Day in the U.S., and this is the Internet's symbolic birthday. The birthday club includes Victoria Ocampo, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and Billie Holi…

The birthday club includes Leonara Carrington, Ram Dash, Merle Haggard, and Homero Aridjis - with a reading from Carrington.

The Petition of Compromise, the American Birth Control League, and the birthday club includes Algernon Charles Swinburne, Barbara Holland, and Pharrell Williams - with a reading from Swinburne's "The…

NATO is created and the birthday club includes Muddy Waters and Maya Angelou - with a reading from Angelou's "Letter to My Daughter."

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks to workers during the Memphis sanitation strike, the Panama Papers are published, and happy birthdays to Washington Irving and Jane Goodall - with a readin…

The birthday club includes Giacomo Casanova, Hans Christian Anderson, Emile Zola, and Camille Paglia - with a reading from "The Story of My Life," by Casanova.

It is the beginning of what poet T. S. Eliot called "the cruelest month," and it is April Fool's Day. The birthday club includes Sergei Rachmaninoff and Milan Kundera - with a reading from Lord Byron…

Spain's "Edict of Expulsion," the U.S. Motion Picture Production Code goes into effect, the U.S. launches the Civilian Conservation Corps, and happy birthday to Johann Sebastian Bach - with a reading…

Canada gets its birthday, residents of Washington, D.C. get the vote, and (the rest of) the birthday club includes Sheila Kitzinger, Eric Idle, Alec Wilkinson, Jo-Ann Mapson, and Evelyn C. White - wi…

Happy birthdays to Maxim Gorky, Nelson Algren, Iris Chang, and Jennifer Weiner - with a reading from Algren's "The Neon Wilderness."

U.S. President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the birthday club includes Jane Colden Charles Mackay, Jelena Demitrijevic, and Louis Simpson - with a reading of Mackay's "No E…