At the 1939 Academy Awards, Shirley Temple presented Walt Disney with an honorary Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was the first traditionally animated feature film. Keeping in the theme of the movie, the award was comprised of one normal-size Oscar, with seven mini statuettes to represent the dwarves. This was Walt Disney's second honorary Oscar.
"In 1967, musicians Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie left their band the Bluesbreakers, and joined forces with Jeremy Spencer and Bob Brunning to form the original iteration of Fleetwood Mac. By the time their third album was released in 1970, the band was starting to achieve mainstream success, although several members were personally struggling. Green left the band first, after an alleged bad acid trip began to affect him mentally. He was replaced with Christine McVie, who is still a member of the band to this day. Following Green's departure, Spencer began to distance himself from the band, and even released a solo album."
"While on tour in 1971, Spencer told his bandmates that he was going to the store to buy a magazine. He never returned. After several days of searching, the members of Fleetwood Mac learned that Spencer had purportedly decided to join a religious group called the Children of God, which has faced criticism for being a cult. He had allegedly been spending some time with the group, and claimed that a feeling of disillusionment caused him to leave the band to join the Children of God. "Bottom line, I had to leave in order to step back from the picture and get my life sorted out," Spencer said. "I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t and they would not have gone on to be one of the biggest bands in history!""
"Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975, something Spencer said he had prayed for. "I knew when I heard the first album with the Buckingham-Nicks line up, that they had hit on something good with an enormously catchy appeal," he said. "Besides that, after I left them, I prayed for God to reward them with success beyond their dreams. He answered that prayer." By 1976, the band had released Rumours, which was named the seventh-best album of all-time by Rolling Stone."
"While you might think that flamingos have pretty double-jointed knees that can bend backward, you're actually most likely thinking of their ankles. A flamingo's actual knee is located much farther up on their leg and is hidden by their body and feathers, while the ankle is the actual joint that you see bending."
"1964 was clearly a time for spooky-themed TV shows! The Addams Family and Bewitched premiered in the same week in September 1964, while The Munsters followed just a week later. CBS had reportedly started pre-production on The Munsters, which put a spin on the traditional family sitcom by setting it in a family full of lovable monsters, long before ABC had gotten their start on The Addams Family. When ABC heard about CBS's project, they sprung into action. While ABC had already planned to adapt Charles Addams's cartoons into a TV series, the news about The Munsters caused them to accelerate production. They ended up beating The Munsters to air by a matter of a few days."
"CBS had filmed the pilot for The Munsters in color, but ultimately decided to air the show in black and white to save money. The color pilot episode, called My Fair Munster, never made it to air, but was played at test screenings. Some said that leaving the show in black and white helped maintain the spookier tone, but it also ended up leading to a decline in viewers. By 1966, a full-color Batman series had premiered on ABC, causing viewership on black and white series like The Munsters to dip."
"In 1979, Stevie Wonder released The Secret Life of Plants, a mostly instrumental album that also served as a soundtrack for a documentary of the same name. As a marketing tool, manufacturers sprayed the inside of the record's cover with a floral perfume. The issue? The perfume ended up eating away at the vinyl, thus destroying the records."
"If you can't get enough of true crime, then you need to thank Truman Capote! Capote's In Cold Blood is widely regarded as the first true crime novel. Capote used fiction techniques while telling the story of the real-life murders of the Clutter family and the subsequent trial. In 1959, Capote, fresh off of the success of Breakfast at Tiffany's, wanted to try his hand at pioneering the first "nonfiction novel."
"On November 14, 1959, Herbert Clutter and his family were brutally murdered after two men broke into their home on a Kansas farm looking for money. They believed that the Clutters had cash stashed away in a safe on the property. When they learned that the safe didn't exist, they decided that they didn't want to leave any witnesses behind after the break-in, and killed the entire family before fleeing the scene."
"After learning about the murders, Capote decided to leave New York and head to Holcomb, Kansas. He was accompanied by Harper Lee, his close friend and author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Capote was able to charm the townspeople in Holcomb, and began to get insider information about the murders and the investigation. Six weeks after the crime, a man who had been former cell mates with Perry Smith and Richard ‘Dick’ Hickock revealed that the men had plans to rob the family in search of the safe, and alerted the police. Smith and Hickock were arrested, and admitted their guilt."
"While writing the book, Capote said that he needed to get the killers' side of the story. He ended up meeting up with them while they were in prison and struck up a close friendship with Smith. The pair kept in contact for five years and bonded over art, music, and books. Although Smith and Hickok had been given the death penalty, their executions kept getting pushed off. Capote was waiting for their executions to finish the book but also allegedly didn't want his now-close friend to be killed, even though he had admitted that he was guilty. On April 14, 1965, Smith and Hickock were executed. They asked Capote to be present at the execution, but he ran out before Smith was killed. In Cold Blood first ran as a serial in the New Yorker in 1965, was published in book form in 1966, and was turned into a movie in 1967."
"Some consider Martin Van Buren to be the first true American president. Van Buren was born in New York in 1782, making him the first president who was born in the United States. Despite this, Van Buren was the first and, so far, only president for whom English was his second language. He grew up speaking Dutch."
"While pinball seems like a rather innocent game, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia banned it from New York City in the early 1940s. Prior to the flipper, which allowed people to have better control of the ball, being invented in 1947, the game was very random, yet still had tons of people placing wagers on games. The cash-based nature of the game also attracted criminals and members of the mob. In 1942, LaGuardia officially banned the game. Many assumed that he wanted to ban the game for moral reasons, but he publicly stated that the materials that were used to construct the machines needed to be used to fight World War II."
"Once the ban was put in place, many other cities soon followed suit. Pinball manufacturers were frustrated by this ruling, and started to change up the rules on the already-existing machines so that players couldn't "win" the game, thus allowing them to evade the gambling rules placed on the machines. Newspapers began running articles saying that pinball games were essentially "stealing lunch money" from young children. Pinball was officially unbanned in New York City in 1976. Many other cities reversed the ban shortly after, although Oakland, California didn't legalize pinball until 2014!"
"Despite the fact that the word centipede means "100 feet," centipedes actually never have 100 legs. They always have an odd number of leg pairs, which means the closest they could get to their namesake is either 99 or 101 legs."
"Jim Thorpe has gone down in both NFL and Olympic history for his achievements. He was the first Native American to win an Olympic medal and was voted NFL president when the league was formed in 1920. When Thorpe died in 1953, he did not leave behind a will. Shortly after his death, there was a proposal to build a monument to the athlete in his home state of Oklahoma."
"After the governor of Oklahoma allegedly decided the monument was too expensive, Thorpe's third wife, Patricia, decided to strike up a deal with the state of Pennsylvania to bury Thorpe in a town located in the Poconos, which would be renamed to honor him. In 2014, one of Thorpe's sons filed a motion to have Thorpe's body moved to Sac and Fox land in Oklahoma to honor Thorpe's Native American heritage, but the case was thrown out because the remains had not been disturbed in their final resting place in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania."
"I know there is an intense debate over whether candy corn is actually good or not, and this might be a key piece of evidence in the argument. Candy corn contains both gelatin and confectioner's glaze. Gelatin is often made of animal hide and bones, while the confectioner's glaze is made from secretions from the lac bug, a parasite that protects itself by emitting a waxy, waterproof coating. The glaze, often called shellac, is actually found in tons of candies, and also is used to create the coating on many pills."
"Christa McAuliffe was a teacher chosen to be the first private American citizen to reach space as part of NASA's Teacher in Space program. The Teacher in Space project was announced in 1984 by Ronald Reagan, who invited teachers across the country to apply to be the first civilian in space. In return, the teacher would teach a lesson from space, then would recount their experiences to students around the country. McAuliffe was selected out of over 11,000 applicants. Barbara Morgan was named her backup. On January 28, 1986, McAuliffe boarded the Challenger space shuttle, which exploded shortly after its launch, killing seven astronauts. The disaster negatively affected NASA's public reputation and put all space missions to a halt for two and a half years."
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odd number pair of legs: so either 98 (49 x 2) or 102 (51 x 2) legs.