Calendar of Literary Facts

August 9...

1593: Izaak Walton is born

1631: John Dryden is born

1927: Daniel Keyes is born

1936: American athlete Jesse Owens, a black man, wins four gold medals at the summer Olympic games in Berlin—a bitter pill for Adolf Hitler, who had earlier boasted of the inherent superiority of the “Aryan race”

1949: Jonathan Kellerman is born

1967: Joe Orton dies

1976: José Lezama Lima dies

1978: James Gould Cozzens dies