Born today

Birthdays and anniversaries that cut across the nine sections.

Anniversaries behind classic stories: the day a book came out, a film opened, a hoax was exposed, or a person was born or died. Each tile gives the date.

Dates come from each story's own sources. Where the sources disagree, the story says so.

41 stories

Anniversary: Frankenstein published Jan 1, 1818
Scott Credited the Wrong Shelley
The first edition had no author’s name. Reviewers guessed, and the most famous of them guessed wrong.
Anniversary: Bram Stoker born Nov 8, 1847
Van Helsing’s First Name
Bram is short for Abraham. In Dracula, the professor who comes to hunt the Count is Abraham Van Helsing.
Anniversary: Sweeney Todd debuts Nov 21, 1846
Was Sweeney Todd Real?
The demon barber of Fleet Street first appeared 180 years ago this November, in a penny weekly. Four years later his publisher printed a preface swearing "there certainly was such a man," and people have been looking for his trial ever since.
Anniversary: Frankenstein released Nov 21, 1931
Frankenstein’s Casting and Cuts
The 1931 Frankenstein almost had a different director and a different monster, and the version most people saw for 50 years was missing its most shocking minute.
Anniversary: Carmilla begins, December 1871
Carmilla Before Dr. Hesselius
Turn to page 434 of the December 1871 issue of a little London monthly called The Dark Blue and Carmilla begins at once, in a young woman's voice, in a castle in Styria, with no doctor and no case file in sight. That was 25 years before Dracula, and its first readers met the vampire cold.
Anniversary: The Signal-Man printed Dec 10, 1866
Dickens’s Railway Ghost Story
On June 9, 1865, Dickens climbed out of a railway carriage left hanging off a broken bridge. The ghost story he wrote 18 months later, as a Christmas present for his readers, is his scariest, and he died five years to the day after the crash.
Anniversary: Jekyll and Hyde published Jan 9, 1886
Jekyll and Hyde Missed Christmas
Many copies of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde carry a cover printed "1885" with the year corrected to "1886" in pen. Longmans had planned it as a Christmas book, but the bookstalls were already full, so it came out in January.
Anniversary: The Raven printed Jan 29, 1845
The Raven, by Quarles
America's most famous poem first appeared credited to "Quarles." A New York newspaper put Poe's real name on it a few days early, and the $9 he supposedly earned for it is only one of four different numbers.
Anniversary: Dracula opens Feb 12, 1931
Dracula Dodges Friday the 13th
Dracula was due to open on Broadway on Friday the 13th in February 1931, until Universal moved it up a day because its director, Tod Browning, "goes in for superstition." The Valentine's tagline everyone repeats, "the strangest love story," is harder to pin down, since the only 1931 trade-paper ad we found with those words is for a different Universal picture.
Anniversary: Grimm volume 1 published Dec 20, 1812
Snow White’s Mother Was the Villain
In the first printed edition of the Grimms' Snow White (Dec 20, 1812), there is no stepmother. The queen who wants Snow White's lungs and liver, salted and cooked for her dinner, is the girl's own mother.
Anniversary: Houdini died Oct 31, 1926
Houdini, 100 Years Gone
Harry Houdini died on Halloween 1926, and for a century people have blamed a student's punch to the stomach. The surgeons' story is less dramatic: a burst appendix, a sold-out show, and a man who refused to go to the hospital.
Anniversary: the final séance, Oct 31, 1936
Houdini’s Final Séance
On Halloween night in 1936, ten years after Houdini died, his widow Bess held a séance on the roof of a Hollywood hotel to see whether he would send a message from the dead. The Library of Congress holds the radio script for that night, and it shows the broadcast was planned line by line.
Anniversary: Houdini died Oct 31, 1926
The Punch and the Medical Record
For a century people have blamed a student's punch to the stomach for killing Houdini. His surgeons, McGill's archive and the calendar tell a slower story about a burst appendix and a man who would not stop performing.
Anniversary: Houdini's funeral, Nov 4, 1926
The Day New York Buried Houdini
On November 4, 1926, Broadway turned out at the Elks' clubhouse in Manhattan to say goodbye to Harry Houdini, and he was buried with his mother's letters under his head. The next morning the New York Times headline read "2,000 HEAR HIM PRAISED." The Associated Press counted fewer: "About 1,000 friends, relatives and associates in the theater world attended the funeral services." The Times story never mentions a wand. The AP report, on the front page of Washington's Evening Star that same day, does: his fellow magicians "broke a wand and placed it on his coffin."
Anniversary: the Belle Isle Bridge jump, Nov 27, 1906
The Frozen River That Wasn’t
The famous story has Houdini trapped under the ice of a frozen river in Detroit. The Detroit News front page from that same afternoon says he jumped off a bridge in November, tied to a safety rope, and was back in a boat in under a minute.
Anniversary: Christie vanished Dec 3, 1926
Agatha Christie’s Eleven Missing Days
A hundred years ago this December, the world's most famous mystery writer vanished for eleven days. The British government still has the police report on her disappearance, and it tells a much plainer story than the legend. It even complains that the newspapers printed "a good deal" that was "without foundation."
Anniversary: the Mary Celeste found Dec 4, 1872
Conan Doyle and the Mary Celeste
In December 1872 a ship was found sailing itself across the Atlantic with no one aboard. Eleven years later a 24-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle published an invented "survivor's statement," and the errors in it are still repeated as fact.
Anniversary: A Christmas Carol published Dec 19, 1843
The Pamphlet Dickens Never Wrote
In 1843 Charles Dickens planned to write a political pamphlet about child labour. He decided a ghost story would hit "twenty thousand times" harder.
Anniversary: the Arthur Ford séance, Jan 8, 1929
The Code Called “Rosabelle, Believe”
Before he died, Houdini and his wife Bess agreed on a secret coded message, so that if he ever spoke from the dead she would know it was really him. In January 1929 a medium, Arthur Ford, gave her the message, and the next day a New York tabloid, the Graphic, called the séance a hoax.
Anniversary: Houdini before Congress, Feb 26, 1926
Houdini Goes to Congress
In February 1926, eight months before he died, Houdini told a congressional committee that in 35 years he had never seen a genuine medium. Then he held up a telegram and dared the mediums and fortune tellers in the hearing room to tell him what it said.
Anniversary: the Diggers Rest flights, Mar 18, 1910
Houdini Takes Flight
In 1910 Houdini shipped a biplane to Australia and flew it near Melbourne, and nine witnesses signed a statement in the newspaper the next day. Whether that made him the first person to fly in Australia is still argued about.
Anniversary: Houdini born Mar 24, 1874, in Budapest
Houdini’s Real Birthplace
Houdini told Congress in 1926 that he was born in Wisconsin, and the Associated Press repeated it when he died. The Library of Congress says he was born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary.
Anniversary: the Atlantic City séance, June 17, 1922
The Séance That Ended a Friendship
In June 1922, in an Atlantic City hotel, Arthur Conan Doyle's wife wrote out what she said was a message to Houdini from his dead mother. Houdini later told Doyle the message was "written entirely in English" and that his mother "could not read, write or speak the English language."
Anniversary: copyrighted Dec 1, 1903
The Movie Copyrighted as a Photo
In 1903 American law had no category for movies. So Edison's company copyrighted The Great Train Robbery as a photograph, and sent the Library of Congress a copy printed on a long roll of paper. That paper roll is one reason the film survives.
Anniversary: the first paid Lumière show, Dec 28, 1895
The Train Panic Nobody Saw
Every film history class hears that the first audience screamed and ran when the Lumières' train pulled into the station. The train film was not on the first night's programme, and a film historian who searched the 1890s press found no report of a panic.
Anniversary: City Lights premiered Jan 30, 1931
Chaplin’s Silent Bet
Three years after the talkies arrived, Charlie Chaplin spent two years and $1.6 million on a film with almost no dialogue. Albert Einstein came to the premiere.
Anniversary: the hoax exposed Nov 21, 1953
The Piltdown Man Hoax
For 41 years Britain's oldest human ancestor sat in the Natural History Museum. Its jaw came from an orangutan, its teeth had been filed flat, and one tooth was stained with paint.
Anniversary: Bayreuth's first festival, Aug 13, 1876
How Vikings Got Their Horns
The horned Viking helmet comes from an 1876 opera wardrobe. Before that, illustrators gave Vikings wings, and the composer's own wife said the new costumes looked like "Indian chiefs."
Anniversary: the eight reindeer debut Dec 23, 1823
Is Santa Really Odin?
Santa's sleigh team went from one reindeer to eight in two years, 1821 to 1823, in two New York publications. Odin's eight-legged horse is 600 years older and an ocean away, and no document connects the two.
Anniversary: Bly sets off Nov 14, 1889
Nellie Bly’s Race Around the World
On Nov 14, 1889, Nellie Bly set out to beat a fictional hero's 80 days. Jules Verne himself toasted her and doubted she would make it. She didn't learn until Hong Kong that a second woman had left New York the same day, heading the other way.
Anniversary: the first chain reaction, Dec 2, 1942
Wells Named the Atomic Bomb
In 1914 H. G. Wells wrote a novel about "atomic bombs" and set their key discovery in 1933. In 1933 a Hungarian physicist who had read it stood at a London traffic light and conceived the nuclear chain reaction.
Anniversary: Scouts of the Prairie opens Dec 16, 1872
Buffalo Bill Forgets His Lines
Ned Buntline subtitled his 1869 Buffalo Bill serial "The Wildest and Truest Story I Ever Wrote." Three years later he wrote Cody a play in about four hours. On opening night Cody couldn't remember a word of it.
Anniversary: Dick Tracy's Sunday debut, Oct 4, 1931
Before He Was Dick Tracy
Chester Gould mailed sixty comic-strip ideas to the Chicago Tribune's Joseph Patterson over a decade and sold none. The sixty-first was "Plainclothes Tracy." Patterson said the title was too long: cops are called "dicks," so call him Dick Tracy.
Anniversary: Under the Moons of Mars begins, Feb 1912
Burroughs’s Joke Pen Name
The man who created Tarzan and John Carter was so embarrassed about writing "crazy" Mars stories that he signed the first one "Normal Bean," meaning a sane head. The editor "corrected" it to "Norman Bean," then apologized in print, and Burroughs wrote back: "you sure did smear up the original."
Anniversary: the £25 offer letter, Oct 30, 1886
Sherlock Holmes, Sold for £25
The first Sherlock Holmes story was rejected or ignored by several publishers. The one that took it offered £25 for the copyright, made it a Christmas annual, and, by Doyle's account, never paid him another penny.
Anniversary: recorded Sept 15, 1926
The Jazz Record Locked Until 2067
Until 2018, federal law said no American sound recording made before 1972 could enter the public domain until 2067. Then Congress changed the rule, and on Jan 1, 2027, Jelly Roll Morton's 1926 "Black Bottom Stomp," a Library of Congress landmark, goes free 40 years early.
Anniversary: recorded Feb 26, 1926
Armstrong’s Dropped Lyric Sheet
On Feb 26, 1926, Louis Armstrong dropped his lyric sheet in the middle of a take and kept singing nonsense syllables. That is how the story goes, and the people in the room mostly backed it up. The record that came out of that take goes into the US public domain on Jan 1, 2027.
Anniversary: Little Caesar opened Jan 9, 1931
The 1931 Film Already Free
On January 1, 2027, the 1931 movies enter the US public domain. One of the most famous 1931 gangster films is not on that list, because its copyright is dated December 29, 1930. By the Copyright Office's own records, it has been free since January 1, 2026.
Anniversary: the Copyright Term Extension Act signed Oct 27, 1998
The Long Copyright Freeze
On Sept 19, 1962, Congress passed a two-sentence resolution that kept old copyrights from expiring "until December 31, 1965." It then renewed that stopgap eight more times, once on New Year's Eve 1974. In 1998 it added 20 years on top. The upshot: Jan 1, 2027 is only the ninth US Public Domain Day with a new crop of published works since 1998.
Anniversary: Dickens v. Lee, injunction kept Jan 18, 1844
Dickens and the Carol Pirates
On 6 January 1844, number 16 of Parley's Illuminated Library published a penny version of A Christmas Carol. Dickens got an injunction in Chancery. He still paid the costs.
Anniversary: Nosferatu premiered in Berlin, 4 March 1922
Florence Stoker vs. Nosferatu
In July 1925 a German court ordered the negative and every print of Nosferatu destroyed. Florence Stoker, Bram Stoker's widow, had sued over the unauthorized film. Copies were already abroad, and the 1922 film is in the public domain in the United States.

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