Today in literary history: July 8

Here's what happened on July 11 in literary history.

• 1822: Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley tried to sail across Italy’s Lerici Bay to his home, during a storm; days after he left, his body was found along the shore. Italian laws at that time required that any body washed ashore be burned, and one of the witnesses to Shelley's cremation pulled the poet's heart and jawbone from the fire, launching the legend that the poet's heart was too pure to burn. (Source: The Poetry Foundation)

• 1900: Poet Robert Frost’s son Elliott died at age three of typhoid fever; the deep grief and miscommunication of a couple who have lost a child later appeared in Frost's poem "Home Burial.” (Source: The Frost Place)

• 1918: An Austrian mortar shell landed about three feet away from Ernest Hemingway, then an American Red Cross volunteer — and teenager — delivering chocolate to soldiers on the Italian front; he was knocked over and hit with shrapnel, but still managed to carry a wounded soldier on his back to safety. (Source: Literary Hub)

• 1923: Nella Larsen, who later wrote the novels Quicksand and Passing, graduated from the New York Public Library's library school and became the first professionally trained Black librarian; interestingly, she was also the first Black woman to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. (Sources: Literary Hub and Encyclopedia Britannica)