Nationality 1: American

Birthdate: 1809

Deathdate: 1894

Oliver Wendell Holmes was born on August 29, 1809, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father was a Congregationalist minister, and his mother was a member of what would become the Unitarian Church. After years of private schooling, Holmes attended Harvard College, where he began to translate and write poetry. He started to have his poetry published after college, while he was studying law. One of his most famous poems, “Old Ironsides,” was published in 1830. A response to the news that the famous Revolutionary War ship USS Constitution was to be taken apart and used as scrap, the poem gained Holmes a wide audience and garnered the necessary public support to have the ship preserved.

Holmes quit studying law in 1831 in favor of a degree in medicine, and, in 1833, he traveled to France to continue his medical education. During his studies and upon his return to...