Cartoonist. Born November 26, 1922, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After studying art through a correspondence course and contributing freelance cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post, Schulz created a newspaper comic strip tentatively titled "Li'l Folks" in 1950. The strip was accepted for syndication under the new title, "Peanuts," and became the most successful cartoon strip in history, read by an estimated 355 million people worldwide. The childhood travails of Charlie Brown, his friends Lucy and Linus, and his dog Snoopy, have been immortalized in more than 30 animated television specials and four full-length cartoon films. The holiday special A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered in 1965 and still runs every December.

The man who made "good grief" a household phrase was also history's most widely syndicated comic strip artist and fittingly was awarded with numerous honors, including International Cartoonist of the Year in 1978, two Reuben Awards in 1955 and 1964, and in 1990, France's Commander of Arts and Letters.

Many of the Peanuts characters had real-life counterparts. Schulz's childhood dog, Spike, was the inspiration for Snoopy; The Little Red-Haired Girl, Charlie Brown's unrequited love interest, was inspired by a girlfriend of Schulz's who rejected him. Even Charlie Brown was a real-life friend of Schulz's. But it was Schulz who turned Charlie Brown into an eternal symbol of the Everyman. He personally drew and wrote every "Peanuts" cartoon for 50 years and went so far as to have a clause written into his contract that prevented the strip from continuing after his death.

Devoted to his beloved characters, Schulz continued writing and drawing "Peanuts" after he underwent quintuple bypass surgery in 1981, and he wrote for years with a hand tremor. He was finally forced to stop working in November 1999, after he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

His last daily comic strip ran in early January 2000. On the eve of his last Sunday comic strip, which appeared on February 13, 2000, Charles Schulz died at home at age 77. He was survived by his wife, Jeannie, and five children, Meredith, Monte, Craig, Amy, and Jill. In the final "Peanuts" strip, Schulz included a poignant comic and a signed farewell message to his editors, his fans, and of course, his characters: "Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can I ever forget them..."