Comic Book Tuesday

Real Deal History (T or F) #2

Samuel Clemens alias Mark Twain

In this new series you will learn more about historical figures than many textbooks care to acknowledge. Second in line is Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain. These five statements below are either true or false. Before you let your fingers run to Google, try answering these questions by yourself. Answers will be posted in a few days  Have fun and prepare to have your eyes opened.

1. Mark Twain's book Tom Sawyer (1876) was the first novel ever to be written on a typewriter.

2. There are no direct heirs to Samuel Clemens surviving today..

3. Mark Twain was said to have been working on a ghost story right before his death. No one ever found it for he ordered all his manuscripts burned when he died.

4. Twain gave Anne Sullivan the label "miracle worker" for her work with Helen Keller.

5. Clemens once slapped Thomas Edison with a white glove when Edison made a remark about Nikola Tesla, Clemens close friend.

The only false statement above is number 5.

Bonus fact: Twain also used the pen names "Josh" as in just joshing and "John Snook" as in to snooker, and "Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass". Samuel Clemens used "Mark Twain" because in his clever wit, he was indicating shallow writing. With a flair for folksy humor that made Twain famous, he also added that "you could train a cat to do what I did. You could train a garden slug to do what I did, but the cat would be quicker."

The Nikola Tesla Glow in the Dark Bobblehead

Nikola Tesla and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) had quite the interesting friendship over the years. 

Twain “cured” Tesla of an illness through his writing:

“I had hardly completed my course at the Real Gymnasium when I was prostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my condition became so desperate that I was given up by physicians. During this period I was permitted to read constantly, obtaining books from the Public Library which had been neglected and entrusted to me for classification of the works and preparation of the catalogues. One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears.”

And Tesla once cured Twain’s constipation by having him stand on a “healing machine”.

And in later years, Clemens would regularly visit with Tesla, engaging in stunningly intelligent entertainment such as shooting an x-ray gun at his head for fun. There’s even rumors that Twain’s story A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, an early sci-fi classic, based its main character around Tesla.