May 14: Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience was published on this day in 1849.  An anthem for the idea of principled, independent behavior, Thoreau's essay was inspired by the nation's battle over slavery and its land-grabbing war with Mexico -- or by those complicit fellow citizens who "sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say they know not what to do, and do nothing."

May 13: After months crossing the Atlantic and then weeks exploring the Virginia coast, English settlers anchored at Jamestown on this day in 1607. When the 104 colonists disembarked the next day, they established what would be the first permanent New World settlement, "rooted in the entrepreneurial spirit that would shape and define the American character."

May 11: The world's oldest dated book, the Diamond Sutra, was published "by Wang Jie on behalf of his parents on the fifteenth of the fourth moon of the ninth year of Xian Long" -- this day in 868. The Buddhist text is a meditation upon the detachment necessary for transcendent wisdom: "Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world: / A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream; / A flash of lightning in a summer cloud, / A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream."

May 10: On this day in 1907 Kenneth Grahame wrote the first (or the first extant) of a series of letters to his son, Alastair, describing the Toad, Rat, Mole, and Badger adventures that eventually became the beloved children's classic The Wind in the Willows: "Have you heard about the Toad? He was never taken prisoner by brigands at all. It was all a horrid low trick of his…."

May 9: Richard Adams was born on this day in 1920, and Shel Silverstein died on this day in 1999. Silverstein's posthumously published Runny Babbit is a billy sook of Spooner-bunnies; Adams's Watership Down is a story of man-rabbit Armageddon.

May 8: The Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton sold his first drink of Coca-Cola on this day in 1886. The humble, homey origins of the world's most ubiquitous soft drink are a cornerstone of the Coca-Cola legend and marketing scheme. In For God, Country and Coca-Cola, his study of the drink and the company, Mark Pendergrast says, "There is no question that The Coca-Cola Company loves its own history," even when inaccurate.

May 7: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony premiered in Vienna on this day in 1824, with the totally deaf composer on stage for the first time in twelve years, though only as a secondary conductor. Contemporary accounts describe Beethoven "as if he wanted to play all the instruments himself and sing for the whole chorus"; others remember him several measures behind, and having to be turned around to at least see the audience's cheers, many thinking to add a waved handkerchief or raised hat to their five standing ovations.

May 6: On this day in 1862 Henry David Thoreau died at the age of forty-four. In his eulogy, Emerson suggested that Thoreau never lived up to his potential -- "instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party" -- but he also praised his friend as a "born protestant" with unique gifts. In her memorial poem, Louisa May Alcott lamented, "'Our Pan is dead; / His pipe hangs mute beside the river / Around it wistful sunbeams quiver, / But Music's airy voice is fled….'"

May 4: James Joyce's Finnegans Wake was published on this day in 1939. Joyce had hoped to have the book come out on his birthday, as Ulysses had done in 1922; this proved impossible, but one advance copy was delivered for February 2nd, and a birthday-book celebration was quickly organized. With the looming uncertainty of war, and the certainty that Joyce did not have another seventeen-year book in him, the party became something of a career celebration.

May 3: On this day in 1810 Lord Byron swam the Hellespont in emulation of Leander's legendary swims to visit his beloved Hero. Byron was twenty-two, and ten months into his two-year tour of the Mediterranean. He was not yet famous for his poetry or his profligacy, although he had just finished the first draft of Childe Harold, and had just ended, while in Malta, his first serious affair with a young woman who fit what would become the Byronic type.

May 2: Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London on this day in 1536, charged with adultery, incest, and witchcraft; two weeks later she was found guilty and beheaded. Among the many recent books about Boleyn are several that explore a less familiar and more influential side of her life -- her role as champion of the English Bible, the King James Version of which was published on this day in 1611.

May 1: Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn on this day in 1923. Heller's memoir, Now and Then, published at age seventy-five, concludes on a self-satisfied note: "I have much to be pleased with, including myself, and I am…." Heller's daughter Erica has recently published her own memoir of family life; Yossarian Slept Here dubiously comments on the above quotation, and a father in whose presence "life was a Catch-22."

April 30: Twenty-six-year-old Henry David Thoreau accidentally set fire to 300 acres of the Concord woods on this day in 1844. Thoreau had taken a few days off from the family pencil-making business and set out down the Sudbury River with a friend. A spark from their first fire, a noonday fish fry -- this courtesy of a borrowed match, as they had forgotten to pack their own -- ignited the dry shoreline grass.

April 29: Hair opened on Broadway on this day in 1968, running for over four years; and Rent, described as "a Hair for the '90s," opened on Broadway on this day in 1996, running for over twelve years. The two shows are regarded as defining moments in the "rock musical" genre, and Hair remains definitive for its '60s answers to the timeless questions: "Why do I live? (beads, flowers) Why do I die? (freedom, happiness)..."

April 27: On this day in 1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson died, aged seventy-eight. Though his last decade was one of increasing debility, Emerson was still invited to speak across America and Europe; his final return to Concord was part tribute and part house-raising, accepted as "a trick of sympathy to catch an old gentleman returned from his wanderings."

April 26: On this day in 1862, thirty-one-year-old Emily Dickinson sent the second of her famous letters to the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson: "You ask of my companions. Hills, sir, and the sundown, and a dog large as myself, that my father bought me. They are better than beings because they know, but do not tell; and the noise in the pool at noon excels my piano…."

April 25: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe was published on this day in 1719. The author may also have died on this day -- his circumstances at the end are obscure, but he passed away sometime between April 24–26, 1731, while separated from his family and hiding from creditors. Whether Defoe's tale was inspired by Alexander Selkirk or some other contemporary castaway, he was himself a survivor of many shipwrecks, most of them caused by his own tempestuous enthusiasms.

April 24: The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit on this day in 1990. The HST would not transmit any images for another three and a half years, this time needed for servicing missions to correct a technological near-catastrophe, but over the past two decades the Hubble has "lifted a curtain from our view of the universe, changing it so profoundly that no human can look at the stars in the same way again."

April 23: On this day in 1616 both William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes died, thus prompting UNESCO to declare today "World Book and Copyright Day." The declaration may also have been inspired by a third death on this day, that of William Wordsworth in 1850. As April 23 is also the generally accepted date of Shakespeare's birth, based on baptismal records, the day is even more momentous, or dubious….

April 22: The first Earth Day was observed across the U.S. on this day in 1970. Though sometimes theatrical and alarmist -- activists dumped oil-coated ducks at the Department of the Interior and dragged a net full of dead fish through downtown New York -- most events were affirming in a '60s, be-in, "Give Earth a Chance" fashion. The April 22 date, recently supported by a UN resolution, is now observed in almost 200 countries around the world.

April 20: Bram Stoker died on this day in 1912. Though the author of some twenty books, Stoker is known almost exclusively for Dracula, published in 1897. The novel brought little fame or fortune in Stoker's lifetime; nor did its erotic violence raise eyebrows, although it is now seen as a "veritable sexual lexicon of Victorian taboos."

April 19: Lord Byron died in Missolonghi, Greece, on this day in 1824. His last months, spent on a revolutionary war that proved to be "a fool's errand," caused not only his fatal illness but such extreme disillusionment that he had to stop writing in his journal in order to spare himself his observations. His last entry, three months before his death, contained his last poem: "If thou regrett'st thy youth, why live? / The land of honourable death / Is here: -- up to the field, and give / Away thy breath!"

April 18: The International Court of Justice, one of the six major organs of the United Nations, held its first meeting on this day in 1946. While it does not preside over the same sort of life-and-death issues as the International Criminal Court, there is every reason to believe that the ICJ will soon be in the spotlight. Within its jurisdiction are issues relating to territorial and maritime claims, and a handful of nations are poised to contest for the Arctic and its fortunes.

April 17: The Bay of Pigs invasion began on this day in 1961. Far from overthrowing Fidel Castro and derailing his recent takeover of Cuba, the CIA-led assault was a humiliating failure for the U.S. and an enduring inspiration throughout the region. "Fifty years of the great victory of Bay of Pigs," tweeted Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in 2011. "Long live Fidel! Long live Socialist Cuba! We will conquer!"

April 16: On this day in 1962, Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook was published. Still the bestselling of her two dozen books, Lessing has described it as an attempt "to break certain forms of consciousness and go beyond them"; she has also said that the novel became "an albatross" hung around her neck by a feminist misreading.

April 15: Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier on this day in 1947 -- as told in Robinson's 1972 autobiography, just barely: "For one wild and rage-crazed minute I thought, "To hell with Mr. Rickey's 'noble experiment.'… To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create…."

April 13: Ian Fleming's Casino Royale was published on this day in 1953. It is not only the first of the dozen spy-sex cocktails Fleming would shake and reshake over the next decade, but the source for the actual Bond cocktail, named at a first meeting with Vesper Lynd, the first of the double-dealing femmes fatales.

April 12: On this day in 1857, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary was published. Flaubert's portrait of "ignoble reality" introduced a new style of writing, established his reputation, and landed him in court, charged with corrupting public morals -- and utterly defiant: "If the bourgeois are exasperated by my novel, I don't care; if we are taken to criminal court, I don't care…."

April 11: So little happened on this day in 1954 that it has been designated "the most boring day in history," this title granted in 2010 by the artificial intelligence computer True Knowledge Answer Engine. Earning the MBDH award would make April 11 interesting, of course; and even setting aside this catch-22, the computer only used data from 1900 onward, by which time there was a long tradition of yawning and finger drumming.

April 10: Joseph Pulitzer was born on this day in 1847. Pulitzer's biographers describe a transcontinental riches-to-rags-to-riches story, one central to any history of the Gilded Age. During his boyhood in Hungary, Pulitzer's wealthy family fell into poverty; a penniless teenage immigrant, Pulitzer made a fortune at the New York World, and his golden-domed Pulitzer Building became a beacon for the American Dream.