Jules Verne

Pioneering science-fiction writer Jules Gabriel Verne was born in the French port city of Nantes on 8 February, 1828, to Pierre Verne, a successful lawyer, and his wife Sophie. Verne published Five Weeks in a Balloon in 1863, an immediate hit which was followed by Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), and his two most inspiring books, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). Verne died of old age and illness on March 24, 1905.