Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) was the legendary American cartoonist famous for his comic strip "Peanuts" that features the beloved characters of Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Nicknamed "Sparky", Schulz's ambition from a young age was to be a cartoonist and his first success was selling 17 cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post between 1948 and 1950. He started submitting strips to the newspaper syndicates and in the spring of 1950, United Feature Syndicate expressed interest in Li'l Folks. They bought the strip, renaming it Peanuts, a title Schulz always loathed. The first Peanuts daily appeared October 2, 1950; the first Sunday, January 6, 1952. Peanuts continued for nearly 50 years, making it one of the longest running cartoon strips in history. Schulz completed 17,897 daily and Sunday strips in his lifetime, each and every one fully written, drawn, and lettered entirely by his own hand — an unmatched achievement in comics.