30 Things You Didn’t Know About Dr. Seuss

Source: Kenneth A Schade

11. Helen Palmer, a fellow student at Oxford who was to become his first wife, encouraged him to give up the academic world to concentrate on his art.

Source: Kenneth A Schade

12. He and Helen were unable to have children, but he sometimes pretended humorously to have offsprings, with names like Chrysanthemum-Pearl, Wickersham, Miggles, and Boo-boo.

Source: Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle in the 1922 Saturday Evening Post / Wikimedia Commons

13. His first published cartoon appeared in a popular weekly magazine, “The Saturday Evening Post,” in 1927.

Source: Jean M / Flickr

14. In 1929, he drew a four-panel cartoon for the satirical weekly Judge that included a blatantly racist image, complete with the n-word.

Source: Gutzemberg / iStock

15. When it ran into financial difficulties, Judge began paying him in merchandise, including 100 cartons of shaving cream on one occasion and 13 gross of nail clippers on another.