Forrest Fenn, an art dealer and author, hid a treasure chest in the Rocky Mountains worth over 1 million dollars. It was found approximately a decade later, in 2020.
100 Mind-Blowing Author Facts
The author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, Sarah Josepha Hale, is most responsible for the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas wanted to make an animated Calvin and Hobbes movie. The author declined because he wanted to protect the integrity of the comic.
Mark Twain was the first author to use a typewriter to write a manuscript.
The children’s fictional book Heidi is inspired by the village of Maienfeld in the Bündner Herrschaft of Graubünden, Switzerland. Published in the early 1880s by author Johanna Spyri, you can now visit the Heidi Village above Maienfeld to tour a replica of the protagonist character Heidi’s home, cottage and school.
The Golden Girls was supposed to have a different theme song. That’s right: Instead of Andrew Gold’s iconic “Thank You for Being a Friend,” the show’s producers wanted to use Bette Midler’s song “Friends,” according to Jim Colucci, author of the book Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorised Look Behind the Lanai. But the rights to the Divine Miss M’s song were too expensive, and the rest is sitcom history.
Children’s book author, Roald Dahl was a spy. To be more precise, he was an agent for the British Security Coordination. He was tasked to gather intel during the Second World War.
At Harvard University, there is a book made with human skin. One of the WTF facts that’ll make your skin crawl: Since the 1930s, Des destinees de l’ame (Destinies of the Soul) has been housed at Harvard’s Houghton Library. The author, Arsene Houssaye reportedly gave the book to his friend, Dr. Ludovic Bouland, in the mid-1880s. Dr. Bouland allegedly bound the book with skin from an unclaimed female patient who died of natural causes.
Mary Shelley allegedly lost her virginity on her mother’s grave. It is widely believed that the author of Frankenstein did the devil’s tango with her would-be husband, Percy Shelley, on her mother’s final resting place. Does it get any more gothic than that?
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category.
If you have children, you likely read them Dr. Seuss’s books. These favourites have been around for generations. But, you are likely saying the famed author’s name incorrectly. According to friends and family, the name rhymes with voice, not deuce.
The author of the James Bond novels wrote the first book to take his mind off the fear of getting married. Ian Fleming was a bachelor of 44 years when he wrote Casino Royale in 1952, the first in a long series about the devilishly handsome British spy. Many years later, Fleming wrote in his memoirs that he was so terrified at the concept of finally getting married that he wrote his first Bond novel. Some authors doubt this dismissal, claiming he simply wrote it as a quick cash job, but it makes a hell of a good story!
The dog ate John Steinbeck’s homework—literally. The author’s pup chewed up an early version of Of Mice and Men. “I was pretty mad, but the poor fellow may have been acting critically,” he wrote.
Among lost works, this story might be even worse: Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, left a suitcase full of the author’s writing on a train. When she went back to get it, it was gone. “I had never seen anyone hurt by a thing other than death or unbearable suffering except Hadley when she told me about the things being gone,” Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast.
Hidden talents. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a medical doctor, bestselling author and Spiritualist advocate. He also played as a football goalkeeper for Portsmouth Association Football Club under the pseudonym A. C. Smith. The club was amateur and disbanded in 1896. Portsmouth FC, the now professional club, was founded in 1898.
The British author J.K. Rowling is the first writer to ever become a billionaire through her writings.