It’s the birthday

… of Dick Clark. America’s oldest teenager is 75.

… of David Mamet. The playwright is 57.

And it was on this date in 1835 that Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born.

He’s best known to us today for his novels about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but in his own lifetime his best-selling books were his travel books such as Roughing It (1872), A Tramp Abroad (1880), and Life on the Mississippi (1883).

The Writer’s Almanac has much more.