- The video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" is based on his short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings".
- Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1982).
- Worked as a foreign correspondent in Caracas, Rome, Geneva, Poland, Hungary, Paris, Barcelona, Mexico, India and New York City.
- His most successful novels include "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967), "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" (1981) and "Love in the Time of Cholera" (1985), which was made into the movie Love in the Time of Cholera (2007).
- His book Love in the Time of Cholera is featured as a major prop in Serendipity (2001).
- Good friends with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
- After learning that he suffered from lymphatic cancer in 1999, he wrote his autobiography "Vivir para contarla" ("Living to Tell the Tale", 2002).
- Member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982
- Born to Gabriel Eligio García and Luisa Santiaga Márquez, he was raised by his grandparents Nicolas Ricardo Márquez, a veteran of the Thousand Days War, and Tranquilinia Iguarán Cotes.
- Pictured on a 55c Spanish commemorative postage stamp, issued 22 April 2015.
- His widow and muse, born Mercedes Barcha Pardo, 6 November 1932, in Magangué, Colombia, died in Mexico City, 15 August 2020.
- Pictured on a 200p Colombian commemorative postage stamp issued 14 July 2015.
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