10/31/1920 Dick Francis is born

October 31, 1920.  A great jockey.  A pilot in World War II.  A bestselling novelist.   And from all I hear, a pretty nice fella.  He certainly wrote some of the best opening lines in the business:

Gordon Micheals stood in the fountain with all his clothes on. -BANKER

I looked at my friend and saw a man who had robbed me. -HIGH STAKES

Art Matthews shot himself, loudly and messily, in the center of the parade ring at Dunstable races. -NERVE

And he was born on Halloween, not as significant a date in the U.K. as in the U.S.  But in his novel The Danger (opening sentence: "There was a god awful cockup in Bologna.") his British hero solves a kidnapping in part because of his knowledge of American Halloween customs.