Joseph Hooker, leading British botanist

It is the birthday of great 19th century British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817), who was Charles Darwin’s closest friend, and was a sounding board as Darwin developed his theory of evolution. Hooker served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and helped establish it as a leading center for botanical research. With voyages to Antarctica, the Himalayas, India, Palestine, Morocco, and the western United States, Hooker built his own reputation as a botanical authority. He trained Walter Hood Fitch, who became a renowned botanical artist and illustrated many of Hooker’s works. Hooker’s best known work is the seven-volume Flora of British India (1872-1897). He also published the three-volume Flora Antarctica: the botany of the Antarctic voyage (1844-1859), Himalayan Journals (1855), and Handbook of the British flora (1858), a project started by acclaimed botanist George Bentham and completed by Hooker. The book is known in botanical circles as “Bentham & Hooker.”

Portugal's Manuel I was, indeed, fortunate

It is the birthday of Portuguese monarch Manuel I The Fortunate (1469), who presided over a period of economic expansion and prosperity that included Vasco da Gama’s discovery of a European sea route around Africa to India (1498) and opening of trade with that country as well as the discovery of Brazil (1500) by Pedro Alvares Cabral. These developments gave Portugal a vast overseas empire that brought great wealth despite the small land area of the country. Manuel was called The Fortunate because his father, King John II, designated him heir to the throne instead of stabbing him to death as happened with Manuel’s older brother Diogo, Duke of Viseu. How fortunate for Manuel.

M.M. Kaye wrote The Far Pavilions

It is the birthday of writer M.M. Kaye (1908), who is remembered for her best-selling epic novel The Far Pavilions (1978), the story of an English officer during the British rule of India. The book drew on Mary Margaret Kaye's experiences as a child and young adult in India and is partly based on her grandfather's writings. It sold millions of copies. Kaye also wrote Shadow of the Moon (1957) and Trade Wind (1963) as well as an autobiographical trilogy The Sun in the Morning (1990), Golden Afternoon (1997), and Enchanted Evening (1999). Her Death in … series was set in various duty stations of her British army officer husband, including Berlin, Cyprus,  Kashmir, Kenya, and Zanzibar. The Far Pavilions was adapted as HBO's first miniseries (1984) and as a British stage musical (2005).