Roald Dahl Facts For Kids | Author Of Children Books

A tall man, Roald Dahl, was not only a pilot in Royal Air Force but one of the best authors of children books. He fought World War II and had his fighter aircraft crashed into the desert but luckily he survived. Apart from reading literature, he had a great interest in photography and he was often seen traveling different places with his camera in hands. His parents migrated from Norway to England but he was born in England in 1916. So let’s have a look at Roald Dahl facts for kids about this wonderful and versatile personality.

Roald Dahl Facts For Kids

Date of Birth: September 13, 1916

Place of Birth: Villa Marie, Llandaff

Period in Royal Air Force (RAF): From 1939 to 1946

Date of Death: November 23, 1990

Age: 74

Early Life Roald Dahl

1. Roald Amundsen was a famous Norwegian explorer who went to South and North poles during early 1900s. Roald Dahl was named after him.
2. Dahl studied at The Cathedral School in Llandaff after he was 7.
3. He was sent to Saint Peter’s boarding school in England. He didn’t like that school and used to write letter every week to her mother back home.
4. He went to the school in Derbyshire called Repton School in 1929.
5. While he was just 8, he along with his four mates played a practical joke on one of the shopkeepers named Mrs. Pratchett. She was the owner of a shop of sweets and was a very dirty woman. Dahl and his friends put a dead mouse in a container of jawbreakers (gobstoppers). The headmaster of the Cathedral School punished Dahl and his friends physically while Mrs. Pratchett enjoyed watching them and told the headmaster to punish more. Dahl and his friends called this the ‘Great Mouse Plot of 1924’.
6. He was not a good writer in his early years of school life.
7. He was fond of studying literature and also had a great interest in photography.
8. In the early years of Dahl’s life, he used to spend most of the summer vacations in his grandmother’s home in Norway.

Family and Marriage of Roald Dahl

1. During 1880s, his father moved from his home in Norway to United Kingdom.
2. His parents got married in 1911.
3. His parents were Norwegian.
4. The name of his father was Harald Dahl.
5. The name of his mother was Sofie Magdalene Dahl.
6. The names of his sisters were Else, Astri and Alfhild.
7. Dahl’s sister Astri died at the age of 7 due to appendicitis (swelling of appendix). At the time, Dahl was only 3 years old.
8. Dahl got married in the city of New York with the US artist Patricia Neal. The marriage took place in the Trinity Church on July 2, 1953.
9. The marriage continued for about 30 years.
10. Dahl had 5 kids.
11. One of his sons was named Theo Dahl. He had an accident when he was just about 4 months old. While riding on a baby cart in the city of New York on December 5, 1960, he crashed into a yellow cab and had serious injuries.
12. Just 2 years after the accident of Theo Dahl, one of his daughters named Olivia Dahl died. She was only 7 at the time.
13. In 1983, Dahl and his wife Neal got separated.
14. Dahl got married the second time with Felicity Crosland in London’s Brixton Town Hall.
15. When his sister Astri passed away in 1920, his father Harald Dahl died in the same month due to pneumonia. He was 57 at the time and was fishing in the Antarctic just before death.

Adult Life

1. Dahl went to the company of Shell Petroleum in July 1934.
2. While flying a fighter aircraft, once Dahl landed the aircraft on the desert. He broke his nose and skull. The aircraft was smashed into pieces after hitting a big rock. He was also partially blind at the time.
3. While he was sent to the hospital of Royal Navy in Alexandria (the second biggest city of Egypt) to recover his eyesight, he fell in love with one of the nurses named Mary Welland.

More Roald Dahl Facts For Kids

1. He was 6 feet 6 inches tall.
2. He died in Oxford due to a blood disease called Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).
3. His grave is in a British village called Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire.
4. Roald Dahl was a pilot, an author, screenwriter and writer for short stories.
5. He wrote an autobiography called “Boy: Tales of Childhood”.
6. Dahl’s first book ever published was in August 1, 1942. The name of this book was ‘A Piece of Cake’.
7. Dahl’s first book for children was published in 1943. The name of this book was ‘The Gremlins’.
8. During World War II, he was a fighter pilot in Royal Air Force. He was holding the rank of a wing commander.

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