Herman Melville was born on August 1, 1819 in New York City into an established merchant family. His father, Allan Melvill, an importer of French dry goods, went bankrupt and died when Melville was 12. From then on Herman worked as a clerk, teacher, and farmhand.
In search of adventures, Melville shipped out in 1839 as a cabin boy on the whaling ship. He joined later the US Navy, and started his years long voyages on ships. He lived briefly among the Typee cannibals in the Marquesas Islands.
In 1847 Melville got married. After three years in New York, he bought a farm, near Nathaniel Hawthorne's home at Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Inspired by the achievement of Hawthore, Melville wrote his masterpiece, Moby-Dick.
In 1855 Melville had a breakdown – he started to believe that he was not going to get fame with his writing.
After unsuccessful lecture tours in 1857-60, Melville lived for 3 years in Washington, D.C. He moved to New York, where he was appointed customs inspector on the New York docks. This work secured him a regular income.
He died at his home on East 26th Street on 28 September 1891 and now rests beside his wife Elizabeth in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York.

James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York City, on August 2, 1924. From ages 14 to 16 he was active as a preacher in a small revivalist church.
After high school he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in New York City. Disgusted with America's racial injustice Baldwin made his home primarily in the south of France, but often returned to the USA to lecture or teach.
In 1957 he returned to the U.S. in order to become involved in the Southern school desegregation struggle.
"The Fire next Time", published in 1963, in which he talked about the Black Muslim (Nation of Islam) movement, and warned that violence would result if white America does not change its attitudes toward black Americans, became a bestseller. After the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 and drawbacks in civil-rights movement, Baldwin started bitterly to acknowledge that violence may be the only route to racial justice. He spent his last years in St. Paul de Vence on the Riviera in France, where he died of stomach cancer on November 30, 1987.

Scientists in Germany say they have used new technology to create see-through human organs. They say the technology could lead to production of three-dimensional body parts for use in transplant operations.
The scientists are with Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. They said they developed a process that uses a solvent to make transparent organs, such as the brain and kidneys.
The German researchers use lasers in a microscope to scan the organ to be replaced. The laser light helps them see the blood vessels and every single cell inside.
The researchers use this information to print out the structure of the whole organ. For this, they need special equipment. They use a 3D printer to manufacture the structure – one that has height, width and length.
The researchers then load the printer with stem cells, which can become any kind of cell in the body. The stem cells act as “ink” in the printer. They are injected into the correct position, making the organ fully operational. More information

The man who made the first call from a wireless phone is now 94 years old.
The year was 1973. Martin Cooper operated a large, heavy new communication device on a street in New York City. The device was not physically connected to phone lines. But, Cooper was able to make use of it --- he called a technology business competitor.
Fifty years later, the inventor says he hopes wireless phones can make life better but he also expresses some worries.
“My most negative opinion is that we don’t have any privacy anymore because everything about us is now recorded someplace,” Cooper said. And, he says he is concerned about how easily young people can link to harmful online material on their cell phones.
Cooper says he is an optimist. He believes the technology’s best days may still be ahead in areas such as education and health care. “Between the cellphone and medical technology and the internet, we are going to conquer disease,” he said.
Cooper was working for Motorola when he used the Dyna-Tac phone to make a call in April 1973. Things have changed greatly since then. But, he said, “we had no way of knowing this was the historic moment.”
Cooper said there are still ways for the mobile phone to change. The first one he used weighed over 1 kilogram. Today, they are small. But he thinks one day, they will be more like a part of our body than something we hold.
He said perhaps the human body can even power the phones. “The human body is the charging station, right,” he asked. The body makes energy from food, he argues, so it could possibly also power a phone. Instead of holding the phone in the hand, for example, the device could be placed under the skin.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Researchers from UC San Diego and the University of Pittsburgh looked into gel manicures. And here's how they did it. They put cell samples from mice and humans under one of those UV dryers.
SHARI LIPNER: The changes that were seen in the cells are similar to what would be seen in skin cancer in a person.
INSKEEP: After frequent exposure to the light, many cells in the samples died or had damaged DNA.
LEILA FADEL, HOST: Now, the FDA says UV nail curing lamps are, quote, "low risk" when used as directed. But Shari Lipner, a dermatologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, says the new study seems to confirm what some doctors worried about for years.
LIPNER: In light of this study, I think it should convince people even more to use caution.
INSKEEP: That means following doctor's recommendations for using sunscreen and wearing fingerless gloves when you're under a UV drier or thinking about cutting back or stopping gel manicures altogether. Sorry, Leila.
FADEL: No. OK. Maria Zhivagui, who led the study, says when she saw the data on DNA damage, she decided to kick her own gel manicure habit.
MARIA ZHIVAGUI: It was very alarming and surprising for me because I did not expect that much effect.
INSKEEP: And Zhivagui says she will not get much more use from the UV dryer she has at home.
ZHIVAGUI: Probably one day, I will dry the glue on the floor or something.
INSKEEP: Until then, it stays in the drawer.
FADEL: Dermatologist Shari Lipner recommends routine checkups for skin cancer as a good habit for those that are sticking with the gel manicure.

William Saroyan was born in Fresno, California on August 31, 1908, the son of an Armenian immigrant.
When his father died in 1911 William Saroyan was placed in the orphanage in Oakland, California, together with his brother and sister. Five years later the family reunited in Fresno, where his mother had obtained work in a cannery.
Saroyan attended technical school to learn to type, but left at the age of fifteen; his mother had shown him some of his father's writings, and he decided to become a writer. He continued his education on his own, supporting himself by taking odd jobs.
His first stories appeared in the 1930s. Many of Saroyan's stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley.
The short story collection My Name is Aram, an international best seller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages. Much of his earnings he spent in drinking and gambling.
From 1958 Saroyan lived mainly in Paris.
He died from cancer on May 18, 1981, in his hometown of Fresno. Half of his ashes were buried in California, and the rest in Armenia.