What you didn't know about Roald Dahl on his 100th birthday

Roald Dahl is shown in this image from the television series 'Tales of the Unexpected.' (RoaldDahl.com)

Fans are celebrating 100 years since the birth of famed children's author Roald Dahl, who penned such beloved works as "Matilda" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," after an adventurous career as a fighter pilot, diplomat and spy during the Second World War.

Dahl was born the son of Norwegian immigrants in Llandaff, Wales, on Sept. 13, 1916, and his father died when he was three. Dahl was filled with wanderlust as an adolescent, and according to his autobiographical "Boy: Tales of Childhood," he refused an offer to pay for his university tuition at Oxford or Cambridge, saying instead that he wanted to "go straight from school to work for a company that will send me to wonderful faraway places like Africa or China."

Dahl sees the world

Dahl first indulged his wanderlust as a teenager in the early 1930s, when he visited Newfoundland (pre-Confederation) on a school expedition. Upon graduating in 1934, Dahl joined the Shell Oil Company and started travelling the world – including Africa – before joining the U.K.'s Royal Air Force in 1939, after the start of the Second World War.

Dahl flew missions in Libya in 1940, but his time as a pilot was cut short when he crash-landed in Egypt, suffering injuries that forced him to take a non-combat role for the RAF, as a diplomat assigned to Washington during the war. Dahl was also secretly charged with feeding information back to the U.K. as a spy, although those details about him didn't come out until several biographies were published in the late 2000s. During this time Dahl became known as a sort of "lady's man" in American high society, dating many wealthy and influential women.

Dahl started taking himself seriously as a writer during his time in the United States. He published his first paid piece of work, an account of being shot down in Libya, in 1942, followed by his first children's book, "Gremlins," in 1943.

He spent the next decade-and-a-half writing mostly for adults, penning several short story anthologies, a post-apocalyptic novel ("Some Time Never"), and a stage play "The Honeys." He married his first wife, Patricia Neal, during this time, and fathered five children with her. One of those children, Olivia, died in 1962 at the age of seven.

Dahl enters his prime

But it wasn't until the 1960s that Dahl really hit his stride as a children's author, with a string of massive hits that included "James and the Giant Peach" (1961), "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (1964), "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (1968) and "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator" (1972). He also wrote the script for the whimsical Disney film "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," based on the novel by Bond author Ian Fleming.

Most of his work around this time was kid-friendly, although he drew on his espionage background in 1961, to pen the screenplay for the James Bond film "You Only Live Twice," which was also based on work by Ian Fleming. Additionally, Dahl started appearing on television in 1961, as host of the show "Way Out."

He continued writing mostly children's books for the remainder of his career, with some of his best-known stories like "The BFG" (1982), "The Witches" (1983) and "Matilda" (1988) published in the last decade of his life.

Legacy

Dahl died at the age of 74 on Nov. 23, 1990, but his works have lived on in print and on film. Several of his books have been turned into live-action films, including "The Witches," in 1990, "Matilda," in 1996, and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (as "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" in 1971 and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" in 2005). Animated versions of "Fantastic Mr. Fox" (2009) and "James and the Giant Peach" (1996) have also been released, and "The BFG" has been adapted as an animated feature (1989) and a live-action film (2016).

On the 100th anniversary of Dahl's birth, many fans shared inspiring quotes from his books, which encourage children to read and seek wonder and magic in their lives. Most of the quotes were shared under the hashtag #RoaldDahlDay, which is promoted each year by the Dahl estate's official website.

On Tuesday, former child actress Mara Wilson, who starred as the main character in the film adaptation of "Matilda," released a memoir about her experience growing up after playing the iconic role. When asked on Twitter whether her book release was scheduled to coincide with Roald Dahl Day, she said it was a "funny coincidence."

The actress says she's still most often linked to that childhood performance.

"'Matilda' has been name-checked by librarians and feminist bloggers alike, and I'm flattered, though the compliment does not seem to be mine to receive," she wrote in a 2012 post on her website. "I didn't write 'Matilda' or direct the movie, I just played the part. Still, what I did was important to them."

Sophie Dahl shared memories of her late grandfather in a piece for The Guardian on Tuesday, in which she wrote about visiting his estate, called Gipsy House, as a young child. She describes at length the various chocolates and candies she and her grandfather would eat together, adding that he loved sweets because he "grew up fatherless, in an era before chocolate was readily available... Sweetshops peppered his boyhood and boyhood writing.

"Magic and food permeated his books, and so did orphans, real or metaphorical," Sophie Dahl wrote. "This is (his) legacy for my daughters, and for countless other children: heroines and heroes who are brave, sometimes scared, funny and always innovative in the face of adversity. Survivors."