The VERB - June '08

~ Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri.

~ Four years later, the family moved 35 miles east to Hannibal, a port city along the banks of the Mississippi.

~ Sam’s father, John Marshall Clemens, was a judge. He died of pneumonia when Sam was 12.

~ A year later, Samuel left school to become a printer's apprentice.

~ In 1851, he began working as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches for his brother's newspaper, the Hannibal Journal.

~ At 18, he left Hannibal behind for a printer's job in St. Louis.

~ While on a voyage down the Mississippi to New Orleans, the steamboat pilot, Horace E. Bixby, inspired Twain to pursue his career. It paid $250 per month, equivalent to $155,000 a year today.

~ His pseudonym, Mark Twain, is a river term which means two fathoms or 12-feet deep. "Mark twain" means it's safe to navigate.

~ Twain was an early member of the Society For Psychical Research.

~ Twain had foreseen the death of his brother in a detailed dream a month before the steamboat his brother worked on, the Pennsylvania, exploded.

~ Twain was guilt-stricken over his brother's death and blamed himself for the rest of his life.

~ He continued to work on the river and served as a river pilot until the American Civil War broke out in 1861 and traffic along the Mississippi was curtailed.

~ During the Civil War, Twain worked as a newspaper reporter for several newspapers all over the United States.

~ When Charles Langdon met Twain, he showed him a picture of his sister Olivia. Twain fell in love at first sight.

~ The couple met in 1868, were engaged a year later, and married in February 1870 in Elmira, New York.

~ In 1871, Twain moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut, and had a house built for them. Local admirers saved it from demolition in 1927 and eventually turned it into a museum.

~ There, Olivia gave birth to three daughters.

~ Twain began to gain fame when his story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calavaras County" appeared in the New York Saturday Press on November 18, 1865.

~ Twain's first book, The Innocents Abroad, was published in 1869, later followed by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

~ He wrote 28 books and numerous short stories, letters and sketches.

~ In 1909, Twain, depressed by all the deaths in his family, said, “I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'”

~ His prediction panned out. Twain died of a heart attack in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.