Agatha Christie Fun Facts

Happy Tuesday!

 Today I decided to do another fun facts about an author post, since I have done one in a while. Today I am going to be providing fun facts about Agatha Christie, who is known to be one of the best mystery writers. Not a lot of people know a lot about Agatha Christie, and I hope that some of the facts I provide today will help people understand her and read more of her books.

Let's get this list party started!

• The first novel she ever written she wrote on a dare from her sister.
• Her character Hercule Poirot was based on a strange man she saw one day, when he was boarding a bus.
• She once disappeared for 10 days without telling anyone where she was going. Turns out she just went to a spa to have some time away from her relationship.
• She loved to surf with her husband.
• She didn't like taking author photos, because she didn't want to be recognized in public.
• You can actually rent her home for $500 a night.
• She was educated at home by her mother and her governess.
• She is the only female dramatist ever to have had three plays running simultaneously in London’s West End.
• In 1922 she traveled around the world.
• She was a huge dog lover.
• When her male detective Hercule Poirot "died" he was given a full page obituary in the New York Times.
• Green was her favorite color.
• On the day she died the West End theaters dimmed their lights for one hour.
• For many years she was the President of the local amateur drama society in Wallingford.
•  In 1931 she read one of her own stories on BBC radio.
• She was the first crime writer to have 100,000 copies of ten of her titles published by Penguin on the same day in 1948 - A Penguin Million.

I hope that some of these facts about Agatha Christie helped interest you in her as an author. I have read a couple of her books and couldn't put them down, because with her writing you don't know who the murderer is until the very end when she wants the reader to know the truth, and how the murder was committed.

References:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/85723/15-mysterious-facts-about-agatha-christie
https://www.agathachristie.com/about-christie/christie-experts/john-curran-75-facts-about-christie

William Shakespeare Fun Facts

Hello again!

 Today I wanted to keep the fun facts about different authors going, and decided to go with William Shakespeare. Yes I am aware he technically didn't write books, but he is known for some of the best plays that we have in existence, and he is considered an author, well a playwright. Let's get started on learning more about Shakespeare.

• Shakespeare is widely considered the world’s greatest dramatist
• He wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets
• He married Anne Hathaway when he was only 18 years old
• He acted in many of his plays performances
• His acting company, The Lord Chamberlain's Men, built the Globe theater for their performances in 1599
• Before Shakespeare, the English language was much less codified with no official dictionary and many variations on spelling
• Shakespeare has given many memorable phrases to the English language, such as “wild goose chase”, “foregone conclusion” “in a pickle"
• Macbeth was often unpopular for its reference to witches which created fear in the middle ages. There remains a long theater superstition of saying aloud the name ‘Macbeth’
• When he died he only left his wife Anne a bed
• There is a belief that a curse lays on Shakespeare's grave for anyone who moves his bones
• Shakespeare introduced almost 3,000 words to the English
• He references suicide 13 times in his plays, mainly by characters dying by their own hand
• Nobody can for certain tell when exactly his birthday is
• They never did figure out what caused him to die
• He disappeared from the history books between 1585 and 1592. No one can find any trace of what he was doing during this time
• Shakespeare had seven siblings

I hope you learned something new about William Shakespeare that you didn't know before fellow readers!

Facts found at the following websites:

https://www.biographyonline.net/poets/facts-shakespeare.html

https://www.williamshakespeare.net/facts.jsp