X-Nico

68 unusual facts about Arthur Conan Doyle


1886–87 St. Mary's Y.M.A. season

Playing in goal for the Portsmouth side was "A. C. Smith", a pseudonym for Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle.

A Catalogue of Crime

Included are, of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, the originator of Holmes and the author of the 60 Holmes stories (56 short stories and four novelas).

Anti-Mormonism

Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (1889), the novel in which the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance, includes a very negative depiction of the early Mormon community in Utah after its migration westwards and the foundation of Salt Lake City.

Arthur Wontner

Arthur Wontner (21 January 1875 – 10 July 1960) was a British actor best known for playing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's master detective Sherlock Holmes in five films from 1931 to 1937.

Arthurdactylus

It was in 1994 named by Eberhard Frey and David Martill in honor of Arthur Conan Doyle, who featured large reptilian pterosaurs in his novel The Lost World, about a professor finding prehistoric animals still alive on a plateau in South-America.

Baskerville Holmes

His unique name was given to him by his mother who was inspired by Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's crime novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Battle of Sedgemoor

The Battle of Sedgemoor is depicted in detail at the climax of plot in Arthur Conan Doyle's historical adventure novel "Micah Clarke".

Bernadette Pajer

Pajer's Bradshaw applies his knowledge of the new science of electrical engineering to solve murders in novels that resonate with the classic style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Alan Poe.

Bounty jumper

He would become known as the "Napoleon of Crime", a label Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would borrow when creating the character Professor Moriarty, whom Doyle loosely based on Worth.

Charles Augustus Howell

His reputation as a blackmailer inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, Charles Augustus Milverton.

Claude Joseph Vernet

In Arthur Conan Doyle's short story "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", fictional detective Sherlock Holmes claims that his grandmother is Vernet's sister, without stating whether this is Claude Joseph or Antoine Charles Horace's sister.

Clyro

It is said that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a family friend and visitor, with obvious consequences.

Cryptofiction

Examples include works by Jules Verne (The Mysterious Island), Arthur Conan Doyle (The Lost World), and Edgar Rice Burroughs (The Land That Time Forgot), and recent fiction such as Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) and Steve Alten (the Meg series and The Loch).

Danite

Arthur Conan Doyle and other authors had also popularized the idea of blood-thirsty Danites riding rough-shod through Utah in various fictional works.

Diego Valverde Villena

He has translated into Spanish literary works written by Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, John Donne, Edmund Spenser, George Herbert, Ezra Pound, Emily Dickinson, Mikolaj Sep Szarzynski, Paul Éluard, Joachim du Bellay, Valery Larbaud, Nuno Júdice, Jorge Sousa Braga, E.T.A. Hoffmann and Paul Celan.

Distant Waves

It is there that it is proven that the twins, Amelie and Emma, have their mother's gift of being able to speak to the dead after having Queen Victoria speak to Conan Doyle.

Economy of Tiruchirappalli

The characteristics of the ashes produced by the fabled Trichinopoly are described by Arthur Conan Doyle's fictitious detective Sherlock Holmes in his 1887 novel A Study in Scarlet.

Egyptian cigarette industry

Arthur Conan Doyle paid a casual tribute to the popularity of Egyptian cigarettes in his 1904 story "The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez", where a character interviewed by Sherlock Holmes in a murder investigation is described as a very heavy consumer of them.

Ernst Lissauer

Over in England, Arthur Conan Doyle said in his book, 'The German War', "This sort of thing is, it must be admitted, very painful and odious. It fills us with a mixture of pity and disgust, and we feel as if - instead of a man - we were really fighting with a furious, screaming woman."

Everybody's Favorite Duck

Bone and Weston are modeled on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Arthur Conan Doyle's archetypal crime solving team, although they may have more in common with the motion picture Holmes and Watson of the 1940s than the turn-of-the-century British, Baker Street originals.

Focal character

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works of Sherlock Holmes, Watson is the viewpoint character, but the story revolves around Holmes, making him the focal character.

Forensic geology

According to Murray, forensic geology began with acclaimed Sherlock Holmes writer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Frequency analysis

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Gold-Bug", and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tale "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" are examples of stories which describe the use of frequency analysis to attack simple substitution ciphers.

Gasogene

The gasogene is mentioned as a residential fixture at 221B Baker Street in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia: "With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner."

Gelsemium

Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of the famous Sherlock Holmes series, once administered himself a small amount of gelsemium and kept increasing the amount everyday until he could no longer stand the ill effects it gives.

Gus: The Theatre Cat

The description in the original poem about Gus playing a "Tiger... which an Indian Colonel pursued down a drain" is a reference to the short story The Adventure of the Empty House by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Horace Vernet

In Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter" Holmes claims to be related to Vernet, stating, "My ancestors were country squires... my grandmother... was the sister of Vernet, the French artist."

Irving Bacheller

It was through the Bacheller Syndicate that he brought to American readers the writings of British authors such as Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling.

Isangi

Arthur Conan Doyle noted in his book The Crime of the Congo that slavery and ivory poaching continued well after the Belgians had assumed power.

James Calhoun

In the Arthur Conan Doyle Story The Five Orange Pips, Sherlock Holmes points out Calhoun as the leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Jamyang Norbu

The book was published in the U.S. in 2001, first under the title Sherlock Holmes - The Missing Years, and fills in the gap in 1891 when Arthur Conan Doyle temporarily killed off Holmes.

Jason Dark

His fertile and inventive imagination has been favourably compared to that of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Ludu U Hla

An old school friend of Daw Amar's father, he was famous for his excellent adaptations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Brigadier Gerard as well as his translations of H. Rider Haggard's Alan Quartermain novels and was arrested at the same time as U Hla but he was to remain in Mandalay Prison for the duration.

Masongill

Mary Doyle (mother of Arthur Conan Doyle) lived in Masongill, and Conan Doyle (creator of a character called Sherlock Holmes) was a frequent visitor.

Meiringen

The town is famous for the nearby Reichenbach Falls, a spectacular waterfall that was the setting for the fictional presumed death of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes.

Moidore

In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four, Small wonders "how my folk would stare when they saw their ne'er-do-well coming back with his pockets full of gold moidores" when justifying his decision to help end Achmet's life for the treasure he carried.

Mountain giant Sunda rat

Arthur Conan Doyle refers to a "giant rat of Sumatra" in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, but it is unknown if he was referring specifically to this species.

Muhsin Ertuğrul

His first performance in theatre was in 1909 with role of "Bob" in Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Neil Loring

The central character in two historical novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Nigel and The White Company, is loosely based on Neil Loring.

The central character of Sir Nigel Loring in two historical novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Sir Nigel and The White Company – is loosely based on Neil Loring.

Netherlands national cricket team

English touring teams then began visiting in 1886 including one in 1891 that featured the author of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

News Chronicle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – war correspondent for the Daily Chronicle during World War I

Prout's hypothesis

In his 1891 novel The Doings of Raffles Haw, Arthur Conan Doyle talks about turning elements into other elements of decreasing atomic number, until a gray matter is reached.

Qazi Mazhar Qayyum

Like Dr. Joseph Bell of Arthur Conan Doyle, he could diagnose any illness by looking at a patient's face.

Ribston Pippin

And in one Sherlock Holmes story (The Adventure of Black Peter in The Return of Sherlock Holmes) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle an incidental character is described as a "a little Ribston pippin of a man, with ruddy cheeks and fluffy side-whiskers".

Rugeley

George Ernest Thompson Edalji (March 1876 – 17 June 1953) was famously and wrongly convicted of one of the 'Great Wyrley Outrages,' (the village of Great Wyrley being some eight-and-a-half miles south of Rugeley, south of the Cannock Chase district and north of Walsall) but cleared as the result of an investigation by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Ruyton-XI-Towns

Arthur Conan Doyle, while a medical student, worked as an unpaid assistant in the village for a Dr Eliot for four months in 1878, living in at Cliffe House.

Shane Rimmer

In 1989, Rimmer was reunited with Bishop and another Gerry Anderson associate, Matt Zimmerman, during the production of a BBC Radio 4 adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study In Scarlet.

Sherlock Holmes in Washington

The plot is an original story not based on any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tales, though it bears some similarity to "The Bruce-Partington Plans." Oscar Homolka was originally cast as Holmes's elder brother Mycroft, but for family reasons he refused and Mycroft's character was replaced by "Mr. Ahrens" played by Holmes Herbert.

Spirit photography

Hope still retained a noted following from spiritualists such as Charles Lakeman Tweedale author of Man's Survival After Death (1920) as well as the author and spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle, who refused to accept any evidence that Hope was a fraud and went to great lengths to clear his name, including writing a book supporting spirit photography, The Case for Spirit Photography (1922).

Through the 1880s into the early 20th century spirit photography remained popular, with notable proponents such as Arthur Conan Doyle and William Crookes.

Star-Begotten

The dialogue of Star-Begotten makes brief and cursory references Wells's earlier novel The War of the Worlds, referring to it as having been written by "Jules Verne, Conan Doyle, one of those fellows".

Stonehouse, Plymouth

During 1882, Arthur Conan Doyle worked as a newly qualified physician at 1 Durnford Street, East Stonehouse.

Terence Reese

Examples of bridge logic abound in Reese, for instance, a player who overcalls but does not lead his suit is likely to lack one or two key honours; this concept is often called 'the dog that did not bark in the night' (after Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's Silver Blaze).

The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby

"The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby" is a Sherlock Holmes mystery by Adrian Conan Doyle, the youngest son of Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes creator.

The Adventure of the Dancing Men

"The Adventure of the Dancing Men", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

The Grapes

Other popular writers have been fascinated by Limehouse: Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray; Arthur Conan Doyle, who sent Sherlock Holmes in search of opium provided by the local Chinese immigrants; and, more recently, Peter Ackroyd in Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem.

The List of Seven

Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle is invited to a seance where two people are apparently murdered.

The Mystery of the Leaping Fish

In this unusually broad comedy for Fairbanks, the acrobatic leading man plays "Coke Ennyday," a cocaine-shooting detective parody of Sherlock Holmes (a self-injecting cocaine addict in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1890 novel The Sign of Four) given to injecting himself with cocaine from a bandolier of syringes worn across his chest and liberally helping himself to the contents of a hatbox-sized round container of white powder labeled "COCAINE" on his desk.

The Picture in the House

Peter Cannon has pointed to parallels between "The Picture in the House" and Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches".

The Real Lost World

The Real Lost World is a documentary, released on December 10, 2006 by Animal Planet, where a team of scientists journey to Monte Roraima in Venezuela, the plateau that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's literary work, The Lost World.

The Royal Mallows

The The Royal Mallows is a fictional Irish regiment mentioned in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

The Scarlet Claw

The film is not credited as an adaptation of any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tales, but it bears a significant resemblance to The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The Six Messiahs

The year is 1894, and Arthur Conan Doyle is visiting America on a book tour with his brother, Innes.

The two main characters are real-life person Arthur Conan Doyle (albeit engaging in fictional actions) and fictional character Jack Sparks.

The Woman in Green

The film is not credited as an adaptation of any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tales, but several of its scenes are taken from "The Final Problem" and "The Adventure of the Empty House." The Woman in Green is the eleventh film of the Rathbone/Bruce series.

Toronto Public Library

Notable special collections include The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, and The Rita Cox Black and Caribbean Heritage Collection.

Vladimir Obruchev

Both of these stories, imitating the pattern of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, depict in vivid detail the discovery of an isolated world of prehistoric animals in hitherto unexplored large islands north of Alaska or Siberia.


And Then There Was No One

A third aspect is the author's wish to distance himself from his own creations if not to get rid of them once and for all, to "murder" them—the way Arthur Conan Doyle tried to rid himself of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls and Adair is struggling to dispose of Evadne Mount.

Arthur Marvin

He directed the short film Sherlock Holmes Baffled, which was the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes.

Eileen J. Garrett

On October 7, 1930 it was claimed by spiritualists that Garrett made contact with the spirit of Herbert Carmichael Irwin at a séance held with Harry Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research two days after the R101 disaster, while attempting to contact the then recently deceased Arthur Conan Doyle, and discussed possible causes of the accident.

Frank Shacklock

Shacklock may have been the inspiration for the naming of Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes.

John Lade

They live on, however in literature: for example, in Arthur Conan Doyle's celebrated Regency novel Rodney Stone, the mature Sir John Lade, a leader of the "Corinthian" set of gentleman-sportsmen, serves to represent the London life the pugilist-hero immerses himself in, and is introduced by means of a race from Brighton to London.

Julius and Agnes Zancig

The spiritualists Arthur Conan Doyle and W. T. Stead were duped into believing that the Zancigs had genuine psychic powers.

Lord John Roxton

Lord John Roxton (A fictional title derived from the English parish of Roxton, Bedfordshire) is a supporting character in the Professor Challenger series of stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Robert Bemborough

An alternative point of view is portrayed in Arthur Conan Doyle's historical novel Sir Nigel, in which Bemborough (called Richard of Bambro in the novel) is a hardy knight who accepts the combat as an honourable means to continue the fight after a truce has been declared.

S. S. McClure

McClure's Magazine published influential pieces by respected journalists and authors including Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Burton J. Hendrick, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Willa Cather, and Lincoln Steffens.

Sherlock Holmes Baffled

It is the earliest known film to feature Arthur Conan Doyle's detective character Sherlock Holmes, albeit in a form unlike that of later screen incarnations.

Terror by Night

The film's plot is a mostly original story not directly based on any of Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes tales, but it uses minor plot elements of "The Adventure of the Empty House," "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax," and The Sign of the Four.

The Dragon's Apprentice

John, Jack, Fred the Badger, the Tin Man (Roger Bacon), Laura Glue, Richard Burton, Harry Houdini, Arthur Conan Doyle, and the mysterious End of Time, a friend of Burton's, travel to Avalon and the Archipelago but discover it in ruins and learn that two thousand years have passed in the Archipelago since their last visit.

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is a series of three annotated books edited by Leslie S. Klinger, collecting all of Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories and novels about Sherlock Holmes.

Trichinopoly cigar

In Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (1887), Sherlock Holmes correctly deduces that the perpetuator of a gruesome murder had smoked a "Trichinopoly cigar".

William Mycroft

The first Sherlock Holmes story was published two years later and there is a suggestion that Arthur Conan Doyle derived the name of Mycroft the younger brother of Sherlock Holmes from William Mycroft.