22nd May: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle, who created Sherlock Holmes, was born on this date in 1859. Here are 10 things you may not know about him:

1. Technically, his surname is simply "Doyle", not "Conan Doyle". Conan, along with Ignatius, is his middle name.
2. Doyle was a qualified doctor as well as an author, and wrote stories while studying. Twice he tried to set up medical practices which didn't attract many patients, allowing him time to write.
3. He served as a ship's doctor on two vessels, the Greenland whaler Hope of Peterhead in 1880 and the SS Mayumba in 1881.
4. Doyle was a keen sportsman. He played Football and was goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club, using the name A.C. Smith. He played cricket, too, for Marylebone Cricket Club, and although as a bowler, he only ever took one first-class wicket, it just happened to be against W.G. Grace. He was also captain of the Crowborough Beacon Golf Club, East Sussex in 1910.
5. He didn't just write fiction. He supported political causes, such as reform of the Congo Free State, and wrote pamphlets to support them. He believed that he was knighted, not for services to literature, but because of an essay he wrote justifying the UK's involvement in the Boer War.
6. Not all of his fiction had Sherlock Holmes in it, either. He wrote about another character called Professor Challenger, and stories about the mystery of the Mary Celeste.
7. He also took on legal cases - he investigated two cases which he believed to be miscarriages of justice, leading to two men being exonerated of the crimes they were accused of. His work indirectly led to the establishment of the Court of Appeal in 1907.
8. Doyle's interest in spiritualism is believed to have started after the deaths of several members of his family. Although taken in by hoaxes on occasion, such as the Cottingley Fairies, he continued to believe. An American historian called Richard Milner believes that Doyle was behind the Piltdown Man hoax in 1912, his motive being to get revenge on the scientific community for debunking one of Doyle's favourite psychics. According to Milner, there are encrypted clues in the publication The Lost World that point to Doyle's involvement in the hoax.
9. His belief in the supernatural was so strong that he was willing to lose friendships over it. He was convinced that his friend Harry Houdini had supernatural powers and wrote about it. Houdini tried to convince Doyle that the things he did were purely and simply illusions, but Doyle wasn't having any of it. They very publicly fell out after that.
10. The epitaph on his gravestone reads: "Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/ Knight/ Patriot, Physician, and man of letters".