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the birth of the legend himself
he had no idea what he would become -
In February (age three), taken by mother to see Lon Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Learns about radio from his paternal grand- father.
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Given 1st book of fairy tales, Once Upon a Time, by his aunt Neva Brad- bury for Christmas. Parents help him learn to read from the newspaper comics. Grandfather shows him pictures of the 1892 and 1903 world’s fairs.
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Sees Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera with his mother and again with his brother, Skip. Grandfather Bradbury dies, and Aunt Neva starts reading Ray the Oz books by L. Frank Baum. Begins 1st grade in Waukegan, but father moves family to Roswell, New Mexico, then to Tucson, Arizona, looking for work.
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Ray’s sister, Elizabeth Jane Bradbury, is born in Tucson. Family moves back to Waukegan in May. A young cousin almost drowns in Lake Michigan; he uses this incident much later in “The Lake.”
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Ray’s baby sister, Elizabeth, dies of pneumonia in February. Sick in bed with whooping cough, Ray misses three months of school during the fall term. Aunt Neva reads him Edgar Allan Poe’s works. Discovers Amazing Stories Quarterly, one of the earliest science fiction pulps. Is terrified of crossing local ravine and uses this fear later in “The Night” and “The Whole Town’s Sleeping,” stories later novelized within Dandelion Wine.
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Discovers the romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs and begins to read Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars series.
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Given a book on magic for his eleventh birthday; attends local performances by Blackstone the Magician several times between 1928 and 1931. Performs his own magic act for various service clubs and lodges and on Christmas Eve at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Hall.
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ray Bradbury dies In LA