Also on this day

The Eiger is climbed for the first time.

Babe Ruth, right, becomes first baseball player to hit 500 home runs.

The infamous Watts race riots begin in Los Angeles.

consolidated into the Carnegie Steel Company, which dominated the US industry.

The income was enormous. In 1901, he sold his corporation to financier JP Morgan for $480million – more than £14billion. He then retired and devoted his life to philanthropy.

Even before he was so wealthy, Carnegie had written: “The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.”

He established charitable foundations and the Carnegie Institutes. He set up libraries and helped spread reading and education throughout the English-speaking world. By the time of his death in 1919 he had given away the equivalent of £64billion today.

Carnegie, together with his contemporary industrialist John D Rockefeller, earned fortunes that are scarcely conceivable. But they also started a trend of US philanthropy that continues to this day.

Question: Which English author, who has sold more than 600 million books, was born on this day in 1897?

Last week I asked: Who, on this day, is said to have invented champagne. The answer is: Benedictine monk DOM PERIGNON.

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