For half a century, Charles Schulz woke up and drew the daily Peanuts comic strip. He single-handedly wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered every single panel without relying on a team of assistants. By the turn of the millennium, his comic was syndicated in over two thousand newspapers globally and read by hundreds of millions of people. However, late in 1999, Schulz was diagnosed with an illness and realized he could no longer maintain the grueling daily schedule. On January 3, 2000, the very last original weekday Peanuts comic strip was published in newspapers around the world. Instead of a traditional joke, the final daily strip featured Snoopy sitting on top of his doghouse with his typewriter. The panel contained a heartfelt, typed letter from Schulz directly to his readers, announcing his retirement and thanking them for their loyalty over the decades. It marked the definitive end of an era for print media and pop culture. Schulz passed away in his sleep just weeks later, the exact night before his final Sunday strip ran in the weekend papers. The January 3 strip remains a historic piece of art, perfectly concluding the longest continuous story ever told by a single human being.