Portrait of Eduardo Galeano

Birthday profile

Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist and author (died 2015)

Born
September 3, 1940
Died
April 13, 2015
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1940

About Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Germán María Hughes Galeano (Spanish: [eˈðwaɾðo ɣaleˈano]; 3 September 1940 – 13 April 2015) was a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist considered, among other things, "a literary giant of the Latin American left" and "global soccer's pre-eminent man of letters". Galeano's best-known works are Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) and Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire, 1982–6). "I'm a writer," the author once said of himself, "obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past of America and above all that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to amnesia." Author Isabel Allende, who said her copy of Galeano's book was one of the few items with which she fled Chile in 1973 after the military coup of Augusto Pinochet, called Open Veins of Latin America "a mixture of meticulous detail, political conviction, poetic flair, and good storytelling." Decades after its first publication, Galeano disavowed certain aspects of the book while still upholding many ideas embodied in it. The Uruguayan socialist weekly first published the teenager's comics prior to his writing.

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

The world when Eduardo Galeano was born

Eduardo Galeano was born in 1940. 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.

Culture in 1940

  • #1 song"In the Mood" – Glenn Miller
  • Top movieRebecca
  • Best-selling bookFor Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst televised college basketball game
  • Top headlineWinston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister
  • Technology milestoneFirst McDonald's restaurant opens
  • Defining fadSwing music hits its peak
  • Notable inventionJeep (military vehicle)
  • World population2.30 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championCincinnati Reds (World Series)
  • U.S. population132.2M

1940 versus 2026

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

Measure19402026
Gas$0.18$3.45/gal
Average home$5,300$435,000
Average income$3,100$67,500
Minimum wage$0.30$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.25$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population132.2M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, 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.