Happy birthday, reporter Damon Runyon

It is the birthday of legendary newspaperman Damon Runyon (1880), who is remembered for the quirky characters who populated his numerous short stories, and for the characters' colorful ways of talking. As a reporter, he covered baseball, Broadway, and Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 inauguration. Two of his short stories became the 1950 Broadway play, and later movie, Guys and Dolls. Twenty of his short stories were adapted for film, including Lady for a Day (1933), Little Miss Marker (1934), The Lemon Drop Kid (1934 and 1951), A Slight Case of Murder (1938), and The Big Street (1942).

Happy birthday, novelist Thomas Wolfe

It is the birthday of writer Thomas Wolfe (1900), who is remembered for his autobiographical novel Look Homeward, Angel (1929), based on his childhood and teen years in Asheville, North Carolina. It describes his family and friends, guests at his mother's boarding house, and other residents of the town. It was originally 1,100 pages long, and was trimmed to publishable length by Scribner's famous book editor Maxwell Perkins. The book caused such an uproar in Asheville that Wolfe moved away and didn't return for eight years.

Happy birthday, novelist Graham Greene

It is the birthday of English writer Graham Green (1904), who is remembered for such popular novels as The Confidential Agent  (1939), The Third Man (1949), The Quiet American (1956), Our Man in Havana (1958), and The Human Factor (1978). He also wrote novels with Catholic religious themes such as Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Heart of the Matter (1948), and The End of the Affair (1951). Several of his works were adapted for film. He also wrote plays and short stories.

Happy birthday, novelist Faith Baldwin

It is the birthday of writer Faith Baldwin (1893), whose popular romance novels appealed to housewives and working girls, and made her one of the best paid women writers in the country in the 1930s. She made more than $315,000 in 1936, when three books were published and four others were adapted for film. She wrote more than 100 novels, most of which gave middle-class women a glimpse into the lives of the wealthy.