Happy birthday, Mark Twain!

Did you know Twain was a real-life Forrest Gump, rubbing shoulders with some of the brightest luminaries of his time?

We dove into @bancroftlibrary’s Mark Twain Paper’s & Project, exploring his famous friendships.

http://ucberk.li/mark-twain 

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In 1842, P.T. Barnum dazzled the nation with a spectacular ruse: Barnum’s American Museum, filled with oddities and wonders.

A roaring showman, Barnum captured the curiosities of a generation. He could hold an audience in the palm of his hand — just like Twain.

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Twain maintained a lifelong enchantment with technology, to him the purest form of art. This fascination would lead him to Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla.

Twain occasionally visited Tesla in his New York City lab, where he would take part in various odd experiments.

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Twain met Helen Keller in 1894, when she was 14 years old. They were instant — and lifelong — friends.

“She is fellow to Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Homer, Shakespeare and the rest of the immortals,” Twain writes. “It has taken all the ages to produce a Helen Keller.”

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On Sept. 3, 1838, Frederick Douglass boarded a train en route to a new life.

He was sheltered by Jervis and Olivia Langdon, conductors on the Underground Railroad. Twain later married the Langdons’ daughter, becoming close to the family's friends, including Douglass.

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In 1872, Twain and all his wild, Midwestern glory arrived in Hartford, Connecticut — home to some of the most illustrious writers and reformers of the day.

His next-door neighbor? Harriet Beecher Stowe. They were neighbors for 18 years, with no fence in between.

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Twain first met Ulysses S. Grant in Washington, D.C., in 1866. They became friends after Grant’s presidency, exchanging views on politics and world affairs.

The leading Union general in the Civil War, Grant kept things straight and simple — a style shared by Twain.

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