Douglas Adams
Author Douglas Adams at his Santa Barbara home in 2000Dan Callister/Online USA/Getty

Today is Towel Day, an annual celebration of the science fiction author Douglas Adams and his work marked on 25 May. In particular, it celebrates Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy series - which tells the story of Arthur Dent, a man who explores the universe in his dressing gown.

As described in Hitchhiker's Guide, a towel is "about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have", - so diehard fans choose to remember Adams by carrying one. Below are ten things you might not know about Adams and his work:

In the US edition of Life, The Universe And Everything - the third book in the Hitchhiker's series - the "f-word" used in the British edition was replaced with the word Belgium. It goes on to explain that while on Earth, "Belgium" refers to a small, flat European country, it is the most offensive word in the rest of the universe.

Adams made his first of two appearances in Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1974, playing a doctor in episode 42.

The date for Towel Day was chosen randomly. Two weeks after Adams died in 2001, fans organised an annual holiday on 25 May to celebrate his life and achievements.

A sixth book in the Hitchhiker's series was written by Irish author Eoin Colfer, who wrote the Artemis Fowl series, with the permission of Adams' widow Jane Belson.

Adams was a committed environmentalist and campaigned for animal rights. He once took part in a charity trek, which involved wearing a rhino suit while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Author Eoin Colfer, who wrote the sixth book and the final installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, poses with fans in 2009 in LondonStephen Hardman/Getty

Adams was friends with biologist Richard Dawkins. In an obituary published in the Guardian, Dawkins wrote: "Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender (he once climbed Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit to raise money to fight the cretinous trade in rhino horn), Apple Computer has lost its most eloquent apologist."

Fans have come up with various theories as to why Adams chose the number 42 as "the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything". Adams dismissed any theories over the significance of the number, saying: "The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base 13, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat on my desk, stared in to the garden and thought 42 will do. I typed it out. End of story."

Adams wrote the Doctor Who episodes; The Pirate Planet and Shada, and co-wrote City of Death with producer Graham Williams under a pseudonym. He was also the script editor for Season 17.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy was commissioned while Adams was writing for Doctor Who, originally appearing as a Radio 4 series in March 1978.

Adams described himself as a "radical atheist" - so people would not confuse his beliefs as agnostic. Dawkins dedicated his book, The God Delusion to Adams.