Born on January 6th, 1854, Sherlock Holmes died on March 5th, 1927. He was a consulting detective from 1881 and 1904, when at age 50 he retired to a small farm in the South Sussex Downs. A Study in Scarlet, the first of the Holmes stories, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. The last one, "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place", finished things off in The Strand Magazine of 1927.