Mark Twain
Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Confederate soldier
Close friends with Ulysses S. Grant; claimed to be “Grant intoxicated”
Encouraged President Grant to write his memoir before he died. Later said “I think the book kept him alive several months.”
On the invention of the telephone: "The voice already carries entirely too far as it is… If Bell had invented a muffler or a gag [he'd] have done a real service" He still convinced his boss at the newspaper to get a telephone for the newsroom. And he installed two phones at his house.
