Elvis Presley only ever performed in the United States and Canada.
Mark Twain was born and died in Halley’s Comet years, 1835 and 1910. He actually said, “It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet.”
Walt Disney gave his housekeeper of 30 years company shares for holiday bonuses, and when she died her estate was worth $9 million.
Charlemagne had a pet elephant, whose name was Abul-Abbas.
Perhaps one-upping Charlemagne, William Randolph Hearst had a pet alligator in college named Charlie.
Thomas Edison proposed to his second wife in Morse Code.
When Marie Antoinette married Louis XVI, the fireworks display went tragically wrong and killed over 100 people. The couple gave their month’s allowance to support the survivors.
Alexander Graham Bell thought his invention, the telephone, should be answered “Ahoy-Hoy!”
Henry VIII also wrote, he authored a 30,000 word novella titled “Defense of the Seven Sacraments” as a defense of the Catholic church against Martin Luther. Then he left the Catholic church.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams visited William Shakespeare’s home while on vacation, and they broke off a piece of his chair for a keepsake.
Jesse Owens was actually named James Cleveland Owens, with JC for short. Once a teacher misheard his nickname and accidentally called him “Jessie,” so he just stuck with it.
JRR Tolkien founded the Viking Club while he was studying at Leeds University.
Cleopatra and Mark Antony once created their own club called the Inimitable Livers. It consisted of feasts and drinking wine.
In 1948 computer scientist and mathematician Alan Turing ran a marathon in 2 hours and 46 minutes. The Olympic marathon runner that year only beat him by 11 minutes.
Paul McCartney performed a voice on “The Simpsons.” He was Lisa the Vegetarian and he did this on the condition that Lisa would stay a vegetarian for the entire run of the show.
Malcolm X copied the entire dictionary into his own handwriting. He also read each page out loud to improve his public speaking.
Ernest Hemingway went undercover for the Soviet Union in 1941, and his code name was Argo.
Rosa Parks sued Outkast for using her name for one of their song titles.
Napoleon Bonaparte wrote a romance novel about a soldier and it was published when he died.
Claude Monet’s real first name was Oscar.
Benito Mussolini spent some time as a teacher before he founded the Fascist Party… and his students nicknamed him the tyrant.
When Amelia Earhart first saw a plane, she described herself as “indifferent toward the thing with rusty wire and wood.”
Nikola Tesla one time paid a hotel by promising them he would give them one of his inventions…the death beam. He said it was worth $10,000… but when they went to get it, it was just a bunch of electronics in a box.
It’s believed that Shakespeare’s children and wife were illiterate.
Frank Sinatra once gave Marilyn Monroe a maltese that she named “Mafia Honey.”
Wolfgang Mozart actually got to meet Marie Antoinette when they were both 7 years old and he was playing music for her family in Vienna. It’s said that he proposed marriage to her.
On that same note, a teenage Beethoven performed for Mozart, which prompted Mozart to say, “Keep your eyes on him-someday he’ll give the world something to talk about.”
One of Genghis Khan’s top generals originally belonged to one of Khan’s rival tribes, and he almost killed Khan in battle. It impressed him so much that he had the soldier join the Mongol army as an officer.
During WWII the French cut the lift cables in the Eiffel Tower so that if Hitler wanted to go up he’d have to take the stairs. He didn’t.
Babe Ruth was trained to be a tailor and shirt maker before his baseball career took off.
Aristotle thought that women had fewer teeth than men.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill claimed that when he stayed at the White House he ran into the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.
Speaking of Lincoln, he was born on the same day as Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809.
Later in his life Christopher Columbus wrote that the apocalypse was coming and that he had caused it by traveling to the New World.
Isaac Newton thought the world would end no sooner than 2060. So relax, we’ve got a little time.
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