August 30 is the birthdate of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. In 1816, she and poet Percy Bysshe Shelley famously spent a summer with poet Lord Byron and others near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary (at age 18) conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Conversation turned to the topics of galvanism (bringing organisms to life using electricity) and similar occult ideas, and Shelley and the others competed to see who could write the best horror story. She later dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. Thus was born the monster.
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