24 November: Dale Carnegie

American writer and lecturer Dale Carnegie was born on this date in 1888. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born to a farming family in Missouri. He recalled, as a young man, having to get up at 3am to feed the Pigs before going to school. He decided early on that farming wasn't for him.
2. His name at birth was Carnagey. He changed the spelling after a sell out lecture in Carnegie Hall in 1916, partly to honour the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and partly so that people would more easily remember his name.
3. He was educated in small, one room schools. In high school he discovered his love of public speaking and joined the debating team.
4. His first job after school was selling correspondence courses to ranchers. He held a number of salesman jobs after that, selling bacon, soap, and lard. He was good at selling things and made his sales territory of South Omaha, Nebraska, the national leader for the firm.
5. Sales wasn't his ultimate goal, though. He wanted to lecture for an adult education organisation and left his job in sales in 1911 when he'd saved up to do the training. For some reason, he veered off course a bit and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and was an actor for a time, playing the role of Dr. Hartley in a road show of Polly of the Circus.
6. Presumably deciding acting wasn't his thing any more than farming, when the production ended he moved back to New York and was living in the YMCA. To fund his accommodation, he persuaded the YMCA manager to let him teach public speaking classes in return for 80% of the profits.
7. He found he didn't have enough material for his first class and had to improvise. He asked his students to speak about something which made them angry, and found that people are less afraid to speak to an audience when they are hopping mad!
8. He served in the U.S. Army during the first world war, spending the time at Camp Upton, an embarkation point for soldiers travelling abroad. This was despite having filed for Conscientious objector status. His draft card noted that he was missing a forefinger.
9. As well as How to Win Friends and Influence People, the book he's best known for, he wrote several others including How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and Little Known Facts About Well Known People.
10. Carnegie died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma on November 1, 1955, at his home in Forest Hills, Queen, New York at the age of 66.

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