Nov. 30 three birthdays...each of which deserve their own post!

 Three for one...Nov. 30 birthdays:

It’s the birthday of statesman Sir Winston S. Churchill, born at Blenheim Castle, England (1874). His long political career led to him becoming Prime Minister in 1940. He said, “I felt as if I was walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour.” He rallied the English people with his courage and great oratory. He wrote a six-volume history of World War Two.

================

It’s the birthday of Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, in Florida, Missouri (1835). He left school at 12 to work as a printer, then as a riverboat pilot. During the Civil War, he went to Nevada where he tried gold mining and then edited a newspaper. When he was 29 he went to San Francisco as a reporter, and achieved his first success with The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County (1865). He took a trip to Europe and the Holy Land, and described his experiences in The Innocents Abroad (1869). When he returned to America, he settled in the East, married Olivia Langdon, and had four children. They built a distinctive house in Hartford, Connecticut, and he won wide popularity with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and later, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

=============

It’s the birthday of satirist Jonathan Swift, born in Dublin, Ireland (1667), author of Gulliver’s Travels. He wrote, “I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities, and all my love is towards individuals.” While walking to London one day, he ducked under a tree during a cloudburst, and was soon joined by a man and a pregnant woman who told him they were going to London to be married. Swift informed them that he was a clergyman, and offered to perform the ceremony on the spot. They agreed, and afterwards, when the groom asked for a certificate of marriage, Swift obliged with a poem:

Under an oak, in stormy weather,

I joined this rogue and whore together;

And none but he who rules the thunder

Can put this rogue and whore asunder

From Writer's Almanac 2000