The first novel published in the U.S. is released and the birthday club includes Ito Noe and Elaine Showalter. Today's reading is from "The House of Mirth," by Edith Wharton.

Happy birthday to Huddie Ledbetter and Fareed Zakaria - with a reading from "Democracy and Social Ethics," by Jane Addams.

Goethe's play "Faust: A Tragedy" (part 1) premieres, the ACLU is founded, and happy birthday to Edgar Allan Poe - with a reading from one of Poe's letters.

Happy birthday to Alan Alexander Milne - with a reading from one of his best known works "The House at Pooh Corner."

Happy birthday to Anne Bronte - with a reading from her second novel, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."

Miguel Cervantes publishes "Don Quixote," Virginia adopts the Statute of Religious Freedom as written by Thomas Jefferson, Ernest Shackleton reaches the magnetic South Pole, and the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords. Happy Birthday to Susan Sontag - and a reading from Cervantes' "Don Quixote."

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Jean-Francois Roberval is commissioned to colonize New France. The Pemberton Medicine Company is incorporated. James Naismith publishes the rules of basketball and Wikipedia is launched. The birthday club includes Moliere, Richard Martin, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Today's readings are from King's "The Three Evils of Society," and "A Knock at Midnight."

The U.S. Congress ratifies the Treaty of Paris, which formalized peace with England and independence for the United States. Happy birthday to Emily Hahn and Maureen Dowd. And a reading from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."

Emile Zola publishes "J'accuse!" and exposes the French military's deceit during the Dreyfus Affair. Happy birthday to Shonda Rhimes - and a reading from Zola's "J'accuse!"

The birthday club includes Laura Adams Armer, Jack London, Haruki Murakami, and Issa Rae - and a reading from London's "Call of the Wild."