Today Is... The Day Vincent van Gogh Was Born

In his life, Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting and that was to a member of his own family so he died not only an ear light but not knowing just what he had achieved which if you look at his paintings, you can see why people were not flocking to hang his paintings on their walls at the time.
There is a very poignant line in Del Amitri's 'Nothing Ever Happens' where he laments that 'American businessmen snap up Van Gogh's for the price of a hospital wing' and they do, his Sunflowers painting sold for over £100 million so that shows what i know about art, the first thing i see when i look at the Sunflowers is not an exceptional example of still life impressionism but that he painted that vase wonky.
As for the ear thing for which he is most famous for, he cut it off after an argument with his fellow painter Paul Gauguin with whom he shared a flat with and said he wanted to leave because Vincent was just too nuts and moody to live with which Van Gogh denied and to prove it attacked him with a straight razor and then used it to chop off part of his ear and gave it to his favorite prostitute, because everyone takes rejection in their own way.
After a trip to the hospital, he was put into a mental asylum which he used the time to put the finishing touches on his most famous masterpiece, Starry Night, and tried to repeatedly kill himself by ingesting his paint and paraffin.
He spent the last few months between home and hospital and gave the doctor who treated him a painting as thanks which he used to repair the floor of his chicken coop.
His depression grew worse and one day walked into a wheat field and shot himself in the chest but unbelievably the bullet missed all his vital organs and he walked back to town and got treated by a doctor but died two days later from an untreated infection resulting from the bullet wound.
The irony was that in his life he sold 1 painting for about £9 but in death, as well as the tens of million for his paintings, the gun he used to sort of kill himself sold for £144,000.