evidence: The facts. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born 21 June 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. His father was a physician and his mother a musician. He had one brother and four sisters. After High School he got a job at the Kansas City Star as a journalist. At eighteen, in 1918, he joined the war efforts as an ambulance driver. He served in both World Wars and reported on the Spanish Civil War. In 1954 he was almost killed in two subsequent plane crashes. He had four wives and three children—all sons. He was a big man, at his largest, 225 pounds and six feet tall. During his life Hemingway published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Posthumously, three more novels, four short stories, and three non-fiction pieces were published. In 1954, the same year he faced death twice, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He owned permanent residences in Key West, Florida and Cuba and, in 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho. His gross estate is estimated at $1,410,310. He owned one boat, Pilar, which cost him $7,495.