Hemingway

In 1944, Ernest Hemingway met Time and Life correspondent Mary Welsh while in London to cover the Allied invasion of France for Collier's. Mary would eventually move to Cuba to be with him, living in the Finca, which he had once shared with previous wife Martha Gellhorn prior to their separation during the war. The pair wed in 1946, but their marriage would be turbulent in the years following.

In the summer of 1953, Ernest and Mary were involved in two plane crashes in two days while in Africa. Following the first accident, word had spread that the writer died, many publications prematurely publishing his obituary before the couple finally arrived at their destination of Entebbe. Though both were injured, Hemingway suffered yet another traumatic brain injury with a fractured skull.

As another war in Europe loomed with Adolf Hitler's rise and the spread of fascism, Hemingway told readers of "Esquire" that America shouldn't get involved. Yet when Spain found itself in the midst of civil war and fascist Francisco Franco, with the aid of Hitler and Benito Mussolini, worked to overthrow the socialist government, the author felt called to return to the country he loved.

After Ernest Hemingway's relationship with Martha Gellhorn came to light and the two began to openly live together in Cuba, Pauline Hemingway did what she could to try to save her 13-year marriage with her husband. Yet despite her reluctance to grant him a divorce, on September 3, 1939, Hemingway told Pauline he was leaving her.

Referring to himself as "Papa," Ernest Hemingway strived to be an expert on everything. This desire to be knowledgeable on all subjects was often reflected in his writing, especially as he sought to master nonfiction and hoped to pass forward his learnings to others. Studying Hemingway as a young writer, novelist Ralph Ellison once learned how to lead a bird from a hunting description in his work.

Ernest Hemingway returned to Spain to cover the civil war for the North American Newspaper Alliance, reporting alongside Collier's writer Martha Gellhorn. Beginning a three-year affair, the two stayed at the Hotel Florida, where other correspondents also resided to witness the events, despite its close proximity to a Loyalist communications center, making it an unintended target of enemy shells.

Published in the fall of 1940 at the end of the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" follows character Robert Jordan, a young American college instructor, in his fight against fascism. Senator John McCain discusses the profound impact the novel and its hero had on him.

In 1935, a hurricane hit Florida killing more than 400 people, including 259 homeless veterans of WWI. Hemingway, whose peers denounced him during the Great Depression for his refusal to declare solidarity with the working class, admonished the Roosevelt administration in "New Masses" magazine for its role in sending veterans south to build highway bridges to bring visitors to the Florida Keys.

In the spring of 1939, Ernest Hemingway returned to Havana, Cuba where Martha Gellhorn would later join him. Martha rented the Finca Vigía, a 10-acre property outside the city where they could live together, which Hemingway would eventually buy and would become his home for the next two decades.

Often fishing and hunting with his father as a young boy, Ernest Hemingway fostered a love for the great outdoors and hoped to become a naturalist like his hero Theodore Roosevelt. As a teenager, he was a passionate reader and took up writing at his school's literary magazine. His mother encouraged him to practice his art, helping form the strict writers' discipline he maintained into adulthood.

Edna O'Brien reads a passage from Ernest Hemingway's "Up in Michigan." She challenges the idea that the author, who wrote from the perspective of character Liz Coates in this short story, hated women.

During WWI, Ernest Hemingway joined the Red Cross Ambulance Service where he was sent to Italy, helping to gather the dead and tend to wounded soldiers. On July 8, 1918, while volunteering to pass out chocolate bars to men at a forward listening post, he was caught in the blast of an enemy mortar shell, injured by over 220 pieces of shrapnel, and was subsequently shot by an enemy machine gunner.