It's the birthday of Umberto Eco

It's the birthday of Umberto Eco, born in the Piedmont region of Italy (1932). He started out as a philosopher and literary critic, and became one of the first intellectuals to study popular culture, writing serious essays about James Bond movies and Superman comics and other products of pop culture that had previously been ignored by literary critics.  Then, one day, Eco decided to produce some popular culture himself. He got an idea for a murder mystery set in a monastery in the middle ages, and he called it The Name of the Rose. When it came out in 1980, The Name of the Rose sold 2 million copies. He's continued writing novels since then, including Foucault's Pendulum (1988) and The Island of the Day Before (1995).