On July 31, 1965, in the English town of Yate near Bristol, Joanne Rowling was born. She loved telling stories to her little sister Dianne almost as soon as she could talk, scribbling tales about rabbits and adventures in notebooks. She had no idea that one day her stories would be read by hundreds of millions of people in 80 different languages.
The big idea came in 1990 on a delayed train from Manchester to London. A skinny boy with messy hair and round glasses just popped into her head, and she could see him as clear as anything. She didn't have a pen, so she sat there for four hours imagining a school for wizards. Over the next seven years she wrote on napkins, in cafes, and on her old typewriter while raising her baby daughter. Twelve publishers turned down her book before a small London publisher, Bloomsbury, said yes after the chairman's eight-year-old daughter loved the first chapter.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out in 1997, and the rest is magic. Seven books, eight movies, theme parks, a Broadway play, and over 600 million copies sold later, Rowling proved that a single great idea scribbled on a napkin really can change the world. And here's the best part: her hero Harry Potter shares her exact birthday, July 31. She gave him her birthday as a gift.
