This was Jack London, the celebrated American author, who was born at San Francisco, January 12, 1876. His full name was John Griffith London (the surname of his stepfather). He was successively an oyster pirate, member of a fishing patrol and a seaman on a sailing vessel. He took part in the Klondike gold rush of 1897 and tramped through …

In his world famous book, James Fenimore Cooper names Chingachgook, the Mohican freind of Natty Bumppo, better known as Hawkeye the Hunter. The story takes place at the time of the Frech and Indian Wars in America. It begins with an English officer, Major Duncan Heyward, in company with Cora and Alice, the daughters of Colenel Munro, setting out from …

His name was Jean de la Fontaine. His father was the ranger of the forest of the duchy of Chateau-Thierry in Champagne. Jean was born there July 8, and educated at first for the Church. He truned, however, to the law but abandoned this on succeeding to his father’s rangership in 1647. He married the same year but soon separated …

Washington Irving, who had fought against the British in the War of Independence. He wrote many books, amongst them his Legends of the Alhambra and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. But it is Rip Van Winkle for which he is best remembered today. Born on April 3, 1783, he died November 28, 1859, already regarded as an author of note …

He was Edward George Earle Bulwe-Lytton, first Baron Lytton who was born on May 25, 1803. Although his works were admired by Charles Dickens and were popular in his time, they are not often read today. Four of his most famous books are entitled The Last Days of Pompeii, Rienzi, The Last of the Roman Tribunes, The Last of the …

He was an American author whose real name was William Sydney Porter. He was born September 11, 1862, in the quiet little village of Greensboro in North Carolina. He fell ill with a bad lung in 1882 and left North Carolina for a ranch in Texas where he worked as a cowboy. He recovered his health and later worked as …

Mark Twain was the pen name chosen by Samuel Langhore Clemens, author of favourite like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Life on the Mississippi and The Prince and the Pauper. After working as a printer and a Mississippi pilot, he turned to writing, telling with charm and humor to the American people and places he …

You might think nobody would have the skill or the courage to steal something as precious and easily recognizable as the crown jewels. But on 9 may, 1671, a daring Irishman, Colonel Thomas Blood, made a near successful attempt to steal them. Although he and his accomplices were caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London, they were not executed, …

James Bond. Ian Fleming introduced Bond in his novel Casino Royal which was first published in 1953. Ian Fleming was born May 28, 1908 and educated at Eton Collage and then the military academy, Sandhurst. He worked with the well-known news agency Reuters and later as the foreign manager of a newspaper combine. Among his other Bond novels are Live …

A schlimazel is a person who is accident-prone and so, considered unlucky, and for the same reason, even thought of as a born loser. The person is inept and fails at most things he attempts. Schlimazel is also used as a verb, for instance, a person gets ‘schlimazzeled’. The word has its origins in the Yiddish vernacular.