Mark Twain

Financial Matters
Although Twain made a substantial amount of money through his writing, he squandered much of it through bad investments, mostly through new inventions. These included the bed clamp for infants, a new type of steam engine that he had to sell for scrap, the kaolatype (a machine designed to engrave printing plates), the Paige typesetting machine (this investment was over $200,000 and did not work at all), and finally, his publishing house that--while enjoying initial success by selling the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant--went bust soon after. Fortunately, Twain's writings and lectures enabled him to recover financially. [3]


Twain Today
Visitors still pay homage to Mark Twain by visiting the places he lived. His birthplace is preserved in Florida, Missouri , and the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri is one of the most popular museums because it provided the setting for much of Twain's work. Visitors can tour the Mark Twain Cave and ride a riverboat on the Mississippi River. In 1874 Twain built a family home in Hartford, Connecticut where he and Livy raised their three daughters. That home is preserved and open to visitors as the Mark Twain House. Twain lived in many homes in the U.S. and abroad.


Trivia

A statue of Mark Twain at Mark Twain Elementary School in the Braeswood Place neighborhood of Houston, TexasTwain was born and died in years in which Halley's Comet appeared (1835-1910).
Twain had a mole above his right pectoral which he dubbed "Mr. Cantankerous".
Twain was the first renowned writer to present a manuscript typed with a typewriter, using a Remington (invented in 1874).[4]
In 1906, his daughter Clara Clemens married the Jewish Russian emigre pianist and conductor Ossip Gabrilowitsch. Clara was a singer who appeared with her husband in recital. Twain and Gabrilowitsch share a gravestone in Elmira, N.Y.
The 1944 biographical film of his life, The Adventures of Mark Twain, featured Fredric March as Clemens and Alexis Smith as his wife Olivia.
Broadway, television & cinema actor Hal Holbrook has been performing his one-man show Mark Twain Tonight ! annually since 1959, with each show somewhat different in Twain content. During the 60th Tony Awards, Holbrook reported that he was purported to be buried near Twain in Woodlawn Cemetery. Holbrook then repeated one of Twain's famous quotes: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Time's Arrow featured a fictionalized version of Mark Twain.
Singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett has written three songs based on Twain's travelog, Following the Equator (That's What Livin' is to Me, Take Another Road, Remittance Man) and has paraphrased Twain in other songs. He also gives Twain a nod in his own literature, most notably by naming a main character's horse Mr. Twain.
The webcomic series Achewood features Mark Twain as a character in one of the strip' s story arcs. This arc features a narrative written in an imitation of Mark Twain's style, as Twain journals his encounter with two of the strip's central characters, who time-traveled from the modern day to the late 19th century.
Mark Twain's wife, Olivia Langdon, was known as Livy to her family and friends.
Livy's nickname for her husband was "Youth."
Mark Twain was opposed to vivisection of any kind, not on a scientific basis, but rather an ethical one, in which he states that no sentient being should unconsentingly be made to suffer for another.
"I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't. ... The pain which it inficts upon unconsenting animal is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further."[5]

Mark Twain is one of the main characters of the Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer.
Twain appeared in a comic strip story featuring The Phantom. The story featured the 16th Phantom meeting Twain in the wild west.
Twain preferred cats over dogs and owned numerous cats throughout his lifetime.
Mark Twain's Parents are buried in the Florida, MO cemetery.
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Epigrams
"A habit cannot be thrown out the window, it must be coaxed down the stairs one step at a time." -Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar." -Mark Twain and I by Opie Read
"'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read." -Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." -More Maxims of Mark
"I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough." -Speech, September 23, 1907
"India: Land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition." [6]
"The lack of money is the root of all evil." -More Maxims of Mark
"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them." -Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
"Jesus died to save men -- a small thing for an immortal to do, & didn't save many, anyway; but if he had been damned for the race that would have been act of a size proper to a god, & would have saved the whole race. However, why should anybody want to save the human race, or damn it either? Does God want its society? Does Satan?" -Notebook #42
"October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February." -Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
"Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." (The original quote was "The report of my death was an exaggeration"; cf. Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life, p. 585)
The saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics," is sometimes attributed to Twain. He did not coin the phrase, but he did popularize it in the United States.
"To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology." -(St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 30, 1902; cf. Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life, p. 611)
"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God." (Corn-Pone Opinions)
"When angry count to four, when very angry, swear." -Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
"When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane, not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic—for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his... When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad." [7]
"[The human] race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon--laughter."[8]
"If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would, I dunno." -Letters from the Earth
"I do not take any credit to my better-balanced head because I never went crazy on Presbyterianism. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground, You never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. Notice us, and you will see how we do. We get up of a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don't shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism --no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to massacre the neighbors. Let us all be content with the tried and safe old regular religions, and take no chances on wildcat. (from "The New Wildcat Religion")
 

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