22 Mind-Blowing Facts About Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

20. The Creator Of Sherlock Holmes Was Duped By The Cottingley Fairies Hoax

In one of the most-famous hoaxes in Britain in the early-20th Century, two Yorkshire girls faked photographs which pictured themselves with five "fairies". Conan Doyle was so convinced that the supposed mystical creatures in the photos were real, though, that he wrote the magazine article The Coming of the Fairies, published in 1922, in which he confirmed his belief that the sprites were authentic and produced theories about exactly what these spiritual beings were. Decades after Conan Doyle died, however, it was revealed that the Cottingley Fairies photographs were fakes - the girls had used hatpins, coloured cut-out drawings and superimposition to create the images. Considering he created Sherlock Holmes' legendary powers of reasoning, Conan Doyle was quite easily duped...