was born in Petrovichi, Russia, on this date in 1920. From MPR’s The Writer’s Almanac
His family moved to Brooklyn in 1923, where they ran a candy shop for 40 years. Asimov wrote, edited or compiled several hundred books on subjects ranging from Don Juan and the Bible to humor and mathematics. He also wrote dozens of works of science fiction. He typed ninety words a minute, and he worked ten hours a day, seven days a week. He tried to turn out four thousand words before he got up from his typewriter every day.
Even though many of his works dealt with space travel and flight, Asimov was afraid of flying. His phobia began while trying to impress a date by going on a roller coaster at the 1940 New York World’s Fair. He traveled little in his lifetime because of his fear of flying, staying close to his home in New York.