Today was the birthday in 1890 of Agatha Christie, the novelist and playwright who gave us some of the most popular mysteries of all time.
And when she wasn’t sending Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot out to crack cases, she was surfing.
That’s right, Agatha Christie loved to surf!
As author Jim Kempton explained in a piece for Crimereads, Christie first tried surfing in 1924, while on a sailing trip across much of the world.
She first tried prone surfing, laying flat on the board, in Cape Town, South Africa.
But when she and her husband made it to Hawaii, they stood up on the boards.
And after some practice Christie started to get the hang of it.
Later she added surfing into one of her novels.
Christie was one of the few stand-up surfers in England at the time; really the only other well-known enthusiast was Prince Edward, who would later briefly become King Edward VIII.
And Christie’s interest in surfing stuck with her for good.
As she once wrote, “Nothing like that rushing through the water at what seems to you a speed of about two hundred miles an hour… until you arrived, gently slowing down, on the beach, and foundered among the soft, flowing waves.”
Of course, we should’ve known Agatha Christie was into surfing.
Didn’t she have a book called “A Surfer Is Announced”?
Today’s also the birthday of playwright Jerry Sterner, best known for his work “Other People’s Money.”
When he passed away in 2001 he was buried in Brooklyn with a headstone that was perfect for someone in his line of work.
It read: “Finally, a plot.”
How Agatha Christie Helped Popularize Surfing — Yes, Surfing (Crimereads)
Investigating Hate (Harpers)
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Photo via National Portrait Gallery, London, photographer unknown. Public Domain, via Wikicommons
