Poor Sarah Palin

Today: Queen Elizabeth I was born on this day in 1533.

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade, since it consists primarily in dealing with men." -- Joseph Conrad.

Yesterday: The first Pilgrims set sail for the new world on Sept. 6, 1620.

"There is no such thing as an American. They are all exiles uprooted, transplanted and doomed to sterility." -- Evelyn Waugh.

Birthdays missed

Catching up:

July 8: John D. Rockefeller (shown here) was born on this day in 1839.

"The rich are the scum of the earth in every country." -- G. K. Chesterton.



July 9: Romance novelist Barbara Cartland was born on this day in 1901.

"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves." -- Don Marquis.



And today: French novelist Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.

"I think he (Proust) was mentally defective." -- Evelyn Waugh.

And writers, too, no doubt

English author Evelyn Waugh died on this day in 1966.

"If politicians and scientists were lazier," Waugh wrote, "how much happier we should all be."

For more on Waugh, visit Today in Farewells