Happy Birthday, Mark Twain!

Happy birthday, Mark Twain!. Born on November 30, 1835, the literary icon (and Hannibal’s most famous resident) would have been 181 today.

Though he died in 1910—well before the motion picture industry would take off—Mark Twain was actually featured in a movie and the footage still exists! Check it out…

The few seconds was shot by Twain’s good friend Thomas Edison in Redding, Connecticut and was later used in a two-reel short film titled The Prince and the Pauper. The short clip is the only known footage of Mark Twain.

Unfortunately, no audio recording exists of Twain. According to mentalfloss.com, Twain attempted to record his novella, “An American Claimant” into a phonograph in 1891, but grew frustrated after burning through 48 wax cylinders. He later recorded stories in Edison’s laboratory, but the recordings were destroyed in a fire in 1914—four years after Twain’s death.