Here are a few semi-interesting trivia facts about a mish/mosh of subjects.
MAURY WILLS
“It Pays to Steal” is the title of Maury Wills’s 1963 autobiography. He was a famous base stealer.
The original name for the TV series, “The Rifleman” was “The Sharpshooter” in 1958.
The birthplace of George Washington in Virginia was Pope’s Creek Plantation in 1732.
The name of Boca Raton in Florida means “Rat’s Mouth” in Spanish.
The Detroit Lions NFL team was originally named “The Portsmouth Spartans” in 1934.
DETROIT LIONS
The Jamaican name of Ian Flemings home was “Goldeneye” where he wrote his first James Bond novel.
A well-known slogan used by Mad Magazine was “Humor in a Jugular Vein”.
Mel Brooks famous movie “Blazing Saddles” took place in the town of Rock Ridge.
The thespian puppet from Sesame Street was Meryl Sheep.
The term Zip Code was introduced in 1963 and means Zone Improvement Plan.
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One of My Favs
Snoopy of “Peanuts” fame had a number of siblings. He had two sisters, Belle and Molly. He also had five brothers: Andy, Marbles, Rover, Olaf, and Spike.
This blog was intended to supply the masses with “everyuselessthing” I could find. There are also thousands of so-called “trivia experts” out there with knowledge of thousands upon thousands of other strange and odd facts. It’s a true challenge for me to search out a few that even the experts may not have heard before. Here are ten items that were new to me, and I hope new to them as well.
The name of the monster in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel was not “Frankenstein” but “Adam”.
According to Ian Fleming’s writings, James Bonds favorite alcoholic beverage wasn’t a vodka martini (shaken not stirred) but bourbon. Of the 317 drinks consumed, Bond drank 37 bourbons, 10 bourbons and branch water, and seven bourbons and soda, but only 19 vodka martinis.
Although the deerstalker hat is almost a trademark of Sherlock Holmes, he never wore one. Nowhere in Sir Arthur Conan Doyles four novels and 56 stories is the hat ever mentioned. The belief that Holmes wore such a hat can be traced to Sydney Paget, an illustrator for Strand Magazine. Paget, who liked deerstalker hats and wore them himself, produced drawings inaccurately depicting Holmes wearing one.
The official name of the bed created by the Murphy Door Bed Company was not called a Murphy Bed but an In-A-Doorbed.
The monkey wrench was named after its inventor, Charles Moncky.
The rock group America was actually formed in England.
The specific English word for a group of kittens is not litter, which can designate animals of different species, but Kittles, or Kindle.
Table tennis was invented not in China but in England, where it was originally played with balls made from champagne corks and paddles from cigar box lids. English engineer James Gibbs introduced the celluloid ball.
The person who invented the electric chair was a dentist. In 1881, Dr. Alfred Southwick, a dentist from Buffalo, New York, saw an intoxicated man touch a live electric generator, which promptly killed him. Thus, the electric chair was born.
Here is your daily collection of somewhat interesting useless information. Read, learn, and pass it along to friends, family and coworkers. I’m sure they’ll appreciate receiving them as much as you do receiving it from me. LOL
Too much coffee can kill you. A lethal dose of caffeine for the average adult is approximately 10 grams, or the equivalent of drinking between 50 and 200 cups of coffee in rapid succession.
The largest human cell is the female ovum. The smallest is the male sperm.
Mosquito repellent doesn’t repel mosquitoes. It only blocks their sensors so that they don’t know you’re there.
Members of the U.S. Congress are the world’s highest-paid legislators.
The bristled toothbrush originated in China around the year 1498. The bristles, fixed to a bamboo or bone handle, were neck hairs from Siberian boars.
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One of the holiest Christian holidays is named after a pagan goddess. The word Easter derives from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, who governed the vernal equinox.
In 1659, the Massachusetts General Court ordered a five shilling fine to be paid by anyone caught celebrating Christmas. The ban was revoked in 1681.
In his role as James Bond, the super spy, Sean Connery wore a toupee to hide his receding hairline.
Artists have more sexual partners. Researchers suggest that creative people excel at attracting mates, acting on sexual impulses, and doing more than their share of ensuring species survival because they often display “schizotypal” characteristics which are the positive side of schizophrenic personality traits.
Wedding rings date back thousands of years. The ancient Romans and Egyptians both believe that a vein called the vena amoria ran directly from the ring finger to the heart.
Since today is April Fools’ Day . . . HAPPY FOOLS DAY. I know Just how much all of you love celebrities and movies, so I thought some movie trivia might be interesting. Nothing too spectacular, just a few interesting factoids to get your week started.
In The Wizard of Oz, Toto was paid $125.00 a week in salary.
The injuries on Luke Skywalker’s face when he is attacked by the snow monster in The Empire Strikes Back were real.
India’s Bollywood movie industry produces more movies each year that Hollywood.
The 2006 James Bond movie, Casino Royale, was the first Bond movie permitted in China by their censors.
The first interracial kiss in television history happened on Star Trek.
Actor Jim Caviezel was struck by lightning while portraying Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.
Bryan Adams’ famous song “Summer of 69” is named after the sex position, not the year.
Nicolas Cage is named after comic book hero Luke Cage.
The group ZZ Top performed in the movie Back to the Future 3.
Kevin Smith’s iconic movie Clerks was filmed on a budget of less than $28,000.
Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings because he didn’t understand the script.
In the post-apocalyptic classic, The Road Warrior, Mel Gibson’s (Mad Max) had just 16 lines of dialogue.
In the Star Wars Trilogy, George Lucas’s original name for Yoda was Buffy.
The mask that Michael Myers wears in Halloween was actually a white Captain Kirk mask.
Yoda from Star Wars, the cookie monster from Sesame Street, and Miss Piggy from The Muppet Show were all voiced by the same person.
I thoroughly enjoyed my career. I had a knack for investigating that gave me a great deal of satisfaction over the years. One thing I was taught by my mentors was that there were no such things as coincidences. After hundreds of cases and thousands of interviews I’ve come to the conclusion we may have been mistaken. Coincidences apparently do exist and to back up my theory I offer the following examples. Some are odd, some are quirky, and some are just unbelievably amazing. Enjoy . . .
Two automobiles that collided in Ajax, Ontario, on a slippery winter day were owned by motorists named Snow and Blizzard.
Lena McCovey had a bottle of nerve pills swept out of her bedroom when a flood destroyed her home on the Klamath River. The pills were later recovered two hundred miles away at Coos Bay, Oregon, by Mrs. McCovey’s sister.
In Bermuda, brothers Erskine I. Ebbin and Neville Ebbin both died one year apart after being struck by the same taxi, driven by the same driver, and carrying the same passenger.
Steven Law of Markham, Ontario, Canada, was hunting for a ring lost by his father in five feet of water in Muskoka Lake. He instead found a topaz ring lost by his grandmother forty-one years earlier.
She gets “credit” for catching a thief. Diane Klos, a cashier in an Irvington, New Jersey retail store was given her own stolen credit card for a purchase by a customer who claimed to be her.
A bottle containing a note describing the fatal injury of Chunosuke Matsuyama and the death of forty-four shipmates on a hunt for buried treasure in 1784, was washed ashore at Matsuyama’s own village in Japan – 151 years later.
When Vera Czermak learned that her husband had betrayed her, she jumped out of her third-story window. She survived the fall but landed on her husband, who was killed.
Actor Sean Connery who played the film character James Bond, was once stopped for a traffic offense by a policeman named Sergeant James Bond.
I’m not convinced that all strange occurances are coincidental but these stories can make you rethink things a little.
I’m a big fan of movies and I find nothing more enjoyable than throwing in a DVD, popping some popcorn, and relaxing with a good film. My preferences are varied but what I really enjoy most are the movies normally shown on TCM. I’ve spent hundreds of hours watching those films and without hesitation would do it again.
One thing above all that interests me are the anomalies made during filming that are missed by the editors and end up in the final version. I’m sure some of them are done purposely but many are just screw-ups that were missed. I stumbled on this information concerning a few movie foul-ups that aren’t all that well known (at least not to me). The next time you happen to be watching any of these films with a friend of family member you can dazzle them with your superior knowledge of movie trivia. Enjoy.
In 1982 during the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark a great blooper can be found in the scene where German soldiers and Gestapo agents were lifting the Ark. If you look closely as the camera pans along the hieroglyphics on the wall you’ll see paintings of C3PO and R2D2, the robots from the Star Wars classic (another George Lucas film).
This tidbit is from the movie Fortune Cookie made in 1966. The blooper scene shows Walter Matthau leaving one room and entering another and he appears to have lost a great deal of weight in the process. Matthau suffered a heart attack while this scene was being filmed; only half of the scene was completed before he entered the hospital. He returned five months later to finish the job almost 40 pounds lighter than he was in the first part of the filming.
In 1971 during the filming of Diamonds are Forever, James Bond tips his Ford Mustang up on two wheels and drives through a narrow alley to escape from the bad guys. Unfortunately in the final version the Mustang enters the alley on its two right wheels and leaves the alley on its two left wheels.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind filmed in 1977 also had a blooper worth mentioning. Towards the end of the movie Richard Dreyfus and Terry Garner smashed through several roadblocks as they neared the Devil’s Tower. The license plate on their station wagon kept changing.
Now let’s go back to 1954 to the filming of Rear Window. The star Jimmy Stewart, in a cast and sitting in a wheelchair, is arguing with Grace Kelly. His cast magically switches from his left leg to his right during the scene.
1967 during the filming of Camelot, King Richard (Richard Harris) praises his medieval kingdom while speaking to some of his subjects. Someone dropped the ball because in that scene Harris is wearing a Band-Aid on his neck.
And last but not least one small blooper from one of my all-time favorite movies, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953). In the movie they actually go to Venus.
I hope to discover more of these little miscues in other films and if I do I’ll be sure to pass them along.
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