7th February: Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on this date in 1812. 10 facts about Charles Dickens:

1. He left school at 12 because his father had been sent to debtors' prison in Marshalsea, London. He was sent to work at a boot-blacking factory, pasting labels on jars. The boy who showed him hoe to do the job on his first day was called Bob Fagin.
2. In 1833 he submitted his first story, A Dinner at Poplar Walk, to the London periodical Monthly Magazine.
3. He almost became an actor. He even had an audition lined up in Covent Garden, for which he prepared meticulously, only to miss the audition because he went down with a cold. Before another acting opportunity came along, he'd started doing well as a writer.
4. Dickens was the founder and manager of a home for "fallen women" in Shepherd's Bush, called Urania House. He set the house rules, did the accounts and even interviewed prospective residents. The aim of the house was to give the women an education and teach them how to run a household.
5. He was in a train crash in 1865. The carriage he was in was the only first class one to remain on the rails, so he wasn't hurt and set about helping tend to the wounded while they waited for the emergency services of the day to arrive. It's said he saved some lives. He didn't appear at the inquest, though, because he'd been travelling with His alleged lover, Ellen Ternan and that would have caused a scandal.
6. Dickens was one of the first celebrities to get divorced. He separated from his wife Catherine in 1858, possibly because Charles had fallen for Ellen Ternan, but since after his wife left, he burned most of his letters in a big bonfire, we'll never really know.
7. He suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, and was obsessed with combing his hair. He also had a thing about always sleeping with his head facing north. When he travelled anywhere, he would take a Compass with him and rearrange the furniture in hotels. He believed that sleeping facing north improved his writing.
8. In Tale of Two Cities, he mentions “Husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil,” which is the earliest reference to potato crisps.
9. The Oxford English Dictionary credits Dickens with introducing 247 new words or new usages into the language, including butter-fingers, cheesiness, fluffiness, abuzz, the creeps, flummox, devil-may-care, round-the-clock and rampage.
10. He had a pet raven called Grip which he had stuffed when it died in 1841.

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