Edward VIII: He gave up the throne for love

Edward and Wallis on vacation in Yugoslavia in 1936.

It is the birthday of British King Edward VIII (1894), who abdicated the throne in 1936 to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. Edward became Duke of Windsor after the abdication and Wallis became Duchess of Windsor after their marriage. During World War II, the Duke was assigned a diplomatic role in France but because he was widely viewed as pro-Nazi, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas, a position that Prime Minister Winston Churchill viewed as a place where the Duke could do the least harm politically. After World War II, the Duke and Duchess lived in Paris and traveled extensively as celebrities.

Happy birthday, Benjamin Franklin

It is the birthday of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin (1706), who is remembered for far more than having his picture on the $100 bill. He was a writer and publisher, inventor, and statesman. Biographer Walter Isaacson wrote that Franklin was "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become." He first published, with partners, the Pennsylvania Chronicle, then later, independently, Poor Richard’s Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin experimented with electricity and invented the lightning rod. He also invented a carriage odometer, a stove that heated a room better than a fireplace, and bifocals. He was designated the Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress and helped fashion the Declaration of Independence. He served as an advocate for the colonies in England before the Revolution, and later, as American ambassador to France. His image first appeared on the $100 Federal Reserve Note in 1914.

Marie LaFarge was convicted of murder

It is the birthday of murderess Marie LaFarge (1816), whose 1840 trial for poisoning her husband with arsenic became a cause célébre throughout France, with the public deeply divided over her innocence or guilt. She was the first person convicted by direct forensic evidence, and the case was one of the first followed closely by the public with daily newspaper reports. The trial was a spectacle attended by people from all over France. It included all the twists and turns of a good whodunit, including a celebrated expert witness and setbacks for both the prosecution and the defense. Marie LaFarge wrote her Mémoires (1841) while in prison. The novel The Lady and the Arsenic (1937) was based on the case as was the French film L’Affaire Lafarge (1938).

Dancer Mata Hari was executed as a spy

It is the birthday of Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari (1876), who was convicted in a secret French military trial of espionage during World War I and executed by firing squad in 1917. She was accused of being a double agent for France and Germany, and the prosecutor proclaimed her the world's greatest woman spy, but recent scholarship suggests she was convicted on evidence as flimsy as her costumes and that she was far more successful as a risqué dancer and courtesan than as a spy. She had many military officers as lovers, she spoke four languages fluently, traveled alone throughout Europe, and had plenty of money, all factors that probably led to her arrest. She faced her executioners without a blindfold or being bound to a stake. A silent Mata Hari film was made in 1927, Greta Garbo starred as Mata Hari in a 1931 and Sylvia Kristel starred in a 1985 version.

She wrote France's first historical novel

It is the birthday of French writer Madame de La Fayette (1634), who wrote France's first historical novel, La Princesse de Cléves (1678), a tale set in the court of King Henry II of France from October 1558 to November 1559. It concerns a 16-year-old heiress whose mother seeks a husband for her in the king's court. Scholars consider it to be the first psychological novel, in which the characters' inner thoughts are revealed. Many of the characters are historical figures, though the heroine is fictional. The novel presents a precise picture of life at court in the era.

Hugh Lofting wrote Doctor Dolittle stories

Hugh Lofting

It is the birthday of English writer Hugh Lofting (1886), whose numerous stories about Doctor Dolittle and the animals with whom he conversed have delighted children for generations. He originally wrote them in letters to his children when he was stationed at the front in France and Flanders during World War I. He said later that the war was too horrible (and, at times, too dull) to write in letters to his children so he chose the fanciful stories instead.

As a boy, Lofting's proclivity for collecting all sorts of little creatures in the yard and bringing them inside (and keeping them in his mother's linen closet), might have foreshadowed his later career. Lofting was born in Maidenhead, England, west of London. His father was English and his mother was Irish. He was educated at a Jesuit boarding school, Mount St. Mary's, and decided to become a civil engineer, mainly so that he could travel the world. He enrolled for a year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology but finished his education at London Polytechnic.

Early in his engineering career, Lofting worked on projects in Canada, West Africa, and Cuba. Then he decided to become a writer. He moved to New York, got married and had two children and wrote magazine articles. When World War I began, Lofting worked for the British Ministry of Information in New York but then became a lieutenant in the Irish Guard and was sent to the front. He was severely wounded in the war and sent to England, where he was joined by his family. Lofting's wife encouraged him to turn the Doctor Doolittle letters into a book.

After he recovered, Lofting and the family returned to New York. On the ship, they met an English journalist and novelist, Cecil Roberts, who was delighted with Lofting's stories and subsequently showed them to publisher. After the first Doctor Dolittle book was published, Lofting sent Roberts an inscribed copy. The Story of Doctor Dolittle: Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts, Never Before Published (1920) was the first in the series. It was instantly popular and young readers in Britain and America clamored for more.

The series also includes The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle (1922), Doctor Dolittle's Post Office (1923), Doctor Dolittle's Circus (1924), Doctor Dolittle's Zoo (1925), Doctor Dolittle's Caravan (1926), Doctor Dolittle's Garden (1927), Doctor Dolittle in the Moon (1928), Doctor Doolittle's Return (1933), Doctor Dolittle's Birthday Book (1936), Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake (1948), Doctor Dolittle and the Green Canary (1950), and Doctor Dolittle's Puddleby Adventures (1952). Lofting also wrote a book of poetry and other children's books.

Eugene Ionesco, absurdist playwright

Eugene Ionesco

It is the birthday of Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionesco (1909), one of the leading absurdist writers of the 20th century. Among his best known plays are The Bald Soprano (1950), The Lesson (1951), The Chairs (1952), Jack or The Submission (1955), The Killer (1958), Rhinoceros (1959), Exit the King (1962), A Stroll in the Air (1963), and Macbett (1972).

Ionesco was born in Romania but grew up in France, and though he moved back to Romania for a period and attended the University of Bucharest, he eventually moved back to France and remained there during World War II, settling in Paris in 1944.

At the age of 40, he decided to learn English. He copied sentences from an English text book with the idea of memorizing them. But soon he found  himself carefully reading the sentences and absorbing the meaning. He discovered amazing truths: The floor was down, ceiling was up. The week had seven days. Though he already knew these things, they suddenly took on new meaning.

The text became more complex. Two characters, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, had a complete back story. They lived near London, had several children and a servant who was also English. Mr. Smith was a clerk. Mrs. Smith was methodical in her quest for truth. Apparently this amazing text had a profound effect on Ionesco.

"A strange phenomenon took place," he wrote later. "I don't know how--the text began imperceptibly to change before my eyes. The very simple, luminously clear statements I had copied so diligently into my notebook, left to themselves, fermented for a while, lost their original identity, expanded and overflowed. The clichés and truisms of the conversation primer, which had once made sense gave way to pseudo-clichés and pseudo-truisms; these disintegrated into wild caricature and parody, and in the end language disintegrated into disjointed fragments of words."

Ionesco translated the experience into his first play, The Bald Soprano, which opened in Paris in 1950 and was roundly ignored until drama critic Jaques Lemarchand and writers Raymond Queneau and Jean Anouilh saw it and began to champion it. Ionesco wrote more than 20 plays in which he rejected the conventions of traditional drama such as character development and plot. His anarchic comedy portrays the meaningless of existence in the modern world.

Saga of the flying aces of World War I

Eddie Rickenbacker

Two years before the United States got into World War I, American volunteers formed the American Escadrille, a squadron of fighter pilots who flew sorties into German-held territory, shooting down reconnaissance planes, bombing Zeppelin hangars and engaging German pilots in aerial battles.

Shortly after the squadron moved near the front lines, the German government protested to the then-neutral United States about the volunteers. As a result, the group changed its name to Lafayette Escadrille, in honor of the Frenchman who helped American colonists during the American Revolutionary War.

The squadron was founded through the efforts of Dr. Edmund Gros, director of the American Ambulance Service that served France during the war and Norman Prince, an American who was already flying for France.

A French officer, Captain Georges Thenault, commanded the squadron and after the war he wrote a book about the unit and its exploits, L’Escadrille Lafayette. Copies of a French paperback edition published in 1938 and an English hardback edition (The Story of the LaFayette Escadrille) published in 1921 are in the collection of rare and unusual books at Lighthouse Books, ABAA. The French edition was signed by Thenault. Laid into each are various related clippings, photos and other ephemera.

A related book in the collection is a 1963 reprint of I Flew with the Lafayette Escadrille, a 1937 book by Edwin C. Parsons, one of the American pilots. By  the time he got to France, Parsons was already experienced in air combat, having flown for Pancho Villa during the Mexican Revolution. When the unit was transferred to the Americans in 1918, Parsons stayed in the French service.

After the war, Parsons returned to the United States, became an FBI agent, ran a private detective agency and became a technical adviser on such films as Wings (1927) and Hell’s Angels (1930). He wrote screenplays, radio scripts, magazine articles and books. During World War II, Parsons was an instructor at Pensacola Naval Air Station and participated in the Solomon Island campaign. He retired as a rear admiral. Parsons settled in Osprey, south of Sarasota.

His book is inscribed to Arch Whitehouse, a British flyer who served in France during World War I. Whitehouse wrote many exciting accounts about aerial battles during the war, but some historians doubt the accuracy of some of his stories.

When the United States entered the war, a new cadre of pilots arrived in France, among them Eddie Rickenbacker, who would go on to become an ace fighter pilot, shooting down an astonishing 26 German aircraft. It was a record that would not be broken until World War II. Rickenbacker also flew more combat hours than any other American pilot in the war.

Rickenbacker became the most celebrated aviator in America and would remain so until 1927, when mail pilot Charles Lindbergh flew nonstop from Roosevelt Field on Long Island to Paris.

Rickenbacker told of his exploits during World War I in a book, Fighting the Flying Circus, a signed first edition of which is also in the collection at Lighthouse Books, ABAA.