*The natural substance the violin bows are strung with is horse hair.
*X-ray technology has shown there are 3 different versions of the Mona Lisa under the visible one.
*James Bond smokes 'Morland Balkan' cigarettes.
*The movie ' Wanda whips Wall Street ' was the first to be billed as being backed by Wall Street.
*Composer Johann Sebastian Bach once walked 230 miles to hear the organist at Lubeck in Germany.
*Pope Paul IV, who was elected on 23 May 1555, was so outraged when he saw the naked bodies on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel that he ordered Michelangelo to paint garments on to them.
*World heavyweight boxing champion, Gene Tunney also lectured on Shakespeare at Yale University later in his life.
*William Shakespeare's father's first name was John.
*Elzie Crisler Segar created the comic strip character Popeye in 1919
*The 'Thing', from the movie of the same name, had green blood.
*The fictional highwayman Dick Turpin's horse was called Black Bess.
* Maxwell Klinger (from the TV series M*A*S*H) wore a '36B Miss Highrise' bra.
*The Beatles song 'A day in the life' ends with a note sustained for 40 seconds.
*Yul Brynner stared in the play 'The king and I' more than 4000 times.
*Superman's hair grows ' incredibly long' when exposed to red kryptonite. ( additional storylines include other random effects )
* Miss Piggy's measurements are 27-20-32.
*Roger Ramjet's American Eagle Squadron consists of Yank, Doodle, Dan and Dee.
*Daffy Duck made his debut in 1937 in ' Porky's Duck Hunt '.
*John Cage composed 'Imaginary Landscaper No.4', which was scored for twelve radios tuned at random.
*Charles Dickens was an insomniac, who believed his best chance of sleeping was in the centre of a bed facing directly north.
*Although starring in many gangster films, James Cagney started his career as a chorus girl.
*Michelangelo died at the age of 88.
*The writer, Rudyard Kipling, only ever used black ink.
*John Lennon's middle name was Winston.
*In the film 'Star Trek : First Contact', when Picard shows Lilly she is orbiting Earth, Australia and Papa New Guinea are clearly visible .. but New Zealand is missing .
*The leading part in Shakespeare's play 'The Merchant of Venice' is Shylock the Jew, though the play was written during a time when Jews were banned from living in Britain.
*Handel wrote the score of his Messiah in just over 3 weeks.
*The 'Mona Lisa' was once brought by Francis I of France in 1517 to hang in a bathroom.
*The movie 'Cleopatra', starring Elizabeth Taylor, was banned from Egypt in 1963 because she was a Jewish convert.
*Over two hundred different languages are spoken throughout the Soviet Union.
*Virginia Woolf wrote most of her work standing up.
*Betty Grable's legs were insured for one million dollars.
*The 'Over the rainbow' scene from 'The Wizard of Oz' was originally cut from the film because it was 'slow' and added nothing to the plot. It was added again at the last moment.
*The 3 largest newspaper circulations are Russian.
*Before Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat was the most popular cartoon character.
* Salvador Dali once arrived to an art exhibition in a limousine filled with turnips.
*The B'52's, were named after a Fifties Hairdo.
* During the chariot scene in 'Ben Hur' a small red car can be seen in the distance.
*Over 400 films has been made, based on the plays of Shakespeare.
*Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary' was Mary, Queen of Scots.
*There are 256 semihemidemisemiquavers in a breve.
*Frank Sinatra was once quoted as saying rock 'n' roll was only played by 'cretinous goons'.
*The vegetarian composer Richard Wagner, once published a diatribe against 'the abominable practice of flesh eating'.
*The juke-box derives from the old English word for dancing - juke. T
*he Marx Brothers (Chico, Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo) were actually named respectively Leonard, Adolph, Julius, and Hebert.
*When young and impoverished, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his own paintings.
*'I am a Walrus', by John Lenon, was inspired by a police two tone siren.
*Charles Baudelaire, preferred to Wagners music, the sounds ' of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws'.
* The subject of the first printed book in England was Chess.
*Tiny Tim called his daughter Tulip after his 1968 hit 'Tiptoe through the Tulips'.
*One of Britain's most famous composers, Sir Michael Tippett, composed pieces notoriously difficult to play, At the premiere of his 'Symphony No. 2', the orchestra got lost in the middle of the piece and the conductor had to start again.
*The canine filmstar Rin Tin Tin is buried in Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
*B.B. King's guitar, 'Lucille' is a Gibson guitar.
*Between 1931 and 1969 Walt Disney collected thirty-five Oscars.
*The French equivalent of 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog', a sentence which contains every letter of the alphabet (useful when learning to type), is 'Allez porter ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume un Havane', which translates to 'Go and take this old whisky to the fair-haired judge smoking the Havana cigar'.
*In the famous line 'Wherefore art thou Romeo', wherefore means why, not where.
*In the story of Cinderella, her slippers were originally fur, but they became glass because of an error in translation.
*Enid Blyton, writer of the 'Famous Five' had 59 stories published in 1959.
*Pablo Picasso was abandoned by the midwife just after his birth because she though he was stillborn. He was saved by an uncle.
*Nineteenth-century artist, Cesar Ducornet, drew with his feet - he had no arms.
*Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was once arrested for vagrancy.
*Mickey mouse's Latin name is Michael Musculus.
*About half the piano's in England are thought to be out of tune.
*The phrase ' The 3 R's ' ( standing for 'reading, writing and arithmetic' ) was created by Sir William Curtis, who was illiterate.
*To romanticise his image, Warner Brothers claimed that Humphrey Bogart was born on Christmas day, he was born 23 January 1899.
*With 1477 stops, 33,112 pipes and a 365 horse-power engine, the Auditorium Organ in Atlantic City is the largest in the world.
*Monaco's national orchestra is bigger than its army.
*Larry Hagman didn't allow smoking on the set of Dallas.
*It is the Doppler Effect, that causes trains and helicopters to change pitch as it passes by.
* Giacomo Puccina, who composed many famous opera's such as "La Boheme" and "Madam Butterfly" also composed " La Fanciulla del West" set in the Wild West at the time of the Californian Gold Rush.
*Rice - Lloyd Webber contemplated a show based on the Cuban missile crisis.
*The balls of purring fluff in the Star Trek series were 'Tribbles'.
*The first Academy Awards (or Oscar's) were presented on 16 May 1929.
*In the original Star Wars movie, there are only two named female characters.
*About two-thirds of the world's population have no regular contact with newspapers, television, radio or telephones.
*The theme music of the original Lone Ranger was The William tell Overture.
*Richard Strauss wrote a 'gay Viennese ballet' on the subject of Whipped Cream.
*Colonel Potter, from the TV series M*A*S*H, was allergic to tomato juice.
*During World War II, W.C. Fields kept US $50 000 in Germany 'in case the little bastard wins'.
*The French composer J.B. Lully, while conducting a concert, pierced his foot with a pointed baton, and died from the resulting gangrene.
*The Stone's album 'Sticky Finger's has a zip on its sleeve.
*The most commonly sung song in the world - Happy birthday to you - is under copyright, the copyright runs out in 2010.
*Of the two chipmunks, Chip and Dale, Chip has the black nose.
*Colour televisions are capable of producing only 3 colours, red, green and blue.
*Fred Astaire's first screen notes read: 'Can't act, Can't Sing, Can Dance a little'.
*The Nazi-sympathist song 'Don't Let's Be Beastly to the German's', was sung seven times in one evening by Noel Coward, at the request of Winston Churchill.
*Issur Danielovitch Demsky was born on 9 December 1916, but most people know him as Kirk Douglas.
*On the same day as he completed his masterpiece "The Divine Comedy", the Italian poet Dante died.
*Elizabeth I, thought it was ill bred to make music in public.
*The Boomtown Rats, who made a hit single, were inspired by a female random killer whose excuse was 'I don't like Mondays.
*Charlie Chaplain's cane was made of bamboo.
*Judy Garland's false eyelashes were sold at auction in 1979 for US $125.
*The poet Coleridge drank about 2 litres of laudanum (tincture of opium) each week at the height of his addiction.
*The Turkish War inspired the song' We Don't Want To Fight But By Jingo If We Do'.
* According to Genesis 7:2, God told Noah to take 14 of each kind of 'clean' animal into the ark.
*Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
* Bambi was originally published in 1929 in German.
*According to Genesis 1:20-22 the chicken came before the egg.
*Marlene Dietrich was born 27 December 1901. She was one of the most popular film actresses of her day, and was considered an expert on men. She was said "Most women set out to try to change a man and when they have changed him they do not like him"
*The opera singer Enrico Caruso practised in the bath, while accompanied by a pianist in a nearby room.
*Colophony is a bow resin.
*In the first 2 years after 'talkies' appeared, US cinema's have attracted over 100 million people a week.
*Bob Dylan turned The Beatles on to marijuana.
*The name of the 'Love Boat' was the 'Pacific Princess'.
*The first crime mentioned in the first episode of 'Hill Street Blues' was armed robbery.
*A Penny whistle has six finger holes.
*Ghosts appear in 4 Shakespearian plays; Julius Caesar, Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth.
*George Bernard Shaw refused an Oscar in 1938, for the screenplay Pygmalion.
*Mozart was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave.
*Sergei Prokofiev composed an opera called 'The Giant' when he was only seven years old.
*Actress Sarah Bernhardt played the part of Juliet (13 years old) when she was 70 years old.
*Beethoven's Fifth, was the first symphony to include trombones.
*The original title for the best seller 'Gone with the wind' was 'Ba! Ba! Black sheep'.
*The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from British Public Libraries.
*Sophia Loren's sister was once married to the son of the Italian dictator, Mussolini.
*In Papua New Guinea there are villages within five miles of each other which speak different languages.
*The band, Buffalo Springfield, was named after an American Tractor.
*Steve Martin's first movie was 'The Jerk'.
*Irving Berlin, who was born on 11 May 1888 and who composed three thousand songs in his lifetime, couldn't read music.
*Turkey has a ban on kissing in films.
*The Pearl Harbour air raid inspired the song 'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition'.
*West Side Story is based on Shakespear's play, Romeo and Juilet.
*The great film comedian, W.C. Fields, died on Christmas Day in 1946. His tombstone bore the following epitaph: " On the whole I would rather be in Philadelphia".
*Mae West was once dubbed 'The statue of Libido'.
*EMI stands for ' Electrical and Musical Instruments'.
*The Green Hornet is the Lone Ranger's grandnephew.
*A Flemish artist is responsible for one of the smallest paintings in history. It is a picture of a miller and his mill, and it was painted on to a grain of corn.
*Maurice Ravel, the French composer, died on 28 December 1937. He suffered from a debilitating brain disease late in his life, which left him unable to speak or even sign his name.
*Leonardo da Vinci played the viola.
*Some hotels in Las Vegas have gambling tables floating in their swimming pools.
*Two of the greatest writers who ever lives, William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes (who wrote Don Quixote), both died on 23 April 1616.
*The French critic, Saint-Beuve, was born on 23 December 1804. On one occasion in his life he was unfortunate enough to get involved in a duel. When asked to choose his weapons, he replied " I choose spelling, You're dead".
*Composer Johann Sebastian Bach once walked 230 miles to hear the organist at Lubeck in Germany.
*Beethoven incorporated the tune of 'God Save the King' into his 'Battle' Symphony.
*Only one western film has even been directed by a woman.
*The longest Hollywood kiss was from the 1941 film 'You're in the Army now', it lasted 3 minutes and 3 seconds.
*Each episode of 'Dr. Kildare' contained 3 suffering patients.
*The first ever musical recording was to the tune of Yankee Doodle.
*A hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica is a variety of musical glasses.
*In 1976 Rodrigo's 'Guitar Concierto de Aranjuez' was No I in the UK for only three hours because of a computer error.
*The music hall entertainer Nosmo King derived his stage name from a 'No Smoking' sign.
*Walt Disney originally supplied the voice for his character 'Mickey Mouse'.
*The first recorded reference to cricket dates back to 1272.
*The highjump method of jumping head first and landing on their back is called the Fosbury Flop.
*Clay pigeon shooting was once known as Inanimate bird shooting.
*The American dart game 'Cricket' is known in Britain as 'Mickey Mouse'.
*Australian Ron Clarke set 18 World Records as a long distance runner but never won an Olympic title.
*The motto for the Olympic Games is Citius - Altius - Fortius (Faster - Higher - Stronger).
*The 180m sprint of the776 BC Olympics (the earliest recorded) was won by Coroebus .
* Cricketer Dennis Lillee once tried to use an Aluminium bat of his own design called 'The Combat'.
*The large disk used in Tiddlywinks is called a Squidger.
*A racehorse which has never won a race is refereed to as a Maiden.
*Orienteering originated in Sweden.
*Snooker originated in India.
*The first reference to a money prise in a horse race is a prise offered by Richard I in 1195.
*Darts is the most popular sport played in Britain.
*The word 'love' meaning 'no score' comes from the word ' L`oeuf ' which means 'egg'.
*A soccer ball has 32 panels.
*Draughts is older than chess.
*To a yachtsman, a fresh breeze is about 20 knots.
*The first automobile racetrack in America was the 'Indianapolis Motor Speedway', which consisted of 3 million cobblestones.
*There are only 7 possible opening moves in draughts.
*The collecting of Beer mats is called Tegestology.
*When driven from a tee, a golf ball travels at over 270 km/h.
* Harry Drake fired an arrow 1871.8 metres, from a crossbow, on 30 July 1988
*In August 1985, Thelma Pitt-Turner set a womens record by completing a marathon at Hastings, New Zealand, in 7 hours 58 minutes. She was 82 at the time.
*The first perfect nine innings baseball game (pitcher pitches 27 out, no hits, no runs) was achieved by John Lee Richmond on 12 June 1880.
*The largest crowd for a basketball game was 800,000 people at the Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece on 4 April 1968.
*The odds on dealing 13 cards of one suit are 158,753,389,899 to 1. The odds on dealing the perfect hand (13 cards of one suit) to a particular player is 635,013,559,559 to 1 and the odds on dealing a perfect game (4 players receiving a perfect hand) are 2,235,197,406,895,366,368,301,599,999 to 1.
*Garry Chapman scored 17 runs off a single delivery (all run with no overthrow) in a game of cricket on 13 October 1990. (he hit the ball into a patch of 10 inch high grass)
*The most expensive commercial boardgame is the Deluxe version of Outrage!, which retails at £3995.
*The world's largest gambling win was US $111,240,463.10 in the Powerball lottery on 7 July 1993
*Grabatology is the collecting of ties.
*The highest paid odds on a horserace are 3,072,887 to 1. For a 5p accumulator bet on 5 horses, an unnamed woman won £153,644.40 (which was paid out by Ladbrokes, the world's largest bookmaker).
*On the 24 April 1993, Charles Servizio completed 46,001 push-ups (press-ups) in 24 hours, at Fontana, California, USA.
*When new, a regulation cricket ball weighs 5.5 ounces.
*Trevor Francis was the first soccer player to be transferred for £1 000 000 ( Birmingham City to Nottingham Forest 1979 )
*The flights on a dart are made from turkey feathers.
*The first major car rally won by a woman was in Rome, 1960. (Pat Moss)
*The minimum number of darts required to finish a single in, double out game of 501 is 9.
*The Roman Emperor Nero killed his wife after she 'scalded' him for going to the races.
*The Australian term for extras in cricket are 'sundries'.
*In the 1950's the hula hoop was banned in Tokyo due to the large number of traffic accidents it caused.
*Max Baer once shouted out in the middle of a world title boxing fight 'Ma, he's killing me!'.
*The yo-yo originated in the Philippines, where it was used as a weapon in hunting.
*Boules, or Petanque, is France's second most played sport.
*In 1935 Jesse Owens broke 4 world records in 45 minutes.
*On 15th May 1948, the Australian touring team scored a world record total of runs in one day. In just under six hours they made 721 all out against Essex, at Southchurch Park, Southend.
*The most common injury in ten pin bowling is a sore thumb.
*Mick Jaggers favourite game is cricket.
*Round arm bowling in cricket was invented by Christina Wells.
*Baseball star Babe Ruth was born George Herman Ruth. During his sporting career he played in 2503 games and had a lifetime batting average of .342.
*English batsman, Arthur Shrewbury, shot himself believing he was afflicted with an incurable disease.
*Shrove Tuesday is the day the Pancake races are run on.
*The first rugby club was formed in 1843.
*In charades, pushing away means you're cold.
*The Ancient Greek name for a racecourse is the Hippodrome.
*
*What is black, frozen and measures 3 inches by 1 inches? An ice-hockey puck. When kicked in the groin, a soccer player has been 'banjoed'.
*US President, Richard Nixon, tried to offer tactics to an American Football team.
*Johnny Weissmuller, the Hollywood Tarzan won swimming gold medals in the Olympics in 1924.
*Marcellus, is the middle name of Cassius Clay.
*The 1970 World cup football match between El Savador and Honduras was so highly charged that it resulted in the two countries embarking on a 3 day war.
*Karate, often considered Japan's national sport, didn't come to Japan until 1916.
*The nickname of the New Zealand Rugby team is 'The All Blacks',which came about through a newspaper printing error.
*Joe Davis, former world Snooker champion, only had one good eye.
*In Thailand, kite-flying is a major sport with teams of up to twenty people competing against each other.
*John L. Sullivan, a famous bareknuckle boxer, once took 75 rounds to knock out his opponent, Jake Kilrain
*Pistols were first used in the Olympic games shooting events in 1984.
*There are over 10 000 golf courses in the United States.
*Australian meteorologist Nils Lied, while in Antartica, drove a golf ball 2414 metres.
*Cystallite is the material snooker balls are made from.
*At Darts, a score of 26 is called 'bed and breakfast'.
*If you were at the Brickyard you would be playing Motor racing (it’s the nickname for the Indianapolis circuit).
*Ferdie Adoboe set a world record on 28 July 1983 by running 100 yards in 12.8 seconds … backwards.
*The average age of a female Olympic competitor is 20.
*A golf green hole in a minimum of 4 inches.
*The bar used for weightlifting weighs 20 kilograms.
*It is forbidden for an Olympic wrestler to twist his opponents toes.
*The board game Monopoly was originally rejected by Parker Brothers, who claimed it had 52 fundamental errors.
*Formula One Driver, Jackie Stewart, who won three motor racing world championships, also has been the British clay pigeon shooter five times.
*Rugby was discovered by accident. A student during a game of football decided to pick up the ball and run to the opposition goal - thus the formation of rugby.
*Ray Ewry, the American athlete, won three gold medals at the 1900 Olympic Games had been paralysed and confined to a wheelchair as a child.
*The first man to swim the English Channel without a life jacket was Captain Matthew Webb, who died trying to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls.
*Football was played in the twelfth century, though without any rules.
*Joseph and Etienne Montigolfier, inventers of the hot air balloon, first believed that their balloon didn't rise due to hot air but an invisible gas given off by fire. They named it Montigolfier Gas.
*Pedals were added to the bicycle in 1839.
*The early personal computer, the Sinclair ZX80, had 1 kilobyte of internal memory.
*Joseph Swan invented a light bulb in 1879, one year before Thomas Edison. But Swan didn't patent his idea and was accused of copying by Edison ( who did patent the idea and is therefore recognised as the inventor ) until it was shown both bulbs were produced in different processes. They then formed a joint company using the best of both technologies.
*Allied bombers were issued with Biro pens as fountain pens leaked at high altitude.
*The bicycle was first introduced to British roads in 1888, but the rider had to ring a bell continuously to warn others of their approach.
*The first computer was built in 1823. The steam driven calculating machine, built by Charles Babbage, failed to work due to poor workmanship in the intricate parts. When rebuilt by the Science Museum of London in 1991 it worked.
*The Dotmatrix printer was developed for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games by the Japanese company Seiko.
*Britain's first escalator was installed in Harrods in 1878.
*The worlds longest escalator is in Leningrad Metro, 120 metres long.
*The fluorescent tube uses 20% of the power to produce an equal amount of light as a tungsten filament bulb.
*Edison tried to invent a gun-powder powered engine for a helicopter . . . he blew up his lab, and decided to stop work on that project.
*Laser means Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
*The tip of a rotary mower travels at over 200 km/hr.
*The first xerographic copy (prelude to photocopy) was ' 10.22.38 Astoria '
*John Dunlop invented the Pneumatic tyre from a section of garden hose, (for his sons tricycle)
*The first public radio broadcast was on the 23 February 1920, in June 1920 Dame Nellie Melba sang on the radio, immediately the Post Office banned 'Entertainment'. Broadcasting lifted the ban in 1921 for 15minutes per week.
*In an atom, the electron weighs 1/2000 th of the weight of the proton.
*The world's oldest man-made alloy is Bronze.
*IBM started as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Corporation.
*Rainfall is measured with a Ombrometer.
*The 'Screwdriver' was invented by oilmen, who used the tool to stir the drink.
*Polytetrafluoroethylene is more commonly known as 'Teflon'.
*Magnesium was used in early flash photography because it burns with a brilliant light.
*Ammonia is the active ingredient in smelling salts.
*When hydrogen burns in the air, water is formed.
*Near-sighted model, Grace Robin was the first to show off contact lenses in 1930.
*The diameter of wool is measured in microns
*Gunpowder is formed after mixing charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur.
*Plutonium was developed by deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in a cyclotron.
*Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen make up 90% of the human body.
*The revolving door was invented in 1888.
*Alcohol is added to soap to make it clear.
*The drinking straw was invented in 1886 by hand rolling paraffined Manila paper.
*The metre was originally defined as one 10-millionth of the distance from the equator to the Pole.
*Cars were first started with ignition keys in 1949.
*Instant coffee has been around since the 18th century.
*The three primary colours are red, yellow and blue. The three secondary colours are green, orange and purple.
*The first washing machine was marketed by Hurley Machine Co in 1907.
*Pearls melt in vinegar.
*Twenty two carat gold has 916 parts per thousand pure gold.
*A shadow of a four-dimensional object would have three dimensions.
*Red light has the greatest wavelength.
*Brimstone, referred to in the Bible and some Alchemy text, is sulphur.
*George de Mestral invented velcro, after getting burrs stuck to his pants.
*Turquoise was once called 'Turkey stone'.
*The decimal system is based on the number 10 while the sexagesimal system is based on the number 60.

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