August 30

August 30 is the birthdate of author Edgar Rice Burroughs, a native of Chicago. His most famous novel, Tarzan of the Apes, was serialized in a pulp fiction magazine in 1912. It tells the story of John Clayton, born in the western coastal jungle of equatorial Africa to John and Alice Clayton, Lord and Lady Greystoke, a marooned English couple. When his parents die, the infant John is adopted by a she-ape Kala, who names him Tarzan ("White Skin" in ape language) and raises him in ignorance of his human heritage. Burroughs continued the Tarzan series into the 1940s with two dozen sequels. Pictured: revised cover of the 1914 book edition.