The under-confident yet resilient spirit of Charlie Brown forever accompanied by his pet beagle Snoopy; the bossy and overbearing Lucy van Pelt and brown's philosopher friend Linus van Pelt — so many memorable characters the comic strip Peanuts gave us and all the credit goes to American cartoonist Charles M Schulz, fondly known as Sparky. These four-framed comic strips were translated into 21 languages and reached as many as 75 countries. It was on February 13, 2000, that we saw the last Peanut strip by Schulz where beloved beagle Snoopy was seen typing 'Dear friends', which was followed by a letter from the cartoonist and the World War II veteran himself. And it was one day before that the creator himself lost his life to colon cancer.
While the comic ran, Schulz regularly dropped truth bombs like 'Happiness is a warm puppy' and Snoopy's eternal mantra, 'Just roll with it' that continue to serve as a great read.
Just sprayed it
On February 13, 2014, just before the Lok Sabha was set to vote on the proposal of carving out the state of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, Congress party lawmaker L Rajagopal deemed it fit to unleash a pepper spray to prevent the bill from coming to vote. This left many of his colleagues in a coughing fit and disrupted the proceedings. Many called it a sad day for democracy.
