Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Diving into the life of Henry David Thoreau

Before he went to live in the woods by Walden Pond, Thoreau (who originally went by David Henry) lived a fascinating life, opening a school with his brother, working for his father's pencil-making business, and becoming close to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who'd become a mentor figure for the aspiring writer. This deep profile explores all that and more.

Busting the myths about Thoreau's 'Walden'

This resource from The Walden Woods Project dispels some of the common myths about Thoreau's time in the woods, including that he was a hermit (he actually regularly visited friends), that he was freeloading (he paid off his debts), that "Walden" was a misrepresentation (he was forthcoming about editing his experiences), and that he was opposed to progress (he believed in practical technology).

See the plot of land where Thoreau built his Walden cabin

Harvard's Lawrence Buell takes viewers down to Walden Pond to show them the spot in the woods where Thoreau constructed his modest cabin. Along the way, he reads from "Walden" and explains why Thoreau's text still matters 170 years after its publication.

Browse the original 'Walden' manuscripts

Henry David Thoreau began writing the book about his time living at Walden Pond in 1846, but it went through seven iterations before being published in 1854. You can look through scans of early proofs, including some of Thoreau's handwritten corrections, through the Huntington Digital Library.

In 2024, Walden Pond was listed as an endangered place

The National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the site of Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" experiment as one of the most endangered historic places in America due to a proposed airport expansion and the proposed development of a nearby plot of land.

Ralph Waldo Emerson celebrated Walt Whitman, then regretted it

Emerson famously praised the first edition of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass,” which Whitman used to promote the collection. In doing so, Whitman effectively created the modern book blurb, though he did so without Emerson’s permission, leading to a prolonged, passive beef between the two.

The long-tail influence of Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience'

His essay "Civil Disobedience" laid out both a practical and a moral plan for resisting unjust governments, inspiring civil rights leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as anti-war anarchists like Emma Goldman and literary figures like Leo Tolstoy.

Taliesin’s first fire also involved the tragic murder of seven people

In 1914, while Frank Lloyd Wright was out working in Chicago, one of his servants at Taliesin brutally murdered his mistress, Martha “Mamah” Borthwick Cheney, her two children, and three other people in the home. The massacre left a deep impression on Wright, who spent much of his career restoring the home.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ in three days, then burned it

Stevenson woke from a dream and instantly got to writing the “fine bogey tale” he’d witnessed in his sleep. He finished a draft three days later and read it to his wife, who suggested it needed revising. Stevenson eventually agreed and threw the manuscript into the fireplace. He got back to work and emerged three more days later with another draft.

'Beowulf' was almost lost in a fire

In 1731, the poem's lone manuscript was stored in Ashburnham House, in Westminster, England. The building caught fire, and the document was damaged, but not entirely destroyed. It then had to be repaired and reordered, with help from Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín.

'Fahrenheit 451' is a perennially banned dystopian story

This late-in-life interview with Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” details the book’s origins, providing background for one of the most popular titles in dystopian literature. As a book lover, Bradbury was horrified by the book burnings of Nazi Germany and imagined a version of the United States where firemen were censors, protecting their fellow citizens from literature’s harmful ideas. “We are a democracy of readers,” Bradbury explains. “And we should keep it that way.”

The ritual burns of California forests

Many ecosystems around the world have adapted to regularly occurring wildfires. Some human cultures saw the advantage of such fires and integrated them into their community rituals. Learn about similar tribal traditions looking to better manage California's forests today.

'Leaves of Grass' was banned several times for obscenity

Whitman's collection was banned numerous times in various cities through the 1800s; in Boston, the district attorney even threatened Whitman’s publisher with criminal prosecution.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burned down

During a June 1613 performance of “Henry VIII,” a theatrical cannon misfired and sent sparks into the theater’s straw roof, forcing the 3,000 attendees to evacuate. No one was killed, though the theater burned down in roughly an hour.

'I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot ... The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'

- Author Jack London (1876 - 1916)

Twain was a notoriously bad investor

After becoming a famous writer, Twain invested in railroad stocks, a magnetic telegraph, and a printing press that weighed four tons. Eventually, he founded his own publishing company, which ultimately led to his bankruptcy. “He is, in business,” one lawyer said, “just a big overgrown boy.”

King sets many of his stories in Maine

In the process, he has created a few fictional towns. This extensive travelogue by a superfan explores the writer's favorite haunts, pinpointing specific details from and inspirations for King's fiction. Helpfully, it also provides plenty of photos, allowing you to venture through King's haunted version of the state without ever leaving the comfort of your home.

President Abraham Lincoln was inspired by a novel to create the holiday

A writer and abolitionist from New Hampshire, Sarah Josepha Hale was instrumental in cementing many of the Thanksgiving traditions we celebrate today. Her 1852 novel "Northwood, a Tale of New England," described a feast with a roasted turkey, stuffing, plum pudding, and pumpkin pie. She wrote dozens of editorials and letters to politicians campaigning for the day to become a national holiday. In 1863 she was finally successful in convincing President Lincoln to make it official.

Americans' love of combining freedom and charred meat began in the 1800s

In the 19th century, politicians (particularly in Virginia) hosted large public barbecues to celebrate Independence Day and, of course, boost their own campaigns. When personal grills became common in the 20th century, the tradition moved into backyards and block parties, where it's still going strong today.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

In 1951, a small French town was overtaken by the fungus that ultimately led to LSD

During the summer of 1951, the French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit appeared to go mad. Hundreds were treated for hallucinations and delirium, with some reporting ongoing hallucinations a month after the LSD-like symptoms appeared. Some historians argue it was a case of ergotism, better known in the Middle Ages as "burning disease" and "St. Anthony's Fire."

Spontaneous combustion involves an object igniting on its own

Even without matches, sparks, or external flames, exothermic chemical or biological reactions can increase the internal temperature of objects to the point where they reach a threshold temperature that can cause them to catch fire. Running batteries and fermenting bacteria within compressed materials can build this heat and cause combustion.

Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire over a dozen times

Between 1868 and 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire at least 13 times due to oil and industrial waste. The 1969 blaze garnered national attention, prompting federal action and contributing to the creation of the EPA, which ultimately led to a successful cleanup of the river.

'Johnny Appleseed' was the itinerant horticulturalist John Chapman

Born in 1774 in Massachusetts, Chapman planted apple orchards for pioneers across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, to be sold to locals to produce hard cider. He became famous through a 'Harper's Weekly' profile in the late 1800s, cultivating the modern legend.

The term 'burnout' in academia dates back to 1974

Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger introduced the term to describe the mental and emotional fatigue he witnessed among volunteers at a free clinic in New York. It was widely popularized in a 1976 article by Berkeley professor Christina Maslach.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was inspired by a drought

In 1886, Baum moved to Aberdeen, South Dakota, opening a general store and a newspaper. A drought afflicted the area, decimating crops. Baum moved, but his first 'Oz' book describes Dorothy's Kansas in a way that matched what he saw in South Dakota.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The use of fungi to detoxify land and water—a process known as mycoremediation—has been used to clean up natural resources affected by the 2025 California wildfires.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Dirty lightning is a thunderstorm created from friction between rising and falling flows of ash and smoke during volcanic eruptions.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.