Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder, American novelist and playwright (died 1975)

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Born: April 17, 1897
Died: December 7, 1975
Zodiac sign: Aries
Birth year: 1897

About Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day. Thornton's older brother, Amos Niven Wilder, became Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. His first novel, The Cabala, was published in 1926.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Thornton Wilder was born

Thornton Wilder was born in 1897. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Headlines and milestones

Top headlineKlondike Gold Rush begins in Canada
Technology milestoneFirst practical diesel engine built
Defining fadKlondike Gold Rush fever
World population~1.57B

United States snapshot

U.S. leaderWilliam McKinley
U.S. population70.0M

1897 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Thornton Wilder's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure	1897	2026
Population	70.0M	341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.