1535 English lawyer, statesman, and author of Utopia (a term he coined), Sir Thomas More, was beheaded (and thus martyred) in London for refusing to accept Henry VIII's Church of England. He was the dedicatee of his friend Desiderius Erasmus' The Praise of Folly and the subject of Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons.

1621 Poet Jean de La Fontaine, famous for his fables, was born in Chateau-Thierry, France.

1778 French philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau died in Ermenonville, France, a few days after his 66th birthday.

1804 Nathaniel Hawthorne, known for The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and numerous classic short stories, was born in Salem, MA.

1804 French novelist Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dudevant, better known by her pseudonym George Sand, was born in Paris.

1822 A few weeks shy of his 30th birthday, the English romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned in a sudden storm while sailing off the coast of Livorno, Tuscany.

1859 Poet and Nobel laureate Verner von Heidenstamm was born in Olshammar, Sweden.

1859 Prolific British author Fergus Hume was born. At the age of three his family moved to New Zealand, where he spent many years and wrote a self-published novel, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. It was a great international success (although he sold the rights for very little and made almost nothing from it) and he moved back to England, where he produced over 100 other titles.

1864 British journalist and mystery writer William Le Queux was born in London. Some credit his espionage novels with having a great influence on Ian Fleming in his creation of James Bond.

1866 British mystery author E.W. Hornung, brother-in-law of Arthur Conan Doyle and creator of gentleman-thief A.J. Raffles, was born in Middlesbrough, England.

1877 Nobel laureate Herman Hesse, remembered for such novels as Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Magister Ludi, was born in Calw, Germany.

1883 Franz Kafka, one of the most original writers of the 20th Century, was born in Prague.

1884 American detective, spy, and true-crime/mystery writer Allan Pinkerton, founder of the first detective agency, died in Chicago at age 64 when he had slipped while walking on the sidewalk, bit his tongue in the fall, and the wound became gangrenous.

1889 Poet, novelist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Lafitte, France.

1892 Mystery writer James M. Cain, author of such classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, was born in Annapolis, MD.

1893 Anthony Berkeley Cox, who wrote numerous mysteries under the name Francis Iles, including Malice Aforethought and Before the Fact (which became the Alfred Hitchcock film Suspicion), was born in Watford, England.

1893 Guy de Maupassant, one of the fathers of the modern short story, died in Paris at age 42 at the celebrated private asylum of Dr. Esprit Blanche. He had suffered from syphilis since his 20s which caused an increasing mental instability, including a suicide attempt a year before his death.

1896 Harriet Beecher Stowe died in Hartford, CT at the age of 85. Her 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin had so great an impact on the American public that it is sometimes cited as one of the causes of the Civil War.

1899 Mystery author Mignon G. Eberhart, who specialized in stories that combined romance and suspense, was born in University Place, NE.

1905 Mildred Wirt Benson, who took Edward Stratemeyer's notes for a female detective and fleshed them out to create series heroine Nancy Drew, was born in Ladora, IA (some sources give the date at July 10). Benson also wrote many of the early books in the series, which were published under the Stratemeyer Syndicate pseudonym Carolyn Keene.

1907 Science-fiction master Robert Heinlein, author of Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and many other classics of the genre, was born in Butler, MO.

1908 Joel Chandler Harris, author of the Uncle Remus stories, died in West End, GA at age 59 of cirrhosis of the liver.

1908 Celebrated essayist M.F.K. Fisher, best known for her gastronomical works such as Serve It Forth and The Gastronomical Me, was born in Albion, MI.

1911 Mystery author John Ball, best known for his Edgar-winning first book, In the Heat of the Night, was born in Schenectady, NY.

1917 Novelist J.F. Powers, whose Morte d'Urban won the National Book Award, was born in Jacksonville, IL.

1919 John Fox, Jr., author of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, died of pneumonia in Big Stone Gap, VA at age 56.

1923 Poet and Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska was born in Bnin (now Kornik), Poland.

1927 Playwright Neil Simon, author of numerous hit plays including Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, and California Suite, was born in the Bronx.

1929 Shirley Ann Grau, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Keepers of the House, was born in New Orleans.

1930 Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, died in Crowborough, Sussex of heart disease at age 71.

1937 Tom Stoppard, author of such plays as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and The Real Thing was born in Zlin, Czechoslovakia.

1952 Humorous mystery writer William DeAndrea, who won two Edgar Awards, was born in Port Chester, NY.

1961 Suffering from depression and memory loss, likely brought on by shock therapy administered to alleviate the former, Ernest Hemingway committed suicide by gunshot in Ketchum, ID a few weeks before his 62nd birthday.

1962 American Nobel laureate William Faulkner, who in the span of a few years wrote several of the most acclaimed novels of the 20th Century including The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, and Absalom, Absalom!, died near his home of Oxford, MS at age 64.

1965 Novelist T.S. Stribling, known for his mystery collection The Clues of the Caribbees and his Pulitzer Prize-winner The Store, died in his hometown of Clifton, TN at age 84.

1966 William McFee, author of numerous nautical novels, died shortly after his 85th birthday.

1977 Novelist Vladimir Nabokov, best known for Lolita, died in Montreux, Switzerland, at age 78.

1980 British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow, author of the eleven-volume novel sequence Strangers and Brothers, died in London at age 74.

1999 Mario Puzo, best known for his novel The Godfather, died of heart failure in Bay Shore, Long Island at age 78.

2001 Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler, author such works as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Cocksure, died in Montreal at age 70.

2005 French novelist and Nobel laureate Claude Simon, author of The Flanders Road, died in Paris at age 91.

2005 Prolific mystery author Evan Hunter, aka Ed McBain, and author of the 87th Precinct novels, died in Weston, CT at age 78.