E. B. White

On this day in 1985 he died at the age of 86. He was an essayist, poet, novelist. His advice to writers: "Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." It was he who convinced the New Yorker that the drawings of his friend James Thurber should be published in the magazine.