1820 – Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Indian Bengali writer, philosopher, academic educator, translator, printer, publisher, entrepreneur, reformer, and philanthropist; his efforts to modernize Bengali prose resulted in a more rational and simplified Bengali alphabet.
1872 – Max Ehrmann, American poet most known for his 1927 work “Desiderata.”
1888 – T.S. Eliot, Nobel Prize-winning American-born British poet whose best known works are The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Waste Land; the Broadway musical Cats was based on his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
1906 – Zhang Tianyi, left-wing Chinese short-story writer, novelist, and children’s book author, known for his satiric wit.
1934 – Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Japanese-American author, journalist, and sociologist, best known for Farewell to Manzanar, an autobiographical book written with her husband James D. Houston; the book details her experiences during her family’s internment, beginning when she was seven years old, at Manzanar, a camp where innocent Japanese-Americans were sent against their will during World War II.
1938 – Raoul Cauvin, Belgian comic strip author, best known for a series, in French, about the American Civil War.
1949 – Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of bestselling novels.
1962 – Mark Haddon, English novelist, poet, and children’s book author, best known for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
