Theodor Seuss Geisel, who was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1904 was called Ted as a boy. His father, Theodor Robert Geisel, often took him to the city zoo. Little ted who was inspired by these visits, with his mother Henrietta Seuss Geisel’s encouragement started drawing animal caricatures on his bedroom walls and that is how a famous author and cartoonist Dr.Seuss came into existence. Read along to know more such interesting things about this renowned personality.

He wasn’t really a doctor, the pen name “Dr. Seuss” began as a way to escape punishment in college

In the midst of the Prohibition Era, Seuss and his friends were caught drinking gin in his Dartmouth dormitory dorm. As punishment, Seuss was stripped of his editorship at the college’s humor magazine. Later, he continued to publish work under a variety of pseudonyms, such as “T. Seuss” and “Dr. Theophrastus Seuss” eventually he shortened the name to “Dr. Seuss” as his professional pen name. In fact, some even say that his father had always wanted him to practice medicine and be a doctor, maybe that was also one of the triggers why Seuss ended up making this pseudonym Dr. Seuss his formal pen name.   

He joined the war effort

From 1941, Seuss produced political cartoons for the left-wing newspaper PM in New York. In those papers, he criticized the U.S. policy of isolationism, urging the country to enter World War II.

He was a famous ad man before a children’s author

He had worked for top Brands of his time

He wrote copy and drew advertisements for companies such as Standard Oil and Flit bug spray, which, in particular, became his most profitable work.

Green Eggs and Ham was born out of a dare

His friend bet that he couldn’t write a book with just 50 different words, and so, Green Eggs and Ham was born.

He had a Collection of Unorthodox Taxidermy

He used the antlers, bills, and horns of deceased zoo animals to create taxidermy sculptures. There are 17 sculptures that Dr. Seuss created in the mid-1930s. He had used some of them for advertising purposes, a couple of them he used to help sell his first book when he was living in New York City and some he created because he was always interested in creating something new.