Today I found out Mr. Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister. After Fred McFeely Rogers, better known as Mr. Rogers, graduated from college in 1951, receiving a B.A. in Music Composition, he began working in television, at first for NBC and later for WQED, which was a Pittsburgh public TV station that was the U.S.’s first community supported TV station. […]
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Today I found out Dr. Seuss wrote “Green Eggs and Ham” on a bet that he couldn’t write a book with fifty or fewer distinct words. The bet was made in 1960 with Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House, and was for $50 (about $382 today). Despite Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theodore Geisel, winning the bet by producing one of […]
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Today I found out that Benjamin Franklin, through extensive study of the world’s major religions and various moral codes, came up with a list of thirteen main virtues that he felt every person should strive to live their life by. As such, he himself attempted to always live by this code and developed charts with which he charted his progress […]
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Today I found out that ‘Uncle Sam’ was a real person- Samuel Wilson, born September 13th, 1766 and died on July 31st, 1854. In 1789, Wilson and his brother Ebeneezer moved to Troy New York where they set up a counting house. Sam Wilson later died, then came back to haunt Ebeneezer on Christmas Eve trying to get him to […]
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Today I found out that Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy’s, before starting the Wendy’s franchise helped save the KFC franchise and was a high school dropout. Thomas first worked at a Knoxville restaurant at the young age of 12 years old, from which he was eventually fired due to a misunderstanding with his boss about a vacation. At 15, […]
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Today I found out Leo Fender, inventor of one of the most popular electric guitar brands in the world, Fender Guitars, never learned how to play guitar. In addition to that, he actually was an accountant before losing his job in the Great Depression. When he lost his job, he decided to turn his hobby of tinkering with electronics, radios, […]
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Today I found out Chef Boyardee was a real person. Ettore Boiardi was an Italian-American immigrant born in 1897. He worked as a cook at his first restaurant at the tender age of 10 years old in Italy. He later immigrating to America at the age of 16 and took the name “Hector Boiardi” as he passed through Ellis Island. […]
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Today I found out that Ada Lovelace was the world’s first computer programmer all the way back in the mid-1800s, writing the world’s first computer program in 1842. She was also an accomplished mathematician, which was obviously quite rare for women in the era she lived. Lovelace was the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, though she never knew him […]
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Today I found out Weird Al Yankovic was the valedictorian of his class at Lynwood High School, which is just outside of Los Angeles. In addition to this, he graduated high school at just 16 years old. He was able to do so because his parents had him attend kindergarten a year earlier than is typical. After performing well academically […]
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Today I found out Alfred Nobel, who left most of his fortune to start the Nobel Prizes, was once nicknamed “The Merchant of Death”. The “merchant of death” title was given to him due to Nobel inventing, and making most of his vast fortune off of, dynamite and other types of explosives, such as “ballistite”, which was the precursor to […]
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Today I found out the actor who played Uncle Phil in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was also the voice of Shredder in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon series. *mind blown* Bonus Factoids: Uncle Phil, also occasionally known as James Avery in the real world, was also the voice of James Rhodes in the 1990s Iron Man series. After […]
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Kentucky Fried Chicken is hardly considered a suitable place to get one’s food for a traditional Christmas meal in most parts of the world. There is one exception, though. In Japan, it is a Christmas tradition to order KFC. So how exactly did Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, become synonymous with a bucket of fried chicken […]
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Today I found out that the woman Jack Nicholson thought was his sister for a good portion of his life, turned out to be his mother. In 1974, Jack Nicholson’s movie Chinatown was opening in theaters and Time Magazine chose to do a cover story on him. Someone working at Time Magazine called Jack up to verify some facts that […]
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Today I found out Sarah Josepha Hale, author of Mary Had a Little Lamb, was largely responsible for the establishment of the United States’ Thanksgiving Holiday. Hale, one of the great women in American history, campaigned for nearly 20 years to get Thanksgiving made a national holiday. It previously was only celebrated, as we think of it, in New England; […]
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Today I found out the actor who played “Scotty” on Star Trek, James Doohan, was shot six times storming Juno beach on D-Day. Doohan, a Canadian, after leading his men through a mine field on Juno beach and personally taking out two German snipers in the process, eventually took four rounds in one of his legs; one in his hand, […]
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Today I found out David Letterman started out his broadcasting career as a radio newscaster. This was at the WBST radio station, which, at the time, was a college run 10 watt radio station and is now an Indiana public radio station. After being fired from that radio station for making fun of classical music, he helped found another campus […]
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As a general rule, historical anecdotes that seem a little “too perfect,” like “John Wilkes Booth’s brother saved the life of Abraham Lincoln’s son shortly before Lincoln was assassinated,” when researched thoroughly almost never turn out to be true. This, however, is one of the exceptions to that rule and it was no less than Robert Todd Lincoln himself who, in […]
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Today I found out Johnny Appleseed was a real person. His real name was John Chapman and his real story is actually nearly as interesting as the legends that have since developed. John Chapman made a quite successful business out of traveling around and planting apple orchards wherever he thought pioneers were going to settle in-mass a few years after […]
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