June 21

Born:

1850 - Daniel Carter Beard
American author and illustrator who was active in early scouting and wrote and illustrated The American Boy's Handy Book.

1894 - Milward Kennedy
English crime writer known for his police mysteries and private investigator stories.

1898 - Donald C. Peattie
American naturalist and author of many works on botany and history.

1905 - Jean-Paul Sartre
French philosopher and writer; one of the key figures in the Existentialist movement.

1912 - Mary McCarthy
American author most widely known for her 1963 novel The Group.

1935 - Françoise Sagan
French author whose most well-known book, Bonjour Tristesse, was published when she was 18 years old.

1938 - John W. Dower
American author and historian whose 1999 book Embracing Defeat won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction.

1942 - Henry S. Taylor
American poet whose collection The Flying Change won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

1948 - Ian McEwan
English novelist many of whose books have been adapted into film.

1957 - Berke Breathed
American cartoonist best known for his long-running Bloom County comic strip and books.



Died:
1527 - Niccolò Machiavelli
1934 - Thorne Smith
2003 - Leon Uris
2010 - Russell Ash