1. Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797.
2. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Woolstonecraft; her husband was the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
3. August 30 was also the birthday in 1400 of Vlad II Dracul, father of Vlad the Impaler who is seen by many as an inspiration for Dracula.
4. Mary Shelley and Percy were spending a “wet ungenial summer” as she put it visiting Lord Byron in Geneva when Byron suggested they all write ghost stories. Frankenstein was one of the results.
5. She was only 18 when she started writing it.
6. Another of Byron’s guests was John Polidori who wrote “The Vampyre” 80 years before Dracula.
7. The original monster had flowing hair, yellow, near-translucent skin, glowing eyes and black lips.
8. The portrayal of the monster with neck bolts, stitches and a flat head began in a 1931 film.
9. Baron Frankenstein may have been inspired by alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel (1673-1734) who lived at Frankenstein Castle, Darmstadt, Germany.
10. The White Pages phone directory in the US lists 504 people named Frankenstein.