OH, but just how useless is useless? There, as Shakespeare observes in Act III, Scene I, of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, is the rub.
For instance, the news that flamingos can only eat with their heads upside down, while of more than passing interest to a female flamingo teaching her fledglings to eat up their shrimp, is of little use to a human being trained to sit up at a table and employ a knife and fork. Yet suppose someone made one a present of a flamingo, and it persisted in eating with its head upside down. You could spend a fortune on vet bills before learning that, in flamingo circles, that is the way it is done.
So we have to tread carefully. There have to be checks and balances. At our Useless Information Society summit meetings, we have these in the form of our formidable resident beadle, the distinguished jazz musician Kennie Clayton. If Mr. Beadle Clayton judges that an item may be put to use in the community, he solemnly bangs his ceremonial staff and it is ruled out of order. There is no appeal, although barracking and cries of “Rubbish!” are permitted.
An exception is sometimes made of material that may be of use to a biographer. Thus, when I learned from a newspaper cutting that Marilyn Monroe had six toes, I eagerly produced this nugget at the next Useless Information soirée in the confident belief that, with so many Marilyn biographers still trawling, it would get under the net. So it proved. What I hadn’t bargained for was that one of our more pedantic members—and we have a few—would seek to have the item barred on purely arithmetical grounds, on the basis that in total she must have had eleven toes at least.
The only other transgression is that of being boring. At the society’s earliest meetings, a few members misunderstood the nature of uselessness and came up with such conversation-?stoppers as that the Mississippi is 1,171 miles long or, for those who prefer it, 1,884 kilometers. We useless information aficionados are not interested in the length of rivers, a fact that is traditionally conveyed to the offender with elaborate yawns and shouts of “Boring!” Tell us, however, that in the Nuuanu Valley of Honolulu there is a river that flows upward, and our eyes light up.
Mr. Gradgrind, in the same volume as the Bard’s “There’s the rub” gag, observes, “Facts alone are wanted in life.” That is the policy of The Useless Information Society. It could be our motto.
But there are facts and facts. Useless information, as may be judged from this modest volume, is not in the same category as trivia, as in Trivial Pursuit. We do not care about any of that Guinness World Records kind of stuff. All our information has to pass the “Not a Lot of People Know That” test, preceded by gasps of surprise and, in extreme cases, followed by wild applause.
If we can send our fellow members home with their heads reeling under the weight of a cornucopia of entirely useless and out-?of-?the-?way facts, then our deliberations will not have been in vain.
Keith Waterhouse
THE USELESS INFORMATION MASCOT
It is estimated that millions of trees are planted by forgetful squirrels.
Squirrels can climb trees faster than they can run on the ground.
Squirrels may live fifteen or twenty years in captivity, but their life span in the wild is often only about one year. They fall prey to disease, malnutrition, predators, cars, and humans.
A squirrel cannot contract or carry the rabies virus.
THE BOOK OF
USELESS INFORMATION
HALL OF FAME
HAIL TO THE CHIEFS
All U.S. presidents have worn glasses; some of them just didn’t like to be seen wearing them in public.
There has never been a president from the Air Force or Marine Corps, although Ronald Reagan was in the Army Air Corps.
More presidents have been born in the state of Virginia than in any other state.
No president has been an only child.
The only three U.S. presidents who ever had to deal with real or impending impeachment—Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton—all have names that are euphemisms for “penis”—Johnson, Dick, and Willie.
David Rice Atchinson was president of the United States for exactly one day.
CURIOUS GEORGE
George Washington is the only man whose birthday is a legal holiday in every state as of a few years ago.
George Washington grew marijuana in his garden.
George Washington was deathly afraid of being buried alive. After he died, he wanted to be laid out for three days just to be sure he was dead.
George Washington’s false teeth were made of whale bone.
George Washington had to borrow money to go to his own inauguration.
Thomas Jefferson anonymously submitted design plans for the White House. They were rejected. He was the first president to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe all died on July 4. Jefferson and Adams died at practically the same minute of the same day.
John Quincy Adams owned a pet alligator, which he kept in the East Room of the White House.
John Quincy Adams took his last skinny dip in the Potomac on his seventy-?ninth birthday.
Andrew Jackson was the only president to believe that the world is flat.
The longest inaugural address by a U.S. president was given by William Henry Harrison. It was one hour, forty-?five minutes long during an intense snowstorm. One month later, he died of pneumonia.
John Tyler had fifteen children.
Millard Fillmore’s mother feared he may have been mentally retarded.
James Buchanan is said to have had the neatest handwriting of all the presidents. He was the only unmarried president.
Andrew Johnson was the only self-?educated tailor. He is the only president to make his own clothes and those of his cabinet.
Ulysses S. Grant had the boyhood nickname “Useless.”
HONEST ABE
Abraham Lincoln had a wart on his face.
Abraham Lincoln’s mother died when the family dairy cow ate poisonous mushrooms and Mrs. Lincoln drank the milk.
Abraham Lincoln had a nervous breakdown in 1836.
Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address consisted of just 272 words.
Before winning the presidential election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln lost eight elections for various offices.
A short time before Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, he dreamed he was going to die, and he related his dream to the Senate. He died in the same bed that had been occupied by his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. His ghost is said to haunt the White House.
The annual White House Easter egg roll was started by Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878.
James Garfield could write Latin with one hand and Greek with the other—simultaneously!
Grover Cleveland was a draft dodger. He hired someone to enter the service in his place, for which he was ridiculed by his political opponent, James G. Blaine. It was soon discovered, however, that Blaine had done the same thing himself.
TEDDY TIDBITS
In 1912, after being shot in the chest, Theodore Roosevelt finished a speech he was delivering before he accepted any medical help.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first to announce to the world that Maxwell House coffee is “Good to the last drop.”
Theodore Roosevelt wrote thirty-?seven books.
Theodore Roosevelt’s mother and first wife died on the same day in 1884. He himself died from an infected tooth.
William Taft got stuck in his bathtub on his Inauguration Day and had to be pried out by his attendants. He had a special, reinforced steel dining chair.
Woodrow Wilson wrote all of his speeches in longhand. He is the only president who has held a Ph.D. degree.
Herbert Hoover was the first U.S. president to have a telephone in his office.
When First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt received an alarming number of threatening letters soon after her husband became president at the height of the Depression, the Secret Service insisted that she carry a pistol in her purse.
Harry Truman’s middle name was just S and was not short for anything. His parents could not decide between two different names beginning with S.
John F. Kennedy could read four newspapers in twenty minutes.
John F. Kennedy’s rocking chair was auctioned off for $442,000.
Pluto, the astrological sign for death, was directly above Dallas when JFK was born.
Lyndon B. Johnson was the first president of the United States to wear contact lenses.
Richard Nixon left instructions for “California, Here I Come” to be the last piece of music played (slowly and softly) were he to die in office.
Richard Nixon’s favorite drink was a dry martini.
Richard Nixon was the first U.S. president to visit Moscow.
Gerald Ford was once a male model.
Jimmy Carter is a speed reader (two thousand words per minute).
Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president born in a hospital. He had an operation for hemorrhoids while he was in office.
REAGANISMS
Ronald Reagan once wore a Nazi uniform while acting in a film during his Hollywood days.
Ronald Reagan married his first wife, Jane Wyman, at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Ronald Reagan sent out the Army photographer who first discovered Marilyn Monroe.
Ronald Reagan was the only divorced president, and he was the only president to be head of a labor union.
Bill Clinton was the first left-?handed U.S. president to serve two terms.
CRIMINAL MINDS
Al Capone’s famous scars (which earned him the nickname “Scarface”) were from an attack. The brother of a girl he had insulted attacked him with a knife, leaving him with three distinctive scars.
Al Capone’s business card said he was a used furniture dealer. His brother was a town sheriff.
While in Alcatraz, Al Capone was inmate 85.
Behram, an Indian thug, holds the record for most murders by a single individual. He strangled 931 people between 1790 and 1840 with a piece of yellow and white cloth called a ruhmal. The most by a woman is 610, by Countess Erzsebet Bathory of Hungary.
Mass murderer Charles Manson recorded an album called Lie.
Benito Mussolini would ward off the evil eye by touching his testicles.
Fidel Castro was once a star baseball player for the University of Havana in the 1940s.
Leon Trotsky, the seminal Russian Communist, was assassinated in Mexico with an ice pick.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s body tag was auctioned off for $6,600.
Josef Stalin’s left foot had webbed toes, and his left arm was noticeably shorter than his right arm.
DER FÜHRER
Adolf Hitler was Time’s Man of the Year in 1938.
Hitler’s great-?great-?grandmother was a Jewish maid.
Hitler had planned to change the name of Berlin to Germania.
Hitler refused to shake Jesse Owens’s hand at the 1936 Olympics because he was black.
Hitler was claustrophobic. The elevator leading to his eagles’ nest in the Austrian Alps was mirrored so it would appear larger and more open.
THE OTHER KENNEDYS
Robert Kennedy was killed in the Ambassador Hotel, the same hotel that housed Marilyn Monroe’s first modeling agency.
While at Harvard University, Edward Kennedy was suspended for cheating on a Spanish exam.
LOUIS, LOUIS
Louis IV of France had a stomach the size of two regular stomachs.
Louis XIV bathed once a year. He had forty personal wigmakers and almost one thousand wigs.
THE ROYAL WE
The Queen of England has two birthdays—one real and one official.
The shortest British monarch was Charles I, who was four foot, nine inches.
Prince Harry and Prince William are uncircumcised.
Catherine the Great relaxed by being tickled.
Princess Grace of Monaco was once on the board of 20th Century Fox.
The royal house of Saudi Arabia has close to ten thousand princes and princesses.
While performing her duties as queen, Cleopatra sometimes wore a fake beard.
King Tut’s tomb contained four coffins. The third coffin was made from twenty-?five hundred pounds of gold, and in today’s market is worth approximately $13 million.
Peter the Great executed his wife’s lover and forced her to keep her lover’s head in a jar of alcohol in her bedroom.
The German kaiser Wilhelm II had a withered arm and often hid the fact by posing with his hand resting on a sword or by holding a glove.
The Mongol emperor Genghis Khan’s original name was Temuji. He started out as a goatherder.
Alexander the Great was an epileptic. He was tutored by Aristotle.
Augustus Caesar had achluophobia—the fear of sitting in the dark.
Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff.
GOD SAVE THE QUEEN
Six of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren were married to rulers of countries—England, Russia, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Romania. Queen Victoria’s native language was German.
Queen Victoria eased the discomfort of her menstrual cramps by having her doctor supply her with marijuana.
The first thing Queen Victoria did after her coronation was to remove her bed from her mother’s room.
One of Queen Victoria’s children gave her a bustle for Christmas that played “God Save the Queen” when she sat down.
All of Queen Anne’s seventeen children died before she did.
Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth I’s mother, had six fingers on one hand.
Elizabeth I suffered from anthophobia—a fear of roses.
Princess Anne competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics.
Queen Berengaria (1191 C.E.) of England never lived in nor visited England.
ARTISTIC ENDEAVORS
The famous painting Whistler’s Mother was once bought from a pawn shop.
The Mona Lisa was completed in 1503. It was stolen from the Louvre on August 21, 1911.
A Flemish artist is responsible for the world’s smallest painting in history. It is a picture of a miller and his mill, and it was painted onto a grain of corn.
Artist Constantino Brumidi fell from the dome of the U.S. Capitol while painting a mural around the rim. He died four months later.
Leonardo da Vinci spent twelve years painting the Mona Lisa’s lips. He could also write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.
On a trip to the South Sea Islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped off briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.
Salvador Dalí once arrived at an art exhibition in a limousine filled with turnips.
When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.
Michelangelo carved the famed Medici tombs in Florence.
GOGH CRAZY
Vincent van Gogh decided to become an artist when he was twenty-?seven years old.
Van Gogh cut off his left ear. His Self-?Portrait with Bandaged Ear shows the right one bandaged because he painted his mirror image.
During his entire life, van Gogh sold only one painting, Red Vineyard at Arles.
Van Gogh committed suicide while painting Wheat Field with Crows.
BRAINIACS
Alexander Graham Bell made a talking doll that said “Mama” when he was a young boy in Scotland. He never telephoned his wife or mother. They were both deaf.
Aristotle thought blood cooled the brain.
Despite his great scientific and artistic achievement, Leonardo da Vinci was most proud of his ability to bend iron with his bare hands.
Jeremy Bentham, a British philosopher who died in 1832, left his entire estate to the London Hospital, provided that his body was allowed to preside over its board meetings. His skeleton was clothed and fitted with a wax mask of his face. It was present at the meeting for ninety-?two years and can still be viewed there.
Thomas Edison had a collection of more than five thousand birds. He once saved a boy from the path of an oncoming locomotive.
NEWTONIAN PRINCIPLES
Isaac Newton was an ordained priest in the Church of England.
Isaac Newton was only twenty-?three years old when he discovered the law of universal gravitation.
Isaac Newton dropped out of school when he was a teenager.
Isaac Newton was a Member of Parliament.
Nobody knows where Voltaire’s body is. It was stolen in the nineteenth century and has never been recovered. The theft was discovered in 1864, when the tomb was opened and found empty.
Sigmund Freud had a morbid fear of ferns.
Socrates committed suicide by drinking the poison hemlock. He left no writings of his own.
At age sixteen, Confucius was a corn inspector.
RELATIVITY SPEAKING
Albert Einstein couldn’t speak fluently when he was nine. His parents thought he might be mentally retarded.
In 1921, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work with the photoelectric effect.
Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952.
When Einstein was inducted as an American, he attended the ceremony without socks.
Einstein’s last words were in German. Because the attending nurse did not understand German, his last words will never be known.
THAT EXPLAINS IT
Hitler and Napoleon both had only one testicle.
A LITTLE EGO
Napoleon Bonaparte was afraid of cats.
Napoleon conducted his battle plans in a sandbox.
Napoleon favored mathematicians and physical scientists but excluded humanists from his circle, believing them to be troublemakers.
Napoleon had his servants wear his boots to break them in before he wore them.
LARGER THAN LIFE
Attila the Hun was a dwarf. Pepin the Short, Aesop, Gregory the Tours, Charles III of Naples, and the Pasha Hussain were all shorter than three and a half feet tall.
BIG BEN
Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey, not the eagle, to be the U.S. national bird.
Benjamin Franklin was the first head of the United States Post Office.
Benjamin Franklin’s peers did not give him the assignment of writing the Declaration of Independence because they feared he would conceal a joke in it.
DID IT RUN WINDOWS?
Bill Gates’s first business was Traff-?O-?Data, a company that created machines that recorded the number of cars passing a given point on a road.
WE LIKE TO CALL HIM “ECCENTRIC”
Henry Ford believed in reincarnation and flatly stated that history is bunk.
GLOBETROTTERS
Marco Polo was born on the Croatian island of Korcula (pronounced Kor-?chu-?la).
Christopher Columbus had blond hair.
American explorer Richard Byrd once spent five months alone in Antarctica.
Harry Houdini was the first person to fly an airplane on the continent of Australia.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME
Bruce Willis’s real name is Walter.
Cher’s real name is Cherilyn La Pierre.
Hulk Hogan’s real name is Terry Bollea.
Ice Cube’s real name is O’Shea Jackson.
John Wayne’s real name was Marion Morrison.
Judy Garland’s real name was Frances Gumm.
Tom Cruise’s real name is Thomas Mapother.
Tina Turner’s real name is Annie Mae Bullock.
Vanilla Ice’s real name is Robert Van Winkle.
Albert Brooks’s real name is Albert Einstein.
Ralph Lauren’s real name is Ralph Lifshitz.
Jim Carrey’s middle name is Eugene.
Keanu Reeves’s first name means “cool breeze over the mountains” in Hawaiian.
Cleo and Caesar were the early stage names of Cher and Sonny Bono.
FAMILY TIES
Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.
Sophia Loren’s sister was once married to the son of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
Julie Nixon, daughter of Richard Nixon, married David Eisenhower, grandson of Dwight Eisenhower.
Humphrey Bogart was related to Princess Diana, according to U.S. genealogists.
Tom Hanks is related to Abraham Lincoln.
I’M READY FOR MY CLOSE-?UP
Andy Garcia was a Siamese, or conjoined, twin.
Arnold Schwarzenegger bought the first Hummer manufactured for civilian use, in 1992. The vehicle weighed in at 6,300 pounds and was seven feet wide. He also paid $772,500 for President John F. Kennedy’s golf clubs at a 1996 auction.
Tommy Lee Jones and Vice President Al Gore were freshmen roommates at Harvard.
Sarah Bernhardt played a thirteen-?year-?old Juliet when she was seventy years old.
Although he starred in many gangster films, James Cagney started his career as a chorus boy.
As a child, Jodie Foster appeared in Coppertone commercials.
Bruce Lee was so fast that his films actually had to be slowed down so audiences could see his moves.
David Niven and George Lazenby were the only two actors who played James Bond only once.
The first actress to appear on a postage stamp was Grace Kelly.
Tom Cruise at one time wanted to be a priest.
Peter Falk, who played Columbo, has a glass eye.
Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the first three Star Wars movies, was a hospital porter in London before starring as the Wookie.
Shirley Temple made $1 million by age ten.
Keanu Reeves once managed a pasta shop in Toronto.
Mae West did not utter her infamous line, “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” until her last film, Sextette. It had been floating around for years and has always been attributed to her, but its exact origins are unknown.
Mae West was once dubbed “the statue of Libido.”
Melanie Griffith’s mother is actress Tippi Hedren, best known for her lead role in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.
Alfred Hitchcock did not have a belly button.
Rita Moreno is the first and only entertainer to have received all four of America’s top entertainment industry awards: the Oscar, the Emmy, the Tony, and the Grammy.
James Doohan, who played Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott on Star Trek, was missing his entire middle finger on his right hand.
In 1953, Marilyn Monroe appeared as the first Playboy centerfold.
Jack Nicholson appeared on The Andy Griffith Show twice.
Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.
Jill St. John, Jack Klugman, Diana Ross, Carol Burnett, and Cher have all worn braces as adults.
Orson Welles is buried in an olive orchard on a ranch owned by his friend, matador Antonio Ordonez, in Seville, Spain.
Kathleen Turner was the voice of Jessica Rabbit in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Amy Irving was her singing voice.
James Dean died in a Porsche Spyder.
Sylvia Miles had the shortest performance ever nominated for an Oscar with her role in Midnight Cowboy. Her entire role lasted only six minutes.
Katharine Hepburn is the only person to win four Oscars for Best Actress.
Clark Gable used to shower more than four times a day.
Elizabeth Taylor has appeared on the cover of Life magazine more than anyone else.
MAKE ’EM LAUGH
Charlie Chaplin started in show business at age five. He was so popular during the 1920s and 1930s he received more than 73,000 letters in just two days during a visit to London.
Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-?alike contest.
Howdy Doody had forty-?eight freckles. His twin brother was named Double Doody.
Dan Aykroyd’s cone head from Saturday Night Live was auctioned off for $2,200.
Roseanne Barr used to be an opening act for Julio Iglesias.
In high school, Robin Williams was voted the least likely to succeed.
Bill Cosby was the first black man to win an Emmy for Best Actor.
I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND
The Beatles featured two left-?handed members: Paul, whom everyone saw holding his Hoffner bass left-?handed, and Ringo, whose left-?handedness is at least partially to blame for his “original” drumming style.
The Beatles performed their first U.S. concert in Carnegie Hall.
The Beatles song “A Day in the Life” ends with a note sustained for forty seconds.
The Beatles song “Dear Prudence” was written about Mia Farrow’s sister, Prudence, when she wouldn’t come out and play with Mia and The Beatles at a religious retreat in India.
The license plate number on the Volkswagen that appeared on the cover of The Beatles’ album Abbey Road is 281F.
“When I’m Sixty-?Four” was the first song to be recorded for the Sgt. Pepper album. “Within You Without You” was the last.
When John Lennon divorced Julian Lennon’s mother, Paul McCartney composed “Hey Jude” to cheer up Julian.
John Lennon’s first girlfriend was named Thelma Pickles.
John Lennon’s middle name was Winston.
Ringo Starr was born during a World War II air raid.
ONE-?MAN SHOW
An eighteenth-?century German named Matthew Birchinger, known as The Little Man of Nuremberg, played four musical instruments, including the bagpipes; was an expert calligrapher; and was the most famous stage magician of his day. He performed tricks with the cup and balls that have never been explained. Yet Birchinger had no hands, legs, or thighs, and he was shorter than twenty-?nine inches tall.
INSTRUMENTAL VERSION
The bagpipe was originally made from the whole skin of a dead sheep. Carnegie Mellon University offers bagpiping as a major.
A penny whistle has six finger holes.
The tango originated as a dance between two men for partnering practice.
The harmonica is the world’s most popular instrument.
There are more than thirty-?three thousand radio stations around the world.
A single violin is made of seventy separate pieces of wood.
Glass flutes do not expand with humidity, so their owners are spared the nuisance of tuning them.
In 1990, there were an estimated seventy-?five thousand accordionists in the United States.
The first U.S. discotheque was the Whisky A Go-?Go in Los Angeles.
Gandhi took dance and music lessons in his late teens.
CLASSICALLY SPEAKING
More than one hundred descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach have been cathedral organists.
When Beethoven was a child, he made such a poor impression on his music teachers that he was pronounced hopeless as a composer.
Beethoven’s Fifth was the first symphony to include trombones.
Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head.
Mozart’s real name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolf-?gangus Theophilus Mozart.
Mozart wrote the nursery rhyme “Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star” at the age of five.
Mozart is buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.
PLAY THAT FUNKY MUSIC
At age forty-?seven, The Rolling Stones’ bassist, Bill Wyman, began a relationship with thirteen-?year-?old Mandy Smith, with her mother’s blessing. Six years later, they were married, but the marriage only lasted a year. Not long after, Bill’s thirty-?year-?old son, Stephen, married Mandy’s mother, age forty-?six. That made Stephen a stepfather to his former stepmother. If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father’s father-?in-?law and his own grandfather.
The music hall entertainer Nosmo King derived his stage name from a NO SMOKING sign.
Jonathan Houseman Davis, lead singer of Korn, was born a Presbyterian but converted to Catholicism because his mother wanted to marry his stepfather in a Catholic church.
Nick Mason is the only member of Pink Floyd to appear on all the band’s albums.
The naked baby on the cover of Nirvana’s album Never-?mind is named Spencer Eldon.
The 1980s song “Rosanna” was written about actress Rosanna Arquette.
The B-52s were named after a 1950s hairdo.
The band Duran Duran got their name from a character in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie Barbarella.
The Beach Boys formed in 1961.
The bestselling Christmas single of all time is Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”
The first CD pressed in the United States was Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA.
The Grateful Dead were once called The Warlocks.
The Mamas and Papas were once called The Mugwumps.
The only member of the band ZZ Top to not have a beard has the last name Beard.
There is a band named A Life-?Threatening Buttocks Condition.
The song with the longest title is “I’m a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with My Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-?O, Beat-?O Flat-?On-?My-?Seat-?O, Hirohito Blues,” written by Hoagy Carmichael. He later claimed the song title ended with “Yank” and the rest was a joke.
Tommy James got the inspiration to write his number-?one hit “Mony Mony” while he was in a New York hotel looking at the Mutual of New York building’s neon sign flashing repeatedly: M-?O-?N-?Y.
ABBA got its name by taking the first letter from each of the band members’ names (Agnetha, Bjorn, Benny, and Anni-?frid).
The opera singer Enrico Caruso practiced in the bath, while accompanied by a pianist in a nearby room.
Enrico Caruso and Roy Orbison were the only tenors in the twentieth century capable of hitting the note E over high C.
The song “I Am the Walrus” by John Lennon was inspired by a two-?tone police siren.
In every show Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (The Fantasticks) wrote, there was at least one song about rain.
Aerosmith’s “Dude Looks Like a Lady” was written about Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe.
Andy Warhol created The Rolling Stones’ emblem depicting the big tongue. It first appeared on the cover of the Sticky Fingers album.
“Happy Birthday to You” is the most often sung song in America.
The band Steely Dan got its name from a sexual device depicted in the book Naked Lunch.
Al Kooper played keyboards for Bob Dylan before he was famous.
LONG LIVE THE KING
Elvis Presley had a twin brother named Garon, who died at birth. Elvis’s middle name was spelled Aron in honor of his brother.
Elvis loved to eat meatloaf. He weighed 230 pounds at the time of his death.
Elvis failed his music class in school.
Elvis never gave an encore.
Elvis was once appointed Special Agent of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. According to Elvis’s autopsy, he had ten different drugs in his body at the time of his death.
Frank Sinatra was once quoted as saying that rock ’n’ roll was only played by “cretinous goons.”
Jim Morrison of The Doors was the first rock star to be arrested onstage.
Mr. Mojo Risin is an anagram for Jim Morrison.
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison were all twenty-?seven years old when they died.
Karen Carpenter’s doorbell chimed the first six notes of “We’ve Only Just Begun.”
Madonna once did a commercial for Pepsi.
Mick Jagger attended the London School of Economics for two years.
Paul McCartney’s mother was a midwife.
Shannon Hoon, the late lead singer of the group Blind Melon, was a backup singer for Guns N’ Roses on their Use Your Illusion I album.
Sheryl Crow’s two front teeth are fake. She knocked them out when she tripped onstage earlier in her career.
Michael Jackson is black.
ALSO KNOWN AS INTERMISSION
Breath, by Samuel Beckett, was first performed in April 1970. The play lasts thirty seconds and has no actors or dialogue.
DO NOT PASS GO
Since its introduction in February 1935, more than 150 million Monopoly board games have been sold worldwide.
Parker Brothers prints about $50 billion worth of Monopoly money in a year.
Every day, more money is printed for Monopoly than by the U.S. Treasury. The most money you can lose in one trip around the board (normal game rules, going to jail only once) is $26,040. The most money you can lose in one turn is $5,070.
Values on the Monopoly game board are the same today as they were in 1935.
The longest Monopoly game in a bathtub was ninety-?nine hours long.
PLAY TO WIN
English gambling dens used to have employees whose job was to swallow the dice if the police arrived.
The word checkmate in chess comes from the Persian phrase Shah-?Mat, which means “The king is dead.”
According to Pope Innocent III, it was not a crime to kill someone after a game of chess.
Australia is considered the easiest continent to defend in the game Risk.
The Ouija board is named after the French and German words for “yes”—oui and ja.
Trivial Pursuit was invented by Canadians Scott Abbott and Chris Haney. They didn’t want to pay the price for Scrabble, so they made up their own game.
Mario, of Super Mario Bros. fame, first appeared in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong. His original name was Jumpman, but that was changed to Mario to honor Nintendo of America, Inc.’s landlord, Mario Segali.
Westwood Studios’ computer game Command and Conquer is the most successful war game series of all time, according to Guinness World Records.
MUPPET MOMENTS
Kermit the Frog was named after Kermit Scott, a childhood friend of Jim Henson’s, who became a professor of philosophy at Purdue University. Kermit has eleven points on the collar around his neck and is left-?handed.
Miss Piggy’s measurements are 27-20-36.
TV GUIDE
One in every four Americans has appeared on television.
Sitcom characters rarely say good-?bye when they hang up the phone.
Daytime dramas are called soap operas because they were originally used to advertise soap powder. In America in the early days of television, advertisers would write stories around the use of their soap powder.
For many years, the globe on the NBC Nightly News spun in the wrong direction. On January 2, 1984, NBC finally set the world spinning in the proper direction.
When Patty Hearst was kidnapped, she was watching the TV show The Magician, starring Bill Bixby.
Of the six men who made up The Three Stooges over the years, only three of them were real brothers.
The first ever televised murder case aired December 5 through 9, 1955.
The Love Boat’s titular ship was named the Pacific Princess.
M*A*S*H MATTERS
M*A*S*H stood for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.
Jamie Farr was the only member of the cast who actually served as a soldier in the Korean War.
Hawkeye’s real name was Benjamin Franklin Pierce. He was played by Alan Alda.
Sixty point two percent of the U.S. TV audience watched the final episode of M*A*S*H in 1983.
There are as many as seventy-?eight scenes in a single X-?Files episode.
Gunsmoke was the top-?rated series from 1957 to 1961.
The Brady Brunch kids went to elementary school at Dixie Canyon Elementary.
The characters of Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street were named after Bert the cop and Ernie the taxi driver in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
The first crime mentioned in the first episode of Hill Street Blues was armed robbery.
Every episode of Seinfeld contains a Superman reference somewhere.
Mr. Munster’s first name is Herman.
On Roseanne, DJ stood for David Jacob.
On Gilligan’s Island, the professor’s real name was Roy Hinkley, Mary Ann’s last name was Summers, and Mrs. Howell’s maiden name was Wentworth.
LIVE LONG AND PROSPER
Mr. Spock was second in command of the Starship Enterprise. His blood type was T-?negative.
As well as appearing on Star Trek, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, James Doohan, and George Takei have all appeared at one time or another on The Twilight Zone.
The mask used by Michael Myers in the original Halloween movie was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white.
Captain Jean-?Luc Picard’s fish was named Livingston.
ANIMATION NATION
Yasser Arafat was addicted to watching television cartoons.
Boris Karloff is the narrator of the seasonal television special How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Before Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat was the most popular cartoon character. He was the first cartoon character to ever have been made into a balloon for a parade.
Bill Cosby created the cartoon characters Fat Albert and Weird Harold.
Cheryl Ladd (of Charlie’s Angels fame) played the voice, both talking and singing, of Josie in the 1970s Saturday morning cartoon Josie and the Pussycats.
Dagwood Bumstead’s dog is named Daisy.
Dennis the Menace’s dog is named Gnasher.
Beetle from the comic strip Beetle Bailey and Lois from the comic strip Hi and Lois are brother and sister.
Marmaduke the cartoon dog is a Great Dane.
Of the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, all named after painters and/or sculptors, only Donatello does not come from the same time period as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
MEET THE FLINTSTONES
Wilma Flintstone’s maiden name was Wilma Slaghoopal, and Betty Rubble’s was Betty Jean McBricker.
The movie playing at the drive-?in at the beginning of The Flintstones is called The Monster.
On The Jetsons, Jane is thirty-?three years old, and her daughter Judy is eighteen.
Pokémon stands for “pocket monster.”
Rocky Raccoon lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
The most common set of initials for Superman’s friends and enemies is L.L.
RETURN TO SENDER
The Simpsons live at 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. The Munsters live at 1313 Mockingbird Lane, Mockingbird Heights. The Flintstones live at 39 Stone Canyon Way, Bedrock.
Tony the Tiger was voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft.
Scooby-?Doo’s real first name is Scoobert. Shaggy’s real name is Norville. Casey Kasem was the voice of Shaggy.
D’OH!
The Simpsons is the longest-?running animated series on TV.
Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, incorporated his initials into the drawing of Homer. M is his hair, and G is his ear.
Patty and Selma smoke Laramie brand cigarettes.
GOING ’NUTS
Peanuts is the world’s most read comic strip.
Charlie Brown’s father is a barber.
Lucy and Linus have another little brother named Rerun. He sometimes plays left field on Charlie Brown’s baseball team—when he can find it!
EAT MORE SPINACH
Elzie Crisler Segar created the comic strip character Popeye in 1919.
After the Popeye comic strip started in 1931, spinach consumption went up by 33 percent in the United States.
Popeye is five feet, six inches tall. He has an anchor tattooed on his arm.
Popeye’s adopted son is named Swee’ pea.
LOONEY TUNES
Mel Blanc, who voiced Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
Bugs Bunny first said “What’s up, doc?” in the 1940 cartoon A Wild Hare.
The Looney Tunes theme song is actually called “The Merry-?Go-?Round Is Broken Down.”
Tweety used to be a baby bird without feathers until the censors decided he looked naked.
WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR
Walt Disney named Mickey Mouse after Mickey Rooney, whose mother he dated for some time. Walt Disney originally supplied the voice for Mickey Mouse.
Mickey Mouse is known as “Topolino” in Italy. He was the first nonhuman to win an Oscar. His birthday is November 18.
Mickey Mouse’s ears are always turned to the front, no matter which direction his head is pointing.
The Black Cauldron is the only PG-?rated Disney animated feature.
Goofy has a wife, Mrs. Goofy, and one son, Goofy Jr.
Goofy actually started life as “Dippy Dawg,” a combination of both Goofy and Pluto.
Donald Duck comics were banned in Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.
Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy. His sister is named Dumbella.
Peter Pan and 101 Dalmatians are the only two classic Disney cartoon features in which both parents are present and don’t die throughout the movie.
The Lion King is the top-?grossing Disney movie of all time, with a domestic gross intake of $312 million.
In Fantasia, the sorcerer’s name is Yensid—Disney spelled backward.
Walt Disney died of lung cancer.
Walt Disney’s autograph bears no resemblance to the famous Disney logo.
CINEMA FIRSTS
The first real motion picture theater was called a nickelodeon—admission was a nickel—and opened in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, on June 19, 1905. The first motion picture shown there was The Great Train Robbery.
The first female monster to appear on the big screen was the Bride of Frankenstein.
The first James Bond movie was Dr. No.
The first word spoken by an ape in the movie Planet of the Apes is “Smile.”
C3PO is the first character to speak in Star Wars.
Love Me Tender was Elvis Presley’s first film.
Mrs. Claus’s first name is Jessica in the movie Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.
The first time the “f-?word” was spoken in a movie was by Marianne Faithfull in the 1968 film I’ll Never Forget Whatshisname. In Brian De Palma’s 1984 movie Scarface, the word is spoken 206 times—an average of once every 29 seconds.
WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES
During the chariot scene in Ben-?Hur, a small red car can be seen in the distance.
In the film Star Trek: First Contact, when Picard shows Lilly she is orbiting Earth, Australia and Papua New Guinea are clearly visible…but New Zealand is missing.
In the movie Now and Then, when the girls are talking to the hippie and they get up to leave, Teeny puts out her cigarette twice.
If you pause Saturday Night Fever at the “How Deep Is Your Love” rehearsal scene, you will see the camera crew reflected in the dance hall mirror.
In 1976, Rodrigo’s song “Guitar Concierto de Aranjuez” was number one in the United Kingdom for only three hours because of a computer error.
HOLLYWOOD INSIDER
When a film is in production, the last shot of the day is called the “martini shot”; the next-?to-?last one is called the “Abby Singer” after a famous assistant director.
Smithee is a pseudonym filmmakers use when they don’t want their names to appear in the credits.
A “walla-?walla” scene is one in which extras pretend to be talking in the background—when they say “walla-?walla,” it looks like they are actually having a conversation.
The Academy Award statue is named after a librarian’s uncle. One day Margaret Herrick, librarian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, made the remark that the statue looked like her uncle Oscar, and the name stuck.
In the early days of silent films, there was blatant thievery. Unscrupulous film companies would steal the film, re-?shoot a scene or two, and release it as a new production. To combat this, the Biograph Company put the company’s trademark initials, AB, somewhere in every scene—on a door, a wall, or a window.
Ronald Reagan did a narration at the 1947 Academy Awards ceremony.
The second unit films movie shots that do not require the presence of actors.
Alfred Hitchcock never won an Academy Award for directing.
Because metal was scarce, the Academy Awards given out during World War II were made of wood.
A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY…
The actor who played Wedge in the original Star Wars trilogy has a famous nephew: actor Ewan McGregor, who plays young Obi-?Wan in the new Star Wars trilogy.
Darth Vader is the only officer in the Imperial Forces who doesn’t have a rank.
In the Return of the Jedi special edition, during the new Coruscant footage at the end of the film, a storm trooper can be seen being carried over the crowds.
Four people played Darth Vader: David Prowse was his body, James Earl Jones did the voice, Sebastian Shaw was his face, and a fourth person did his breathing.
Luke Skywalker’s last name was changed at the last minute from Starkiller to make it less violent.
The name of Jabba the Hutt’s pet spider monkey is Salacious Crumb.
YOU HAIRY APE
King Kong is the only movie to have its sequel (Son of Kong) released in the same year (1933).
King Kong was Adolf Hitler’s favorite movie.
Skull Island is the jungle home of King Kong.
SHARK TALE
Bruce was the nickname of the mechanical shark used in the Jaws movies.
In the 1983 film Jaws 3D, the shark blows up. Some of the shark guts were stuffed E.T. dolls being sold at the time.
ENJOY THE SHOW
One of the many Tarzans, Karmuala Searlel, was mauled to death by a raging elephant on the set.
Debra Winger was the voice of E.T.
Dirty Harry’s last name is Callahan.
In Psycho, Mrs. Bates’s dress was periwinkle blue.
SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED
Felix Leiter is James Bond’s CIA contact.
James Bond is known as “Mr. Kiss-?Kiss-?Bang-?Bang” in Italy.
Jean-?Claude Van Damme was the alien in the original Predator in almost all the jumping and climbing scenes.
More bullets were fired in Starship Troopers than in any other movie ever made.
The famous theme ostensibly from Dragnet was actually composed by Miklos Rozsa for the 1946 film noir classic The Killers.
Godzilla has made the covers of Time and Newsweek.
Gone With the Wind is the only Civil War epic ever filmed without a single battle scene.
The movie Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, was banned from Egypt in 1963 because Taylor is a Jewish convert.
The movie Clue has three different endings. Each ending was randomly chosen for different theaters. All three endings are present on the DVD.
The movie Paris, Texas was banned in the city Paris, Texas, shortly after its box-?office release.
The skyscraper in Die Hard is the Century Fox Tower.
The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in jelly.
The word mafia was purposely omitted from the Godfather screenplay.
Dracula is the most filmed story of all time. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is second, and Oliver Twist is third.
When the movie The Wizard of Oz first came out, it got bad reviews. The critics said it was stupid and uncreative.
THE NUMBERS GAME
Smokey the Bear’s zip code is 20252.
Dirty Harry’s badge number is 2211.
Sleeping Beauty slept one hundred years.
Approximately sixty circus performers have been shot from cannons. At last report, thirty-?one of them have been killed.
There are twenty-?two stars surrounding the mountain on the Paramount Pictures logo.
In 1938, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel sold all rights to the comic-?strip character Superman to their publishers for $130.
The number of the trash compactor in Star Wars is 3263827.
Pulp Fiction cost $8 million to make. Of that amount, $5 million went to actors’ salaries.
In an episode of The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob’s criminal number is 24601, the same as the criminal number of Jean Valjean in Les Misérables.
All the clocks in the movie Pulp Fiction are stuck on 4:20.
The longest film ever released was **** by Andy Warhol, which lasted twenty-?four hours. It proved, not surprisingly (except perhaps to its creator), an utter failure. It was withdrawn and re-?released in a ninety-?minute form as The Loves of Ondine.
The longest Hollywood kiss was from the 1941 film You’re in the Army Now; it lasted three minutes and three seconds.
A Chinese checkerboard has 121 holes.
There are 225 spaces on a Scrabble board.
There are one hundred squares on a Snakes and Ladders board.
The total number of bridge hands possible is 54 octillion.
There are 311,875,200 five-?card hands possible in a fifty-?two-?card deck of cards.
The wheel on the game show Wheel of Fortune is 102 inches in diameter.
John Travolta’s white suit from Saturday Night Fever was auctioned off for $145,500; Judy Garland’s ruby slippers for $165,000; Charlie Chaplin’s hat and cane for $211,500; Elvis’s jacket for $59,700; and John Lennon’s glasses for $25,875.
THE LITERARY WORLD
PAGE TO SCREEN
Bambi was originally published in 1929 in German.
General Lew Wallace’s best-?seller Ben-?Hur was the first work of fiction to be blessed by a pope.
The name for Oz in The Wizard of Oz was thought up when the author, L. Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A–N and O–Z, hence Oz.
THE USELESS INFORMATION BOOK CLUB
An estimated 2.5 million books will be shipped in the next twelve months with the wrong covers.
Louisa May Alcott, author of the classic Little Women, hated children. She only wrote the book because her publisher asked her to.
Susan Haswell Rowson was America’s first bestselling novelist for her novel Charlotte Goode.
During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville’s timeless classic of the sea, Moby Dick, only sold fifty copies.
Guinness World Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from public libraries.
Lassie, the TV collie, first appeared in a 1930s short novel titled Lassie Come Home, written by Eric Mow-?bray Knight. The dog in the novel was based on Knight’s real-?life collie, Toots.
In 1898 (fourteen years prior to the Titanic tragedy), Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility. The plot of the novel turned on the largest ship ever built hitting an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean on a cold April night.
Keeping Warm with an Axe is the title of a real how-?to book.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at the age of nineteen.
Virginia Woolf wrote all her books standing up.
At twelve years old, an African man named Ernest Loftus made his first entry in his diary and continued every day for ninety-?one years.
People in Iceland read more books per capita than any other people in the world.
During the eighteenth century, books that were considered offensive were sometimes “punished” by being whipped.
The all-?time bestselling electronic book is Stephen King’s Riding the Bullet.
The only person to decline a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was Sinclair Lewis for his book Arrowsmith.
Roger Ebert is the only film critic to have ever won the Pulitzer Prize.
Tom Sawyer was the first novel written on a typewriter.
Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, smoked forty cigars a day for the last years of his life. He was born in 1835 when Halley’s Comet appeared. He died in 1910 when Halley’s Comet returned.
Ghosts appear in four Shakespearian plays: Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet, and Macbeth.
World heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney also lectured on Shakespeare at Yale University later in his life.
Shakespeare spelled his own name several different ways.
Goethe couldn’t stand the sound of barking dogs and could only write if he had an apple rotting in the drawer of his desk.
For the 66 percent of Americans who admit to reading in the bathroom, the preferred reading material is Reader’s Digest.
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote the fifty-?thousand-?word novel Gatsby without any word containing “e.”
The original Aladdin story from Tales of 1001 Arabian Nights begins, “Aladdin was a little Chinese boy.”
Dr. Seuss pronounced his name so it would rhyme with rejoice. His birthday is March 2.
Dr. Seuss coined the word nerd in his 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo.
Sherlock Holmes’s archenemy was Professor Moriarty. Holmes had a smarter brother named Mycroft.
Sherlock Holmes never said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
Writer Edgar Allan Poe and LSD-?advocate Timothy Leary were both kicked out of West Point.
Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey decimal category.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was the most famous editor at Doubleday & Co.
Hans Christian Anderson, author of many famous fairy tales, was word-?blind. He never learned to spell correctly, and his publishers always found errors in his manuscripts.
Dr. Jekyll’s first name is Henry.
Charles Dickens never finished his schooling. He was also an insomniac, who believed his best chance of sleeping was in the center of a bed facing directly north.
BIBLE TALK
Almost all the villains in the Bible have red hair.
The last word in the Bible is Amen.
The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalms 119.
There are more than 1,700 references to gems and precious stones in the King James Version of the Bible.
The Bible is the number-?one shoplifted book in America.
The book of Esther in the Bible is the only book that does not mention the name of God.
The term devil’s advocate comes from the Roman Catholic Church. When deciding if someone should be sainted, a devil’s advocate is always appointed to give an alternative view.
The Bible has been translated into Klingon.
It is believed that Shakespeare was forty-?six around the time the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the forty-?sixth word from the first word is shake, and the forty-?sixth word from the last word is spear.
Every minute, forty-?seven Bibles are sold or distributed throughout the world.
According to Genesis 1:20–22, the chicken came before the egg.
All Hebrew-?originating names that end with the letters “el” have something to do with God.
A seventeenth-?century Swedish philologist claimed that in the Garden of Eden God spoke Swedish, Adam spoke Danish, and the serpent spoke French.
ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?
A phonophobe fears noise.
Carcinomaphobia is the fear of cancer.
Paedophobia is a fear of children.
Nyctohylophobia is the fear of dark wooded areas, or forests at night.
Pyrophobia is the fear of fire.
Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive.
Telephonophobia is the fear of telephones.
Papaphobia is the fear of popes.
Nycrophobia is the fear of darkness.
Lachanophobia is the fear of vegetables.
Entomophobia is the fear of insects.
Eosophobia is the fear of dawn.
Clinophobia is the fear of beds.
A gynaephobic man fears women.
Arnold Schonberg suffered from triskaidecphobia, the fear of the number thirteen. He died thirteen minutes from midnight on Friday the thirteenth.
Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
Zoophobia is the fear of animals.
Tonsurphobia is the fear of haircuts.
Xenophobia is the fear of strangers or foreigners.
Phobatrivaphobia is fear of trivia about phobias.
NOW SAY IT THREE TIMES FAST
The world’s longest name is Adolph Blaine Charles Daivid Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorft Sr.
A hydrodaktulpsychicharmonica is a variety of musical glass.
