John and Abigail

Twenty-eight year-old John Adams married Abigail Smith on October 25, 1764. The lawyer, founding father and second president appears five times in A Book of Ages.

Jackie and Ari

On this day in 1968, Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy. He was 62. She was 38. After five years as the grieving widow of a martyred president she suddenly became Jackie O. Her new husband was rich, magnetic, mysterious, but to a public accustomed to pairing beauty with glamor he seemed strange and a bit creepy. Aristotle Onassis appears six times in A Book of Ages, emigrating penniless from Turkey, working as a dishwasher, smuggling cigarettes and opium, sleeping with Evita Peron and Maria Callas.

Tom and Viv

In September 1932, T. S. Eliot moved out of the London apartment he shared with his wife, Vivien. The poet was 43. They'd been married for almost twenty years, but her mental illness had made her increasingly difficult to live with. She had begun biting visitors. The poet (who was never married to the novelist George Eliot) appears seven times in A Book of Ages.

Clinton Agonistes

On August 17, 1998, Bill Clinton became the first sitting President of the United States to be forced to testify in a criminal case of which he was the target. He was alleged to have lied about an affair while under oath. The interrogation by prosecutors went on for four hours in the Map Room in the White House, and the entire thing was videotaped and broadcast to the nation. Many of the questions were of a probing, extremely personal nature, which no one watching on television could imagine being expected to answer themselves. Clinton answered the questions anyway. His national approval ratings, already above 70 percent, went even higher. He was 51. He and Hillary had been married for 23 years and are still married.