Sherlock's Fun Facts and Trivia

[Carol the Dabbler]

But that's only if you squished all those Earths into one big blob. If instead you used spherical Earths to fill Jupiter like pouring marbles into a bowl, it'd probably hold only about half that many.

[Van Buren Supernova]

Ah yes of course, as they would be spaces between the sphere, but certainly much more than eleven. :p

[Van Buren Supernova]

There are three things relevant to Sherlock; detective, somnambulism and murder investigation that local police have difficulty with.

 

 

Unable to solve the murder of Andre Monet, who killed on a beach, because of the ambiguity of evidences, the police asked Detective Robert Ledru to help with the investigation.

 

Ledru deduced that the killer was missing a big toe, based on the footprint, and the bullet that was used was the same type with his. On the day of the murder, he woke up with wet socks and he, was also missing his big toe.

 

He concluded that he killed Andre Monet while he was sleepwalking and turned himself. Reluctant with the theory, the police placed in cell for overnight observations.

 

He sleepwalked on the first night and on second night he shot at the guards, while sleeping, using gun loaded with blanks they purposely placed on his cell.

 

Homicidal somnambulism or sleepwalking murder, he was not prosecuted and could not be held responsible for his actions, but since he was still a threat, he was exiled to a farm in countryside, where he lived for another 50 years with guards and nurses.

[Arcadia]

Good lord. The detective they hired just coincidentally turned out to be the murderer????? The universe really IS lazy.....

 

What a bizarre story.

[Van Buren Supernova]

That makes me think about how people used to solve things before they found cure/solutions to any problems.

 

Not sure about somnambulism, I just imagine many things that can be cured now would caused people in the past to be locked up, exiled or shunned from society. Quite sure there are a lot of examples, even in modern era.

 

That one was around 1887.

[Van Buren Supernova]

Botulinum toxins, that caused Carl Power and Connie Prince's death, in form of poison and botox overdose, could also be found in other daily things most hardly suspect, such as food.

 

 

 

Botulinum toxins is produced by bacteria called Clostridium botulinum, this bacteria exists in common environment such as soil and water.

 

Bacteria grows and produces toxin in products with low oxygen content and certain combinations of storage temperature and preservative parameters. This happens most often in lightly preserved foods and in inadequately processed, home-canned or home-bottled foods.

 

 

Foodborne botulism is caused by eating foods that contain the botulism toxin.

[Arcadia]

Remind me never to ingest anything ever again.

[J.P.]

In Poland we also call it sausage poison/venom.

[Van Buren Supernova]

In Poland we also call it sausage poison/venom.

:o

Is it foodborne poisoning caused by C. botulinum as well?

[Carol the Dabbler]

I'm pretty sure you're talking about two different things. C. botulinum is an anaerobic organism, meaning it doesn't do well in the presence of oxygen. So it's most commonly encountered in improperly-processed canned goods. Ordinary food poisoning tends to be caused by aerobic organisms.

[Van Buren Supernova]

 

The skull painting in TAB is a well-known metamorphic illusion drawn by Charles Allan Gilbert in 1892 when he was only eighteen years old.

(I went to TAB thread search and found that Carol mentioned it as well. Haven't been actively following the threads or other new threads, so shout-out for anyone else who had also mentioned it somewhere).

 

All Is Vanity, in details, it shows image of woman with her reflection in the mirror.

 

 

For years, the painting remained unsold until LIFE Publishing Co, a small cartoon tabloid bought it for a nickel and it became a hit.

 

 

During late 19th and early 20th century skull optical illusion gained popularity and continues to appeal to imagination to this day.

 

Others:

Au Revoir, circa 1905-1910

 

S(K)UL(L)TUR, circa 1910

 

La Guerre No.40 - Tete Macabre de Guillaume

[Van Buren Supernova]

Warning: Post contains S4 material.

 

 

 

 

 

It was a day before my Christmas break, and I was sure I wouldn’t have time for a write-up again until S4. Had two ideas at that time for this thread, and I had to pick one that I thought was more likely to come up for S4. The contender was The Iceman, Post#580 or a write-up about H.H.Holmes.

 

And dang! I chose The Iceman, not because I thought they would reveal Mycroft as serial killer in S4, but because since I was pretty sure they were going to explore the childhood, we should know more things that could explain his character, while the only relevant thing that connect H.H.Holmes with the series is the similarity of the last name, and the fact that he looked like Victorian Watson (kind of). :P

Well, obviously, a wrong choice!

 

Now that S4 is in open.. here it is.

 

Warning: not a pleasant read.

 

From Ariane DeVere’s The Lying Detective.

HOSPITAL ROOM.

SHERLOCK (in a whisper): How did you get in?

(Smith stands and walks closer to the bed, pointing towards the door. He keeps his voice low throughout the rest of the scene.)

SMITH: Policeman outside, you mean? Come on. Can’t you guess?

(Sherlock’s gaze turns to the wooden panel opposite the bed.)

SHERLOCK (softly): Secret door.

SMITH (looking up and twirling a finger to indicate their surroundings): I built this whole wing. Kept firing the architect and builders so no-one knew quite h-how it all fitted together. I can slip in and out anywhere I like, you know ... when I get the urge.

SHERLOCK: H. H. Holmes.

SMITH: Murder castle, but done right.

 

 

 

 

H.H.Holmes, mentioned in TLD by Culverton Smith, was a serial killer who built a “murder castle”, a hotel with elaborate mazes with death traps.

Real name Herman Webster Mudgett, he changed it to Henry Howard Holmes beside moving around to avoid detection after running numerous scams (collecting insurance money from stolen cadavers that he disfigured) and connected to various missing person cases and mysterious death.

Holmes settled in Chicago, worked in a drugstore and later bought it from the widow after the death of the store’s owner, using fund obtained by mortgaging the store’s assets. The widow, Mrs. Holton, was never seen again. Holmes then purchased a land across the drugstore and built a three-story hotel and commercial building, it was massive structure that local people called it "The Castle".

 

Holmes hired and fired workers during construction to ensure that he was the only one familiar with the design of the building, which contained labyrinth of rooms, staircases leading to nowhere, windowless rooms, doors opening to brick walls, trapdoors, chutes and other deceptive features, including rooms with gas jets. It would become the place where he tortured and killed his victims, suffocating, hanging or starving them to death. They were later burned in a kiln or disposed in other ways, like tossing them in pits of lime or acid. He would also sell skeletons of his victims to labs and schools for medical and science purposes.

He required his employee to buy insurance and named him as beneficiary, many of them mysteriously died shortly after. His other victims consisted of his lovers and hotel guests.

Holmes lived by couple of aliases, had multiple wives and relationships.

 

After the murder castle period, Holmes continued to move around and ran his scheme, he was arrested for selling mortgaged goods, in which he developed another scheme  with fellow inmate, to collect insurance money by faking his own death. The inmate, named Hedgepeth was promised a commission in exchange of attorney that they could trust. That scheme failed, but Holmes later attempted similar plan with his associate name Pitezel, in which Holmes actually killed him.

Holmes never paid the commission he promised to Hedgepeth, who later tipped the police off. He was arrested in 1984, almost got away with it, if not for an outstanding warrant that the authorities had become more suspicious and began the investigations, and eventually led to his death sentence. He was hanged in 1896, with his last request that his coffin to be cast in concrete and buried 10 feet deep to prevent grave robbers.

[Arcadia]

Geez.

[Van Buren Supernova]

Geez.

I know you'd hate that.  ^_^

 

But no comment about me almost predicted a very specific part of S4 plot? :P

I swear it's true. It's on the tip of my fingers. : XD

[Arcadia]

Sorry, I'm sleep-deprived. But, erm, yes, very good, very clever (waves hand limply in VBS's general direction.)

[Van Buren Supernova]

Pageant wave..!

Eekkk... girly girl!

 

 

 

 

:p

[Van Buren Supernova]

Mycroft should have more appreciation for goldfish too. :p

 

Orkney primary school goldfish get flaming Viking burial boat send off

 

I'd just copy paste the whole BBC's article.

 

Primary 3 and 4 pupils at Papdale School in Kirkwall gave Bubbles and Freddy a traditional Norse ceremony to start their journey to Valhalla.

The fish become class pets for Christmas but both died recently.

 

The children, who had been studying the Vikings, wrote down their memories of the fish and read them aloud before the boat set sail.

 

The school blog revealed they "decided to send our fish to Valhalla with a Viking style burial in a longship we made that day".

The blog added: "While we will miss Freddy and Bubbles, we certainly enjoyed giving them a good send off to Valhalla."

[Arcadia]

So when he calls us ordinary people "goldfish" it's actually a compliment? Why, Mycroft, I didn't know you cared!

[Van Buren Supernova]

This could be another style of elephant in the room for The Final Problem.

 

 

[SherlockedCAMPer]

This could be another style of elephant in the room for The Final Problem.

 

Knowing Arwel the limited way that we do, it most definitely was an elephant in the room.

[J.P.]

Yes it was. And - of course - he's got a lot of flak for posting elephants before S4. At least enough flak to make him post a statement that he's sorry if someone was misled, but he posted them, because he likes elephants. Well, I warned him he's playing with fire, but he didn't listen :P Or he knew this and was trolling the conspirators.

 

Another fun fact:

In this picture of Ian from Dr Who episode, he's wearing the wig used for Ben's stunt double from Sherlock. Next curious case of creative recycling.

 

[Van Buren Supernova]

Interesting. Does Ben use his wig exclusively?

 

I suppose that is real-haired wig. It looks good, so should be high quality one and costly. I remember reading Cersei Lannister's wig cost 7k, but that is very delicately made.

[J.P.]

Don't know, I have a blurred memory of a "Sherlock" wig at the first Sherlocked. Ben having his own wig - could be - he has a huge head :D And those things ARE expensive. Here is a little video, it's in German, but there must be plenty of them in www. So I'm not surprised they re-use them as long as they last.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Benedict goes between his own hair and a wig depending on length of his hair when filming (e.g. the longer hair of his Hamlet fit in well with filming Doctor Strange (longer more Sherlock-length hair for most of it) followed by filming Sherlock.

[J.P.]

Just posting it here for further exploration later.

https://obotligtnyfiken.tumblr.com/