You’re a good man, Charles Schulz. Today would have been the famed Peanuts creator’s 91st birthday. Born in Minneapolis in 1922, the prolific comic artist was 77 when he passed away in 2000.

In honor of the beloved cartoonist’s birthday, find out 17 little-known, lovely facts about the man who created Snoopy and Charlie Brown, below.

1. Peanuts was read daily by 355 million people worldwide in 75 countries, 2,600 newspapers, and 21 languages.

2. All in all, Schulz drew more than 18,250 comic strips across his 50-year career.

3. Schulz’s father, Carl Schulz, was a barber, just like Charlie Brown’s dad.

4. As a kid, Schulz practiced his art by drawing Popeye.

5. His kindergarten teacher told him ”Someday, Charles, you’re going to be an artist” after seeing one of his drawings.

6. Schulz served in the military during World War II as a staff sergeant in France and Germany. Once, he refused to throw a grenade at an artillery emplacement because he saw a small dog walk into it.

7. Schulz had a black and white dog named Spike, who inspired Snoopy’s cartoon brother by the same name.

8. George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strip was a major influence on Schulz’s work.

9. An art lover, Schulz loved Picasso, Andrew Wyeth, and Edward Hopper. Snoopy even displayed paintings by Van Gogh and Wyeth in his dog house.

10. When Peanuts first debuted, Schulz made $90 per week in royalties. But eventually the strip was so successful Schulz was earning $30 million to $40 million a year.

11. Snoopy was the official mascot of NASA. During the Apollo 11 mission, the lunar excursion model was called Snoopy and the command module was named Charlie Brown.

12. Schulz is often quoted as saying, “Happiness is waking up, looking at the clock and finding that you still have two hours left to sleep.”

13. His wife, Jeannie, once said that all of the Peanuts characters represented parts of Schulz’s personality. ”He’s crabby like Lucy, diffident like Charlie Brown. There’s a lot of Linus—he’s philosophical and wondering about life,” she noted. Schulz also loved classical music, like Schroeder, and was a war buff like Snoopy.

14. Part of Schulz’s daily comic-drawing routine was lunch in his studio—which was almost always a ham sandwich and a glass of milk.

15. Some of Schulz’s likes: golf, tennis (which he played with Billie Jean King), bridge, hockey, and ice skating. Dislikes: coconut, cats, and spending the night away from home.

16. He died just a few hours before his last cartoon was published in Sunday newspapers on Feb. 12, 2000.

17. Of his passing, his wife Jeannie said, ”He had done everything he wanted.”

Read the last Peanuts strip, in which Schulz announces his retirement, here.