September 26, 1903: Dr. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle caves in to public pressure, and invents "fan service," by bringing back his most famous fictional character: Sherlock Holmes.
The 1st Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, had been published on November 24, 1887 in the British magazine Beeton's Christmas Annual. It sold out before Christmas, and the public couldn't get enough of the stories of the consulting detective Holmes and his assistant, Dr. John H. Watson.
Conan Doyle was a highly intelligent man with many interests, and he wanted to write about other things. Inspired by the "scientific novels" of Jules Verne -- H.G. Wells had not yet tried the genre, and Hugo Gernsback had not yet coined the phrase "science fiction" -- he created the scientist Professor Challenger, including The Lost World, one of the 1st pieces of fiction to incorporate dinosaurs. He created Brigadier Gerard, an officer in Napoleon's Grand Armée. He created Sir Nigel Loring, a knight in the Hundred Years War.
His scientific and historical fiction got him the best reviews of his career. But the general public wanted more and more of Holmes. Conan Doyle couldn't take it anymore: In 1893, he published The Final Problem. He created a villainous equal for Holmes, Professor James Moriarty, a man so brilliant and evil that Holmes called him "The Napoleon of Crime." Though Moriarty appeared in only this story, Holmes told Watson that they had been in a battle of wits for years.
They made their way to the Reichenbach Falls, a real place in the Bernese Oberland of Switzerland. There, according to the story, on May 4, 1891, 10 years after Holmes and Watson first met, Holmes and Moriarty fight, and tumble over a protective fence to their deaths. From such a height, neither could have possibly survived.
Holmes fans were furious! How dare the man who created their hero kill him! Conan Doyle got death threats in the mail. He was attacked on the street, by men with umbrellas and women with purses. It was the first "toxic fandom" in the history of popular culture.
It also produced some of the earliest "fanfiction," as people began writing their own Holmes stories, not considering copyright laws. As you might guess, this included some pornographic stories, some involving Holmes and Irene Adler, from "A Scandal in Bohemia," the only woman ever to defeat Holmes, whom he called "the woman," so she must have meant something to him.
Some of these fan-written stories even involved a homosexual relationship between Holmes and Watson, thus inventing what came to be known -- after similar "Kirk/Spock" stories by whacked-out female Star Trek fans -- in the 1970s as "slash fiction." And you thought the English Victorians were uptight about sex. (Heterosexual porn stories involving famous fictional characters created by others came to be called "hetslash.")
Bowing to pressure, in 1901, Conan Doyle published a full-length novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles, obviously taking place before Holmes' death. If he thought it would satisfy the demand for more Holmes material, he was wrong: It backfired, only increasing the demand.
So, in 1903, Conan Doyle gave in, writing The Empty House, and explaining how Holmes survived the Reichenbach Falls. It was published in America on September 26, in the magazine Colliers; and in Britain in Holmes' previous usual forum, The Strand magazine, the following month. Fandom had its 1st victory over the "cancellation" of a popular series. It would not happen again until the original Star Trek series, 65 years later.
The story explains that what came to be known to Holmes fans as "The Great Hiatus," from May 4, 1891 to March 30, 1894, began when Holmes managed to grab onto an outcropping of a cliff at the Reichenbach Falls, but knew that one of Moriarty's men, Colonel Sebastian Moran, had discovered that he'd survived. By fooling Moran into thinking that he'd killed Holmes, Holmes exposes Moran as the perpetrator of a recent murder, and puts the highest-ranking remaining member of Moriarty's organization away, striking a blow from which it never recovers.
Conan Doyle continued to publish Holmes stories until 1917, with "His Last Bow," showing Holmes and Watson as old men, helping out the British government at the dawn of what came to be called World War I. Conan Doyle died on July 7, 1930, and Holmes fans accepted as "canon" that Holmes died at the same time.
But the Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone, starting in 1939, would move from the Victorian era to the present day. And 2 TV shows, one on the BBC, another on CBS, moved Holmes into the 21st Century. People still can't get enough of the man at 221B Baker Street.
UPDATE: In 2025, CBS began airing Watson, set in the present day, but unconnected to their previous series Elementary, which ran from 2012, with Jonny Lee Miller as Holmes and Lucy Liu as an Asian-American female Watson. This new Watson, a black American played by singer Morris Chestnut, has lost his friend Holmes, and moves to Pittsburgh to establish a new medical practice.
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September 26, 1903 was a Saturday. Woolwich Arsenal of South-East London, which would became Arsenal Football Club and move to North London, beat Bristol City, 4-0 at St. John's Lane in Bristol, Gloucestershire, in England's West Country.
And these baseball games were played:
* A doubleheader was split at Hilltop Park in Washington Heights, Manhattan The New York Highlanders, the team that would become the Yankees, nears the end of its 1st season. They lose the opener to the Detroit Tigers, 13-8. Future Hall-of-Famer Sam Crawford goes 4-for-6 with 4 RBIs. The Highlanders leading the Detroit Tigers, 5-1 after 6 innings of the nightcap, when rain comes and the game is called. Jimmy Williams, their 2nd baseman, went 2-for-3 with 3 RBIs.
* The New York Giants beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 4-1 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. "Iron Man" Joe McGinnity advanced to 31-20. That's for one season. He outpitched William "Brickyard" Kennedy, who fell to 9-6. Honus Wager of the Pirates, at this point the best player in baseball, did not play in this game.
* The Brooklyn Superbas beat the Cincinnati Reds, 10-7 at the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati. What became Crosley Field was built on the site in 1912. The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911.
* A doubleheader is split at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston. The St. Louis Browns beat the Boston Americans, the team that will become the Red Sox, to win the 1st game, 6-2. Cy Young (28-9) is outpitched by Ed Siever (13-14, and definitely not to be confused Cy Young or a Cy Young Award winner like, say, Tom Seaver). The Americans are leading the 2nd game, 8-2 after 8 innings, when the rain that hit the Northeast hits them, and they go no further.
* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Cleveland Naps, 4-2 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie had briefly starred for the A's, but, because he'd previously played in the city for the Phillies, an injunction meant that he couldn't play in the City of Philadelphia unless it was for the Phillies. Since he could only play away games -- and there was no health risk as there would be over a century later, as with Kyrie Irving and the Brooklyn Nets -- the A's let him go to the Cleveland Bronchos. In 1903, they made the 2nd baseman their manager, and even changed their name to the Cleveland Naps, which held until he left them after the 1914 season. They then became the Indians, and the Guardians in 2022.
* The Chicago White Sox beat the Washington Senators, 7-4 at Boundary Park in Washington.
* The Boston Beaneaters beat the Chicago Cubs, 4-3 at West Side Park in Chicago, in a game limited to 8 innings by rain. The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912.
* And the Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-2 at Robison Field in St. Louis. (Not "Robinson.")
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