Mary Shelley born in Somers Town, London
Shelley is born to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Her mother is a leading feminist writer, and a source of inspiration. Mary’s learned father, who has frequent guests in their home all through her formative years, guarantees her education. A voracious reader, she borrows books from her father’s extensive library. She enjoys writing at a young age.
It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing
Sojourner Truth born in Swartekill, NY
Sojourner Truth is born Isabella Baumfree, one of as many as 12 children of James and Elizabeth Baumfree in the town of Swartekill, Ulster County, New York. Her father is a slave captured in modern-day Ghana; her mother is the daughter of slaves from Guinea. The Baumfree family is owned by Colonel Hardenbergh and lives at the colonel’s estate in Esopus, NY, 95 miles north of New York City.
I was given the name Isabella, and was called ‘Bell.’ My mother was named Elizabeth, and called Betsy and my father was named James…In my father’s youth he was very tall and straight. For that reason he was called “Bomefree,” which was Dutch for tree. We called my mother “Mau-mau” Bett. Mau-mau was Dutch for Mama. My parents were loyal, faithful, hard working and gave Colonel Ardinburgh no trouble. He rewarded their fidelity by allotting them a small plot of land by the mountainside. On it they could crops on weekends and evenings that they could barter on the extra food and clothing for their kids.
Isaac Newton dies age 84
Newton dies of natural causes at age 84, and is buried with full honors in Westminster Abbey. As a celebrated natural philosopher, he is a new kind of national hero.
I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton born in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, England
Newton is born in Wollsthorpe-by-Colsterworth to a farmer by the name of Isaac Newton Sr. and Hannah Ayscough. His father dies three months before his birth. When Newton is three, his mother remarries and goes to live with her new husband, the Reverend Smith, she leaves her son in the care of his maternal grandmother. Newton is unhappy with the arrangement.
[I engage in] threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them
William Shakespeare dies on 52nd birthday
Exactly 52 years after the day of his birth, Shakespeare dies of a fever, supposedly induced by an excess of drinking, one of his contemporaries says
Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.
He dies in his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon and is buried in the Holy Trinity Church. Upon his tombstone his own words are engraved.
Good friend for Jesus sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here!
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones
Shakespeare, Hathaway marry
The couple pay a forty pound bond for their marriage in Stratford-upon-Avon. Hathaway is eight years older than Shakespeare, and there are allegations that she is pregnant at the time of marriage.
William Shakespeare born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England
William Shakespeare is born of John and Mary Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. He is their third child, however his two younger sisters die prior to his birth, the presumed cause being plague. John is an Alderman and Bailiff, and Mary is a housewife. As such he is educated at a local grammar school, where he first develops his love of writing.