H.L. Mencken.

In 1880 a man named Henry L. Mencken was born. Mencken was a determined young man with a dream to be a writer and reporter. At age nineteen he camped outside the editors' offices at the Baltimore Herald hoping for a story assignment; after a month of waiting, he received his first assignment and his professional career began. Mencken turned out to be one of the most influential and wittiest idividualists of the 19th century. Mencken was brilliant, publishing 30 of his own books, and also contributing to 20 chapters to other books. Not to mention his turning out thousands of newspaper articles and writing an estimated 100,000 letters. Mencken wrote on subjects like polotics, food, health, sports, music and many other subjects. At the age of 50, in 1930, Mencken married Sara Haardt. Sadly, Sara died abruptly, at age 37, in 1935. Mencken chost to refuse to remarry. Mencken was very active in writing throughout his whole life, but during 1925 Mencken was a very active person in the fight against prohibition. It is said that Mencken even went to the extent to learn how to brew his own beer, and tought a class of ten people only asking them to pay him back by teaching ten more people. Menckens views and contraversial attitudes towards certain touchy subjects in American History is what made him famous. For example is the essay he had posted during prohibition in 1925, called a Portrait of an Ideal World, was a very contraversial essay suggesting the slight alcoholization of the entire world would solve all the problems of society. Menckens mockery and critisim of polotics is what made him famous. Mencken worked for newspapers all his life while publishing all of his work. Mencken suffered in 1949 a stroke which impaired his speech. He was also unable to read and write and did not remember the names of his friends. On a tragic day, Mencken died of heart failure on January 29, 1956 in Baltimore, in the row house on Hollins Street where he had lived most of his life.