In 1947 Charles Schulz started a cartoon strip that was known as L'il Folks for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The strip was very unsuccessful and was never given a permanent spot in the newspaper. In 1950 Schulz put all of his strips together and sold his entire comic series to the United Features Syndicate. They changed the name of the strip from L'il Folks to Peanuts which Schulz originally refused to the name change because he felt that Peanuts was undignified and insignificant. By the 1980s and the 1990s had a very large fortune from his Peanuts cartoon strips and he gave a lot of that money to charity. In November of 1999 Schulz had a stroke that impaired his vision, memory and his motivation for drawing. So, On December 14, 1999 he announced that he was retiring. On January 3 of 2003 the final peanuts daily strip was published and on February 12 Charles Schulz died at age 78 from colon cancer.
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