Who was Cervantes?

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer. He was born on 29th September, 1547 in Alcalá de Henares and died on 22nd April, 1616 in Madrid. Before he was a writer he was a soldier. He fought in the battle of Lepanto and lost the use of a hand. After that he was sent to prison several times and finally died as a poor man. During his life he wrote a novel called Don Quixote, which became very famous after Cervantes' death. Nowadays, Don Quixote is one of the most important novels in the Spanish literature.

William Shakespeare was an English poet and actor. He was born on 23rd April 1564 in Warwickshire and died on 23rd April, 1616 in the same place. He married Anne Hathaway when he was 18 and had 3 kids. Years later, he went to London. There, he became very famous and he wrote some plays. Some of them are very famous, like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. He lost his son and his grandsons didn't have any children, so nowadays there aren't any descendants alive. He is considered one of the most important poets in the English literature and the English language is often called the Shakespeare language.

Both of them died on the same date, but not on the same day. This happened because the calendar that people was using in Spain was different from the one they were using in England. If they had been using the same calendar, Shakespeare would have died on 3rd May of that year.