The Yukon Gold Rush Begins (August 12th)

Indigenous people had known of the existence of gold in the Yukon Territory of Canada for a long time, but both the Russians and the Hudson Bay Company in the region had ignored the rumors and chose to fur trade instead. There were several prospectors in the area, but none had struck real luck prior to 1896.

On August 12th, 1896, the American George Carmack was travelling with his wife, his brother-in-law, and his nephew south along the Klondike River. The group had followed rumors from previous prospectors and had discovered gold along the Rabbit, or Bonanza, Creek, a tributary of the Klondike. Since Carmack's wife, Kate, and her brother, Skookum Jim, were both Native Americans, Carmack laid claims for his relatives and himself, and the four began mining the claim soon afterwards. As the four began finding large quantities of gold, news spread and soon, mining camps were built all along Rabbit Creek.

The miners along rabbit creek were all from the Yukon territory because the ice and mountains surrounding the territory stopped the news from getting out. Eventually, mining officials in the Yukon got a message to Ottawa by sled-dog, and the news of gold in the Yukon was out. In the Yukon, or Klondike, Gold Rush, an estimated 100,000 people attempted to reach the Klondike river to make their fortunes. It is also believed that only around 30,000 or 40,000 actually made it. Among the stampeders, to the Klondike was none other than American writer Jack London.

 At total of $1,139,000 dollars in gold was discovered. This amount is equivalent to $1,000 million today. This amount of gold found meant that paper currencies increased in value, due to the gold standard tied to the currency. This helped to develop the financial panic of 1896. The amount of people who went to the Yukon and the amount of gold found made the Yukon Gold Rush one of the largest gold rushes in history.

Jane Austen (#92)

Childhood

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 into an English family. She was the daughter of George Austen, a rector for Anglican parishes. She had six brothers and one sister, Cassandra. For the most part, Jane and Cassandra were educated together, going to the same schools and receiving the same education. Unlike most families, though, Jane and Cassandra were encouraged to read from her father's library and write their own pieces of writing. As early as 1787, Austen began to write stories for her family's amusement, some of which has been compiled into the book Juvenilia. For the most part, these works were comedic and satirical.

Adulthood

Austen continued to live with her parents in adulthood. She continued to experiment in writing, creating a short play in 1793 and Lady Susan, her first real novel by 1795. After finishing Lady Susan, Austen began to write the novel Elinor and Marianne, whose first draft was finished around the year 1796. When Austen was twenty, she met Tom Lefroy, the nephew of Austen's neighbors. Over the several months that they were together, Austen and Lefroy grew very close, but Lefroy's family intervened in the relationship because neither Lefroy nor Austen had any money. In 1796, Austen began working on her second novel, First Impressions, finishing the initial draft in 1797. Jane's father, George Austen, attempted to have First Impressions published in London, but the novel was rejected. In 1798, Austen began writing the novel Susan, which was a satire on Gothic novels. In 1803, Jane's brother, Henry Austen, was able to sell the copyright for Susan to a London publisher for £10, though the publisher never printed the novel. In December of 1800, the Austens moved to Bath. The period of time while Austen was in Bath is marked by a  lack of writing by Austen. For some reason, Austen did little writing other than revising her previously written novels. In 1802, Austen received an offer of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, which Austen initially accepted, but withdrew her acceptance by the following morning. In 1804, Austen began writing The Watsons, which was the only book she wrote in Bath, but abandoned this novel shortly after her father died in 1805, possibly because the family in her book mirrored her actual family too closely. In 1806, Jane Austen moved in with her brother Frank and his wife in Southampton, but soon left to live in Chawton with her mother and sister.

Publishing

In October 1811, Jane Austen was able to get Elinor and Marianne published under the name Sense and Sensibility. The book received good reviews and the edition sold out in 1813. In January 1813, First Impressions was also published as Pride and Prejudice. This book was an immediate success and by October of that year, a second edition had come out. In 1814, Mansfield Park, a revision of Susan, came out, and though it did not get many great reviews, the public loved the book. The success of her books gave Austen and her mother and sister financial security. Austen continued to write new books, publishing Emma in late-1815 and finishing the first of The Elliots by 1816. 

The End

Unfortunately, Austen became unwell in early 1816, though she ignored her illness. By mid-1816, she had serious symptoms and in July of 1817, Jane Austen had died. In December of 1817, Jane's siblings, Cassandra and Henry, arranged for Persuasion to be published. This book was also a success. Austen is on our list because she made some of the most enduring stories of all time. She was popular when she was alive and she is still popular now. My father has also made sure that movies based on her books take up half the space of our DVD collection, so I had to mention her.

Edwin A. Abbott (#95)

Background and Education

Edwin Abbott Abbott was born on December 20, 1838. His mother, Jane Abbott, as a first cousin of his father, Marylebone Abbott, which explains the two Abbotts in his name. He was educated at the City of London School and later, at St. John's College, Cambridge, where he took highest honors in classics, mathematics, and theology. In 1861, he was Smith's prize, a prize given to Cambridge students in the fields of theoretical Physics or mathematics. 

Teacher and Writer

In 1863, Abbott married Mary Elizabeth Rangeley, with whom he would have two children. After getting his master's degree at King Edward's School, he became the headmaster of the City of London School in 1865. As headmaster, he oversaw the education of H.H. Asquith, who would one day become the Prime Minister. As headmaster, Abbott began to write, and he continued to do so even after he retired in 1889. Abbott's works, including Shakespearian Grammar, Silanus the Christian, and The Kernel and the Husk covered a wide range of topics from the English language to theological discussion. He also wrote an article, "The Gospels", for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica and a textbook on the Latin language.. He also wrote biographies on several people, including Francis Bacon and St. Thomas of Canterbury. His most famous work, however, is Flatland (1884), which he wrote under the name 'A. Square.' In Flatland, Abbott writes about a two-dimensional world which is populated by shapes. In this book, Abbott discuss how life would function in a two-dimensional world and what it would take to get shapes to understand other dimensions.

The End

Abbott died of influenza on October 12, 1926. Abbott is on our list because he thought outside of the box. He looked into the matter of how a population would function in a two-dimensional world, and he made fun of the fact that people believe there was no fourth dimension simply because they could not imagine how a fourth dimension would look. He also wrote a whole book on how Shakespeare's grammar worked, which is a feat of its own.

Gore Vidal (#101)

Background

Eugene Louis Vidal, Jr. was born in the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York on October 3, 1925. He was the son Eugene Luther Vidal, an aeronautics instructor at the Academy, and Nina Gore, a socialite and Broadway extra. Vidal's grandfather, Thomas Gore, was a Democratic senator from Oklahoma. Vidal was raised in Washington, D.C., and when World War II broke out, Vidal enlisted in the US Navy. Vidal worked as a warrant officer until he contracted hypothermia and developed rheumatoid arthritis. After that, Vidal became a mess officer. When Vidal realized that he wanted do be a political leader and writer, he changed his name to Gore Vidal because it was a unique and memorable name.

Writer and Actor

Vidal began his writing career at the age of nineteen, when he wrote Williwaw, a novel about World War II. Two years later in 1948, Vidal wrote The City and the Pillar, which focused on the issue of homosexuality. This book received a mix of reactions. Book critic Orville Prescott found the book so objectionable that he did not allow the New York Times to review any of Vidal's next five books, people within the Gay Rights movement see Gore Vidal as an early champion of sexual liberation. Vidal also wrote plays and scripts during his career. He helped to revise the script of Ben Hur, and he also wrote several of his own scripts, including that of The Best Man and Visit to a Small Planet. Vidal continued to write novels as well, most of which fell into two categories: American history and satire. Vidal also wrote many essays and pamphlets, many of which criticized certain parts of the U.S. government, including the military-industrial complex and American expansionism. In 2009, he was given the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation. Vidal also appeared in several films and television shows, including Gattaca, With Honors, The Simpsons, and Family Guy. 

Politics

Gore Vidal had a very active role in American politics as well. In 1960, Vidal ran for Congress under the Democratic party and was supported by many, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Newman, but lost by a margin of 57% to 43%. He was also a chairman of the People's Party from 1970 to 1972, and ran against Jerry Brown for the Democratic primaries for the seat in the United States Senate. Vidal also claimed that Roosevelt had provoked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor and that Truman dropped the atomic bombs even though the Japanese had already asked to surrender. Vidal was an advisory board member of the World Can't Wait group that advocated the impeachment of George W. Bush for war crimes. 

The End

Vidal died while in his home in California on July 31, 2012 due to complications from pneumonia. Vidal makes our list because he was a major figure in two major fields. He was both a politician and writer, and he was respected in both of those fields. Vidal was involved in many projects spanning from the film industry to the American political arena and worked with such people as Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman, Ralph Nader, and many others. He not only lived in the world we see, he was involved in its formation.

Lewis Carroll (#117)

Childhood to College

Lewis Carroll was born in England on January 27, 1832 as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was born into a family of army officers and Church of England clergymen. Carroll suffered from a stammer, but was very smart for his age, supposedly reading The Pilgrim's Progress wwhen he was only seven. After an unhappy three years at Rugby School (from 1846 to 1849), Carroll went to Christ Church college in Oxford, where he earned considerably honors in the field of mathematics.

Life and Work

Photography

In 1856, Dodgson began learning photography under his uncle, Skeffington Lutwidge, and continued on to become a famous 'gentleman photographer'. This job allowed Dodgson to enter higher society by making portraits of many notable people, including Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Dodgson stopped his photography in 1880, after taking over 3,000 images, though only about 1,000 survive. Dodgson later said he stopped because of the difficulty of keeping a working photography studio.

Inventing

Carroll invented many games, including an early form of scrabble and the Word Ladder, where one word changes into another through a series of one-letter changes. He also invented the nyctograph, a writing device for note-taking in the dark. He also invented a steering device for a velociam tricycle, a new parliamentary system, and a rule for finding the day of the week for any date.

Literature

Lewis Carroll is best known for his two books, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). In these books, a young girl named Alice finds herself in the strange and random world of Wonderland, where she meets man strange characters, including a talking Dodo, Humpty-Dumpty, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, a hookah-smoking caterpillar, a smiling cat, and the Mad Hatter. Many suspect that Alice is based on the daughter of Henry Liddell, the Dean of Christ Church, but Carroll denied these theories. These two books have given us such works of literature as Jabberwocky and The Walrus and the Carpenter. The same nonsense style found in these books is found again in Carroll's last great work, The Hunting of the Snark (1876).

Mathematics

Dodgson, due to his continued teaching of mathematics at Christ Church, wrote almost a dozen books on geometry, matrix algebra, and mathematical logic. Dodgson also used mathematics to create his own voting system, now known as Dodgson's Method. His mathematical work is what gave Dodgson the financial security to pursue other interests.

The End

After publishing The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll became less popular as an author, though he was now able to live on money from his previous books. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881. Carroll died on January 14, 1898 from pneumonia following influenza. Carroll is on our list for being successful due to the complete sense of random in his books. He is also on here for being a Renaissance Man of sorts, covering many subject areas over the course of his life.