Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) was born on this day in Minneapolis. Known to his friends as Sparky, he served as a combat soldier in World War II and quietly carried those experiences into the tender humor of his work.

“No problem,” Schulz observed, “is so formidable that you can’t walk away from it.” His cartoons made room for doubt and disappointment, yet always with a soft landing.

After the war, a church publication hired him to draw comics, and there he created a boy named Charlie Brown and a girl with red hair. “It seems beyond comprehension of people that someone can be born to draw comic strips, but I think I was,” he admitted. “My ambition from earliest memory was to produce a daily comic strip.”

In 1950, he introduced his small cast of “Li’l Folks” to seven newspapers. The strip was soon renamed Peanuts, a title Schulz never loved, but his characters—earnest, awkward, and wise—won the hearts of readers around the world.

The strip’s popularity grew because of the gentle wisdom shared by its children. Schulz once joked, “Some days are like being in the ‘ten items or less’ line behind a dozen people who don’t understand the new math,” capturing the frustration and comedy of everyday life.

By 2000, Charlie Brown and the gang appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and were translated into 21 languages. Beloved beagle Snoopy became one of the most widely recognized cartoon characters in the world.