Bill Blackbeard (28 April, 1926 – 10 March, 2011) was a founder-director of the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art, a writer, editor, and comic strip collector. By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31636874 Books in which Bill Blackbeard was involved Reporter Kevin Parker said that Bill Blackbeard “saved the American comic strip—all of them.” Mr. Blackbeard started being taken by comic strips at the age of 12, luckily for him recycling was practically non-existent at the time and people kept old newspapers stacked at home. They were more than happy to give them to him. During World War II, Mr. Blackbeard was part of the 89th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squad, 9th Army and served in Belgium, France and Germany. He used to G.I Bill to study history, English and American lit in Fullerton College, California. Along with his wife Barbara and other volunteers, Mr. Blackbeard pent years clipping comic strips from the old newspapers, arranging them in chronological runs of each strip title, and storing them in filing cabinets. It was estimated in 1990 that Mr. Blackbeard has organized 350,000 Sunday strips and 2.5 million dailies. Comic books did not appeal to Mr. Blackbeard, he thought that Superman was “meretricious dreck”. All…

Henry Fielding (22 April, 1707 – 8 October, 1754) was an dramatist and novelist from England. Mr. Fielding was knwn for this satires and humor. By Unknown – http://www.flickr.com/photos/23239528@N00/2193013977/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7579904 1) Together with his half-brother John, Mr. Fielding, then London’s magistrate, created the Bow Street Runners, London’s first police force. 2) Mr. Fielding studied classical literature at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. 3) His first play, Love in Several Masques, was shown in February 1728 in London, a month before he started his university studies. 4) After he finished his studies, Mr. Fielding worked as a playwright and theater manager. 5) His wife, Charlotte Cradock, whom he married in 1734, was the prototype of Sophia and Amelia, two of his heroines. 6) Charlotte and Henry Fielding had five children together, only one daughter, Henrietta, survived to adulthood.. 7) Mr. Fielding created his comic masterpiece, Tom Jones, in 1749 after the death of his eldest daughter (1742) and beloved wife (1744). 8) Three years after Charlotte passed away, Mr. Fielding married her former maid, Mary Daniel who was pregnant at the time. 9) Mary and Henry Fielding also had five children, three daughters (who died young) and…

E. Y. Harburg (8 April, 1898 – 5 March, 1981) was an American songwriter and book author who is mostly known for his hit songs for Hollywood and Broadway <\p> 1) Born as Isidore Hochberg in New York’s Lower East Side to Jewish immigrants from Russia, he was the youngest of four children (out of 10) who survived to adulthood. 2) His nickname, Yipsel, is Yiddish for squirrel because he was always moving around. 3) He attended high school at Townsend Harris Hall, an experimental school for talented children where he worked at the school newspaper with Ira Gershwin (a fellow student), who later on introduced him to composers and writers. 4) Americana, a 1932 revue, Mr. Harburg worte “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” which was considered to be the anthem of the Depression and an anti-capitalist propgranda. 5) In 1939 Mr. Harburg, along with his long time writing partner Harold Arlen, scored the movie The Wizard of Oz. Mr. Harburg approached the movie as a depression fantasy. 6) The Broadway musical Finian’s Rainbow is considered to be Harburg’s masterpiece. 7) Mr. Harburg was involved in several radical groups (but never of the Communist Party itself) and was blacklisted in…

Bella claimed to have come up with the idea of selling Girl Scout cookies to raise revenue.

Mr. Mallarmé’s occupation was an English teacher

Douglas Adams (11 March, 1952 – 11 May, 2001) was an English humorist and dramatist best known for his series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3154283 1) Mr. Adams had some interesting jobs throughout his life. He was a a bodyguard to oil tycoons from Qatar and cleaning chicken sheds at one point. 2) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy started as a radio show. The idea occurred to Mr. Adams while he lay drunk in a field in Austria looking at the stars. 3) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a trilogy… of five books. 4) Mr. Adams was never a prolific writer and constantly missed deadlines. He had to be forced by others to do any writing. Mr. Adams was known for saying: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” 5) Mr. Adams also wrote three episodes of the TV series Dr. Who. 6) Not only did Douglas Adams wrote for Monty Python’s Flying Circus, he also appeared in two episodes. 7) Pink Floyd’s 1994 album, The Division Bell, was named by Mr. Adams. 8) Mr. Adams was the first person in the…

Victor Hugo was a French author best known for his novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. He was also a human rights activist

His 1924 novel The Vortex (La vorágine), about the rubber workers in the Amazon basin, is considered a most important novel in Latin American literary history.

Darwin loved animals…. He started a club in college which dined on “birds and beasts, which were before unknown to human palate”. While traveling around the globe, he continued to eat exotic animals.

William S. Burroughs (5 February, 1914 – 2 August, 1997) was an American author, satirist, painter and celebrity. Image from http://www.burroughs100.com/features/the-burroughs-guy-an-interview-with-james-grauerholz-by-tom-king-text-and-audio Burroughs family fortune came from the Burroughs Adding Machine. His parents sold their stock in 1929, right before the crush. Burroughs has a degree in English lit from Harvard. The military rejected him four times. When he was in Vienna to study medicine, he married Ilse Klapper, a Jewish woman, so that she could get a visa and not be sent to a concentration camp. Even though they divorced, they remained close friends. Burroughs first tried opium with his family’s housekeeper. U2 were big fans and wanted Burroughs to be in one of their videos He is on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Kurt Cobain was also a fan, the author thought Cobain was strange and that “There’s something wrong with that boy”. Mr. Burroughs didn’t know who Cobain was or who Nirvana were. One of his first jobs was to interview Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. Mr. Burroughs went to their concert but hated the music, so he and Page talked about magic. You can read ABOUT the interview here, it’s actually…