How old was Mark Twain when he died?

Mark Twain was 74 years old when he died. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri, he died on April 21, 1910, at his home in Redding, Connecticut.

Twain became famous as a humorist, lecturer, journalist, and author of works including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. His pen name came from a Mississippi River sounding call meaning two fathoms, or twelve feet, of water.

His death followed a period of declining health, and contemporary reports described it as occurring after a long illness. A common mistake is to confuse his age with the year of death or to calculate it by subtracting 1835 from 1910 without noticing that his birthday had not yet arrived. He was therefore 74, not 75. Twain was buried in the Langdon family plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York.