Appears on sleeve of The Beatles' "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club.
His classic short story "The Open Boat" was inspired by an actual experience that occurred while he was a war correspondent. His ship having been sunk, he spent a week with a handful of other survivors in a lifeboat, some of it in rough weather. Most feel that it was during this period that he contracted the tuberculosis that lead to his early death at the age of 28.