On this day, March 27, 1881, illustrator Thornton Oakley was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Oakley studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and then went to Wilmington, Delaware to study illustration with Howard Pyle, saying later that until then he had never held a painter’s palette in his hands. Oakley went on to have a 40+ year career as an illustrator working for the periodicals and also illustrating a series of travel books written by his wife.