It was on this day in 1864 that Charles Dodgson gave a handwritten manuscript to Alice Liddell. Entitled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, it was based on a tale he had told the 10 year-old girl and her sisters during a fishing trip several months earlier. Alice was so delighted with the story that she begged him to write it down. The mathematician-now-turned-author also illustrated his story before having the book bound as a Christmas present for her. In 1965 the book was officially published as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, under the pseudonym “Lewis Carroll” and with illustrations by John Tenniel. It has since been translated into 97 different languages and has been the inspiration for several movies, TV shows and video games.
The earliest event that Wiki says took place on this day is “43 BC – The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus (“Octavian”, later “Caesar Augustus”), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony is formed” and the most recent are two from 2004: “Ruzhou School massacre: a man stabs and kills eight people and seriously wounds another four in a school dormitory in Ruzhou, China” and “Male Po’ouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of Avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.”
A few other things that also happened on this day are:
1716 – Captain Arthur Savage puts a lion on exhibit in Boston, the first time such an animal is seen in the American Colonies.
1956 – First episode of The Price Is Right.
1988 – Russian cosmonauts aboard Soyuz 7 play a cassette copy of the album Delicate Sound Of Thunder, making Pink Floyd the first rock band to be played in outer space.
Happy birthday to John McVie, Daniel Davis, Tina Turner, Rich Little, and Frederik Pohl.