'Be careful about reading health books.
You may die of a misprint.'
Mark Twain
Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri. He was
apprenticed to a printer at the age of 13 and later worked
for his older brother Orion, who established a local
newspaper, the Hannibal Journal. In 1857 he was commissioned
to write a series of comic travel letters but gave up after
writing five letters to become a steamboat captain instead.
He received his pilot's license at the age of 23. He piloted
boats for two years until the Civil War brought a temporary
halt to steamboat traffic. After volunteering in the
Confederate army for a few months, in 1861 he began working
for the 'Territorial Enterprise' in Virginia City. He wrote
a humorous travel letter and signed it Mark Twain (mark
twain is a boatman's call indicating that the water is only
two fathoms deep, which is the minimum for safe navigation);
he continued to use this pseudonym for the next 50 years.
In 1864 he took a job as a reporter in San Francisco and
wrote the book that first made him famous, 'The Celebrated
Jumping Frog of Calaveras County'. From then on he traveled
the world writing accounts of his travels for newspapers on
both coasts. He died in April 1910.
Image: Mark Twain, 1867
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