Miguel de Cervantes

1547 – 1616 · died at about 69^[1][2]

Literature

Fun Facts About Miguel de Cervantes

• Miguel de Cervantes was captured by Ottoman corsairs in 1575 and held for ransom in Algiers. He made four escape attempts before a religious order paid for his freedom in 1580.^[1]
• Cervantes's remains went missing in 1673 during rebuilding work at the convent where he was buried. They were found and confirmed in 2015, partly from his injuries at Lepanto.^[1]
• Cervantes and Shakespeare are both tied to 23 April 1616, now World Book Day. But Cervantes died on the 22nd and was buried on the 23rd, and England's Julian calendar puts Shakespeare's death on another day.^[1][3][4]
• Wounded at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, Cervantes later wrote that he had "lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right." The only source on how disabled he was is Cervantes himself.^[1]
• Before Don Quixote, Cervantes bought wheat and oil for the doomed Spanish Armada, then became a tax collector and was briefly jailed over his accounts.^[1]
• No authenticated portrait of Cervantes is known to exist, so nobody knows for certain what the author of Don Quixote looked like.^[1]
• Miguel de Cervantes was alive at the same time as Michelangelo — their lives overlapped for 17 years (1547–1564).^[1][2][5][6]
• Miguel de Cervantes shares a birthday with Lech Wałęsa: both were born on September 29.^[1][2][7][8]

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his two-part novel Don Quixote, a work considered to be the first modern novel. Don Quixote has been labelled by many well-known authors as the "best book of all time" and the "best and most central work in world literature".^[1]

Contemporaries

Tokugawa Ieyasu

69 yr overlap

Akbar the Great

58 yr overlap

Elizabeth I

56 yr overlap

Francis Bacon

55 yr overlap

Tycho Brahe

54 yr overlap

Galileo Galilei

52 yr overlap

William Shakespeare

52 yr overlap

Sir Francis Drake

49 yr overlap

Johannes Kepler

45 yr overlap

Caravaggio

39 yr overlap

Peter Paul Rubens

39 yr overlap

René Descartes

20 yr overlap

Their World

Questions About Miguel de Cervantes

When was Miguel de Cervantes born?

Miguel de Cervantes was born on September 29, 1547, and died on April 22, 1616.

How old was Miguel de Cervantes at death?

Miguel de Cervantes was born on September 29, 1547, and died on April 22, 1616, at age 68.

What was Miguel de Cervantes known for?

Miguel de Cervantes was known for: Author of Don Quixote. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his two-part novel Don Quixote, a work considered to be the first modern novel. Don Quixote has been labelled by many well-known authors as the "best book of all time" and the "best and most central work in world literature".

Who was alive at the same time as Miguel de Cervantes?

Miguel de Cervantes's closest contemporary was Tokugawa Ieyasu. Their lives overlapped for 69 years.