Have you heard about these?

This literary character had a front-page obituary in the New York Times

Many literary characters have transcended their stories, a few of them becoming universal archetypes. But despite beign known by all, readers continue to learn new things about their favorite characters. Who was the inspiration for Shelock Holmes? What famous wizard was named after a cabinet drawer? Which famous playwright coined the name "Jessica"? Here are 10 facts about famous characters that you might not know.

While Sherlock Holmes was not the first widely famous fictional detective (that title belongs to Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin), he has become the blueprint for thousands of literary detectives and investigators. It might be surprising to know that his author, Arthur Conan Doyle, didn’t model Sherlock after a detective, but after a surgeon he had met while working as a clerk at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Joseph Bell was a surgeon known for his ability for diagnosis, following an observation-based technique he called "The Method". According to his students, Bell was able to deduce a patient’s ailment, profession, and origin just by looking at them.

Huckleberry Finn is considered by many to be one of the most important characters in American literature. Despite being presented as ignorant, neglected, and superstitious, his innate sense of right and wrong makes him constantly challenge the hypocrisy and prejudices of the Antebellum South, and side with those oppressed and mistreated.

Many might think that Mark Twain constructed the character to serve this purpose, but he was actually inspired by one of his childhood friends, Tom Blankenship. According to Twain, he wrote Huck exactly as Blankenship was: the son of a drunkard, unwashed, poorly fed, and uneducated, but also good-hearted, free, and fiercely independent, a fact that caused the envy and the admiration of his peers.

To write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Frank L. Baum drew inspiration from all sorts of places, such as the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, his childhood nightmares, his mother-in-law, and even political debates. Many believe the titular wizard and the land that gives him his name to be a reference to Australia, colloquially nicknamed "Oz", but the name was actually inspired by the most mundane object imaginable.

Years after the publication of the book, Baum explained that he wanted his magical land to have a short and catchy name, easy to remember. Looking around his office, he noticed that his three-drawer file cabinet was labeled alphabetically, and that the third drawer contained the letters O through Z.

We all know that William Shakespeare created hundreds of new words, or was at least the first to record them, but the name Jessica is not a word one expects to find in this category. Yes, "_The Merchant of Venice"_’s Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, was the first Jessica to ever exist.

It is widely believed that Shakespeare drew inspiration for this name from the Bible, where Iscah (meaning "foresight," "sight," or "to behold") is Abraham’s niece and a minor character in the Book of Genesis. The name is spelled "Iesicca" in the First Folio, as "j" and "i" were not distinguished at the time.

Although its cinema portrayals have led many to believe that Frankenstein is the name of the famous monster, readers of the book know that it’s actually the name of its creator, and that the monster is commonly referred to as "the creature", unnamed and unwanted by its maker.

According to some of her contemporaries, Mary Shelley had named her character "Adam" and had referred to it as such during a public reading of the novel. While this was never confirmed by Shelley, Victor briefly considers the name "Adam" in the story as a nod to the "new man" created, and later on the creature compared itself to Adam.

The Professor in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" might not seem an important character in The Chronicles of Narnia. Still, once the reader realizes he and "The Magician’s Nephew"’s Digory Kirke are the same person, he becomes crucial to the story, a fact quite ironic considering that many believe the Professor to be inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien, who openly disliked the saga.

Although Professor Kirke was partly modelled on and named after Lewis’ strict childhood tutor, William T. Kirkpatrick, readers have noted many coincidences between the Professor and Tolkien, such as both being young orphans, indirect creators of a fantasy world born from a tree, and having academic and intellectual interests.

Moby Dick has been seen as representing many things, such as fate, the power of nature, evil, human internal struggles, or just maybe the absurdity of reality, while Captain Ahab’s relentless quest for vengeance has been traditionally interpreted as the search for answers in a confusing and deceptive world. But did you know that all this symbolism is built on a real-life whale?

Mocha Dick was a leucistic, or albino, sperm whale that lived in the southeastern Pacific Ocean in the early 19th century, usually sighted near Mocha Island off the coast of Chile. There are at least a hundred skirmishes registered between whalers and Mocha Dick —including the sinking of a whaling ship in 1820. The whale was allegedly killed in 1838, although some sailors claim to have seen him after that date.

If you read Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables or watched the musical inspired by it, you know that the characters of Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert stand on opposite sides of a conflict: Can people change? While Jean Valjean champions the power of compassion and mercy, Javert sees people’s character as fixed and adheres to rigid law and mechanical justice.

This stark contrast starts making sense when we learn that both characters are based on the same person, Eugène François Vidocq, a famous criminal later turned police detective. Jean Valjean and Javert are two faces of the same coin, the reformed criminal and the ruthless enforcer. In the end, however, one side has to prevail, and it is the side of compassion, which also fits Vidocq’s history as an enforcer who, according to the accounts of the time, refused to arrest petty thieves who stole out of necessity.

If Sherlock Holmes was the greatest detective of 19th century literature, we can argue that Hercule Poirot is a main contender for that title in 20th century detective novels. The most famous of Agatha Christie’s leads, the Belgian detective starred in 33 novels and over 50 short stories, captivating readers with his personal quirks, his infallible method, and his deep understanding of human nature.

It is not surprising, then, that the death of such a beloved character was a monumental event. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, which closes the detective’s career with his passing, was written around World War II, but only published in September of 1975, when Christie’s own health began to fail. A month earlier, the New York Times had published a front-page obituary of the fictional detective, announcing his passing in England, an homage no other literary character has received.

The countless cinematic adaptations of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights have come across the same dilemma: How should Heathcliff, one of its tortured protagonists, be represented? Is he Irish? Is he Romani? Is he black? Is his appearance relevant to the story? The answer is simple, and yet incredibly complex at the same time.

Emily Brontë’s description of Heathcliff is deliberately ambiguous. He is described as "dark", characterized as Romani, South Asian, Irish, Chinese, or of mixed heritage, while some hints suggest he is an illegitimate child, but no clue about his parents is given to us. In the end, the correct answer doesn’t matter. Heatcliff could be any of these things, because he is an outsider and a foreigner. His appearance is important because it visually sets him apart from Cathy and Edgar, but how to interpret his background is for the reader to imagine.

A group of what?

Shrewdness, siege, business, and other words for animal groups

A shrewdness? A murder? An unkindness? None of these words even suggests that we are talking about apes, crows, or ravens, but we are. Why are animal collective nouns so strange? During the Middle Ages, English nobles developed a hunting language. These ‘terms of venery’ were not intended to be practical, but to show erudition and mastery of an elite code. Some of these names were adopted into everyday language and continue to be used nowadays.

Boars are wild pigs, so why isn’t a group of boars just a herd? While ‘herd’ can be used, linguists believe that the collective noun ‘sounder’ —from the Old English sundor, meaning ‘to separate’— was used as a reference to the fact that boar herds were led by sows (the female adult), separate from the males that were solitary or formed male-only groups.

All across Europe, ravens bore a reputation for being tricksters and bad omens. In several folk traditions, they were seen as messengers for the Gods and bearers of prophecies, an ominous task reinforced by their black plumage. The term ‘unkindness’ to refer to a group of ravens reflected the perceived malice or cruelty of these animals.

Since classical times, owls have been a symbol of wisdom and knowledge, and in the Greek tradition, these birds were the companions of Athena, goddess of wisdom. This led to the idea of a group of owls meeting for serious gatherings, such as a parliament.

This is indeed an odd term to use as a collective noun, but it stems from a copying mistake. The 1486 Book of St. Albans, which describes several of these animal collective nouns, states that a group of ferrets is called a besynes —meaning ‘activity’— due to the scurrying habits of these animals. Over time, the word was miscopied as ‘business’, and the term stuck.

There are several theories about the reason for this particular term as a collective noun for herons. Some say that it is a reference to their patient hunting stance (siege comes from the Latin sedere, ‘to sit’). Other opinions refer to the use of ‘siege’ as a synonym for ‘plague’ or ‘vexation’, as these animals are noisy and generally unpleasant to have around.

This one is quite straightforward. Male peacocks are known to parade their colorful feathers in front of the females, and have always been used as a symbol of vanity and flamboyance. Therefore, calling a group of peacocks an ‘ostentation’ seems quite fitting.

Several collective nouns can be used to describe a group of pheasants, but the term ‘bouquet’ stands out because it doesn’t just refer to the group of animals, but to flying pheasants. When hunters startled these birds, they took flight all at once in different directions, their colorful feathers looking like a ‘bouquet’ against the sky.

Like ravens, apes were perceived to be wicked, and this term reflected that idea. Originally, ‘shrewd’ was used to mean ‘evil, ‘mischievous, or ‘malicious’, so a group of apes was named a ‘shrewdness’. Later on, ‘shrewd’ came to mean ‘clever’ or ‘astute’, both qualities that apes do possess.

Were mice thought to be mischievous? Not really. The word ‘mischief’ was originally used to mean ‘harm, trouble, or annoyance’, and mice were troublesome pests that ate stored food and caused property damage.

We are so used to the use of ‘pride’ as a collective noun that it might not sound as strange as other words in this list, but this term originated in the same way. Lions were a symbol of royalty, courage, and authority, so the word used to describe them had to reflect these qualities. While ‘pride’ can be used negatively, it also carries the positive connotation of ‘dignity’ and ‘high standing’.