Question: What famous American author was born in Florida, Missouri on this day in 1835?
Answer: Mark Twain
Born Samuel Clemens, Mark Twain was best known for his coming-of-age novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called “the Great American Novel.”
Mark Twain was born in Florida, Missouri in November of 1835 when the population of the village was exactly 100. His family had moved there the previous May or June with the hope that a railway line would be extended from St. Joseph and that the Salt River would be made navigable to the Mississippi. Neither happened. The family moved to Hannibal, 35 miles to the northeast, in 1839.
