Bill Nye

Born Edgar Wilson Nye in Shirley, Maine, on August 25, 1850, he grew up partly in Wisconsin and later became widely known by the pen name Bill Nye. Before finding a large audience as a humorist, he studied law, spent time in the American West, and founded and edited the Laramie Boomerang, a Wyoming newspaper that helped build his reputation.

His writing mixed journalism, storytelling, and comic exaggeration. Readers especially knew him for a relaxed, deadpan style that poked fun at politics, history, travel, and ordinary mishaps without sounding heavy or formal. In the last part of the 19th century, he became one of America's most popular humor writers, and he also appeared on the lecture circuit, including collaborations with poet James Whitcomb Riley.

Nye died on February 22, 1896, in Arden, North Carolina. Though his fame is quieter today than it once was, his work still offers a lively glimpse of American humor in the Gilded Age, full of playful mock-history, newspaper wit, and a voice that feels surprisingly modern.