Born in Albany, New York, on August 6, 1874, Charles Fort made his life's work the study of unexplained phenomena. After achieving modest success as a short story writer and novelist, he began his systematic study and cataloging of anomalous phenomena in the early 1910s. His research topics included mysterious beasts, spontaneous combustion, interplanetary visitations, poltergeists, and other phenomena written off by science. In his lifetime, Fort published four books on the unexplained and was cele¬brated in The New York Times as the "Enfant Terrible of Science," Fort's name was made into an adjective-Fortean-describing strange phenomena. A lasting influence on the evolution of science fiction as well as critiques of science, Fort stands as one of the most fascinating and polarizing figures in all of Ameri¬can culture. He died on May 3, 1932, in New York.