The Peanuts comic strip first appeared

On October 2, 1950, Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip Peanuts debuted in seven newspapers, including the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Few readers that morning could have guessed they were meeting one of the most beloved casts in American culture.

Schulz hadn’t chosen the name. He had drawn a feature called Li’l Folks; his syndicate rebranded it Peanuts, a title he never liked. The early strip was spare and gentle — round-headed children trading anxieties far larger than themselves.

Over the next half-century Schulz drew nearly every panel himself, building a world of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and a perpetually undelivered football. By his death in 2000, Peanuts ran in some 2,600 newspapers across dozens of countries.

Schulz drew roughly 17,800 strips without ever handing the pen to an assistant.