It was on this date, October 5, 1946, that English historian of antiquity, educator and gardening writer Robin Lane Fox was born. He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a Fellow from 1970-1973. Lane Fox has written acclaimed studies of Alexander the Great and Ancient Macedon, Christianity and Paganism and […]

It was on this date, September 8, 1954, that American science writer and science historian Michael Shermer was born Michael Brant Shermer in Glendale, California. Shermer earned a B.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University, an M.A. in experimental psychology from California State University, Fullerton, and a Ph.D. in the history of science from Claremont Graduate […]

It was on this date, September 6, 1809, that German philosopher, historian and Biblical critic Bruno Bauer was born at Eisenberg in Saxe-Altenburg. Bauer studied in Berlin and came under the influence of Georg W. F. Hegel (1770-1831). He began teaching in Berlin, but was transferred in 1839 to the University of Bonn after publishing […]

It was on this date, September 3, 1866, that British idealist metaphysician John McTaggart was born John McTaggart Ellis in London. The family dropped the name Ellis, so he attended Clifton College, Bristol, and Trinity College, Cambridge, as John McTaggart, studying under Henry Sidgwick and James Ward and taking First Class honors in Moral Sciences […]

It was on this date, August 29, 1862, that Belgian symbolist playwright, poet and Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck was born Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck in Ghent, Belgium, into a wealthy, French-speaking family. Education under Jesuit control and literary restrictions instilled in Maeterlinck a distaste for the Catholic Church and organized religion generally. “The decent […]

It was on this date, August 26, 1941, that American feminist, democratic socialist, and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander in Butte, Montana, the daughter of a copper miner and a liberal Democrat. An award-winning columnist and essayist, Ehrenreich has been called “a veteran muckraker” by The New Yorker magazine for such works […]

It was on this date, August 24, 1957, that English actor and comedian Stephen Fry was born in Hampstead, London and reared in no religion. After being expelled from two schools and spending three months in prison for credit card fraud, he entered Queens’ College, Cambridge, where he studied English Literature and became involved in […]

It was on this date, August 15, 1750, that French writer and political theorist Pierre Sylvain Maréchal was born in Paris. Trained as a lawyer, he found employment at the Collège Mazarin as an aide-librarian. Maréchal was an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Helvétius, and Diderot, and connected with deist and atheist authors like himself, […]

It was on this date, August 12, 1866, that Spanish dramatist Jacinto Benavente y Martínez was born in Madrid. One of the most important Spanish dramatists of the 20th century, Benavente wrote over 170 plays, including La comida de las fieras (The Food of the Beasts, 1898), an attack on aristocrats, La Gobernadora (The Governor, […]

It was on this date, July 5, 1791, that the English philosopher and philanthropist Samuel Bailey was born. He was educated first by his maternal grandfather and then at the Moravian school of Fulneck. He visited America to establish commercial connections, but became distracted by literary pursuits. Back in England he acquired a fortune as […]