Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

And here's your 30-second summary.

Four sisters adventure through life in Civil War era New England.

They make the best of poverty and the absence of their father as they come of age and become the best little women that they can be.

And then one of them writes a novel about it that sells millions.

The end. Let's talk about Louisa May Elcott.

But first let's drop her into history.

In 1868, the first US parade with floats took place during Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama.

The refrigerator car and the stapler were both patented and helium was first discovered.

The military shogunate government ended in Japan and the governing power was returned to the emperor.

Cornell University opened in New York and the first traffic lights were installed outside Westminster Palace in London.

And WACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois, future and last Zarr Nicholas II of Russia and composer Scott Joplin were all born.

And in 1868, a coming of age novel about four sisters in Civil War era New England called Little Women was first published.

Louisa May Elcott was born on November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the second of the four surviving children of Amos, Bronson Elcott and Abigail May Elcot.

On her father's 33rd birthday, you think that would have created sort of a bond?

You would. It did one day a year.

Papa was from rural Connecticut and was a member of a mostly illiterate farming family who was lucky enough to have a mother who could teach him to read and write by drawing in charcoal on the floor of their house.

Even when he could go to school, boys were needed at home for harvest and for planting. We talked about that in Laura Ingalls Wilder that girls, this is very ironic.

Girls often got more education than boys did.

For an mostly illiterate family, they changed the spelling of their names so often.

Originally, it had been Alcock, ALC, okay. It had morphed into Al Cox, COX and eventually Bronson himself changed it to Alcott.

Well, also you can see how you might be sick of people cackling at Amos All Cox.

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