Dappled Things

I’ve found I share my birthday with some interesting people:

1719 – Leopold Mozart, Austrian composer (d. 1787)
1765 – Robert Fulton, American inventor (d. 1815)
1805 – Fanny Mendelssohn, German composer and pianist (d. 1847)
1840 – Claude Monet, French painter (d. 1926)
1900 – Aaron Copland, American composer (d. 1990)
1907 – Astrid Lindgren, Swedish writer (d. 2002)
1907 – William Steig, American cartoonist and children’s book author (d. 2003)
1948 – Charles, Prince of Wales
1954 – Condoleezza Rice, United States Secretary of State

And a couple of interesting literature-related events:

1851 – Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick was published.
1889 – Nellie Bly set out to beat Jules Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg’s time of 80 days to travel around the world. She did it in 72.