50 Fun Facts About 1926

Which children's character, named partly after a Canadian black bear at London Zoo, got his first book in October 1926?

Winnie-the-Pooh sold 150,000 copies before the end of 1926. The second half of the name came from a swan called Pooh that the Milnes met on holiday.

Which British royal, third in line to the throne at birth, was born in a Mayfair townhouse in April 1926?

Elizabeth II was not expected to reign, because her uncle, the heir, was still young enough to marry and have children. She was delivered by Caesarean section at her grandfather's house.

Which US highway, established in November 1926, ran from Chicago to Santa Monica and was nicknamed the Mother Road?

Route 66 nearly had another number: promoter Cyrus Avery wanted US 60, but Kentucky officials won that number for a road through their own state.

Which escape artist died in a Detroit hospital on Halloween 1926, days after being punched in the stomach backstage?

Harry Houdini died of peritonitis at 52. That August he had stayed sealed in a submerged casket for an hour and a half in a New York hotel pool.

Which physicist launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket in March 1926 from his aunt's farm in Massachusetts?

Robert Goddard's rocket, later nicknamed Nell, flew for only 2.5 seconds and came down in a cabbage field 184 feet away.

Which Scottish inventor first demonstrated true television images to the public in a Soho laboratory in January 1926?

John Logie Baird had sent his first recognisable picture a few months earlier: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed Stooky Bill.

Which stretch of water did American swimmer Gertrude Ederle become the first woman to cross in August 1926?

The English Channel had been swum by only five men before Ederle. New York welcomed her home with a ticker-tape parade watched by more than two million people.

Which Hollywood star, born in Los Angeles in June 1926, spent much of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage?

Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at Los Angeles General Hospital, and married her first husband, James Dougherty, at sixteen.

Which crime novelist vanished for eleven days in December 1926 and was found at a hotel in Harrogate?

Agatha Christie had registered at the hotel under the surname of her husband's lover. More than 1,000 police officers and 15,000 volunteers had joined the search.

Which standardized exam was first given in June 1926 to about 8,000 students, many of them applying to Yale?

The SAT, then called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, was developed under Princeton psychologist Carl Brigham. Six in ten of its first test-takers were male.

Which naturalist and broadcaster, born in May 1926, began presenting with Zoo Quest and later narrated Planet Earth?

David Attenborough also ran BBC Two from 1965, where he quickly abolished its kangaroo mascot.

Which future Cuban leader was born in August 1926 on the farm of his father, a wealthy Spanish migrant?

Fidel Castro went on to lead Cuba from 1959 to 2011. His father had come to the island from Galicia in north-west Spain.

Which novelist, born in Monroeville, Alabama, in April 1926, was a childhood friend and neighbor of Truman Capote?

Harper Lee based the character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird on Capote, and later helped him research In Cold Blood.

Which rock and roll pioneer, born in Missouri in October 1926, was known for a stage move called the duck walk?

Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record, which was sent into space in 1977.

Which jazz trumpeter, born in Alton, Illinois, in May 1926, led the sextet that recorded Kind of Blue?

Miles Davis had saxophonist John Coltrane in that band, and Coltrane was a 1926 baby too, born that September in North Carolina.

Which crooner, born in Queens in August 1926, was given his stage name by comedian Bob Hope?

Tony Bennett had been singing as Joe Bari until Hope took him on the road and shortened his real surname, Benedetto.

Which comedy filmmaker, born in Brooklyn in June 1926, directed The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein?

Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on a tenement kitchen table, and changed his surname as a teenager after being confused with trumpeter Max Kaminsky.

Which Impressionist painter died in December 1926, three years after cataract surgery, and is buried at Giverny?

Claude Monet died of lung cancer at 86. At the funeral his friend Georges Clemenceau swapped the black cloth on the coffin for a flower-patterned one.

Which architect died in June 1926 after a Barcelona tram struck him and he was taken for a beggar?

Antoni Gaudí was not recognised until the next day, when the chaplain of the Sagrada Família found him in hospital, too late for treatment to help.

Which silent film idol died in August 1926 aged 31, drawing about 100,000 mourners onto the streets of Manhattan?

Rudolph Valentino, the Italian-born star of The Sheik, died of peritonitis after surgery for appendicitis and gastric ulcers.

Which author's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises follows American and British expatriates from Paris to Pamplona?

Ernest Hemingway based the characters on his own circle and a 1925 trip to the Pamplona festival. British readers got the book a year later under the title Fiesta.

Which industrialist moved his car factory workers to a five-day, 40-hour week in May 1926 without cutting their pay?

Henry Ford reasoned that workers with a free Saturday would spend more on leisure, travel and shopping. His office staff followed that August.

Which emperor came to the Japanese throne on Christmas Day 1926 and reigned until his death in 1989?

Hirohito succeeded his father and opened the Shōwa era, which ran for more than six decades. No emperor in Japanese history has reigned longer.

Which car pioneer's company merged with Gottlieb Daimler's old firm in June 1926, creating a famous German luxury brand?

Karl Benz's firm and Daimler's had both enjoyed success in early motor racing. The merged company sold its cars as Mercedes-Benz under Daimler's three-pointed star.

Which dictator was shot in the nose in April 1926 by Violet Gibson, an Irishwoman who fired from a crowd?

Benito Mussolini had his nose bandaged and carried on with his parade. Gibson spent the rest of her life in a psychiatric hospital in Northampton.

Which Yankees slugger made the final out of the 1926 World Series by being caught stealing second base?

Babe Ruth's failed dash handed the St. Louis Cardinals their first championship. Earlier in the Series he had hit three home runs in one game, a World Series first.

Which heavyweight champion lost his title to former Marine Gene Tunney in Philadelphia in September 1926?

Jack Dempsey was the most famous fighter of his era, yet he lost the rematch a year later too, in the bout remembered as the Long Count Fight.

Which silent comedian played a Confederate train engineer chasing his stolen locomotive in the 1926 film The General?

Buster Keaton did his own stunts on the moving train, and bought an extra locomotive just to send it crashing through a burning bridge.

Which Swedish actress, brought to Hollywood by Louis B. Mayer, made her first American film, Torrent, in 1926?

Greta Garbo could not speak the language when she arrived in 1925, and waited in New York for more than six months before MGM sent word.

Which sharpshooter, a star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, died in Greenville, Ohio, in November 1926?

Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann Mosey and learned her trade as a girl, hunting game that she sold to Greenville shopkeepers.

Which American broadcaster, formed by RCA as a radio network, began operations in November 1926?

NBC was built on radio stations that RCA bought from AT&T for about $1 million. Its peacock logo arrived only in 1956, to promote colour broadcasts.

Which Norwegian explorer flew over the North Pole in the airship Norge in May 1926?

Roald Amundsen had led the first party to the South Pole in 1911. The Norge's crew of 16 are the first explorers verified to have reached the North Pole.

Which Austrian physicist published in 1926 the wave equation that sits at the heart of quantum mechanics?

Erwin Schrödinger won the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics for the work. His famous cat in a box came in 1935, after a long exchange of letters with Albert Einstein.

Which locked-out workers was Britain's nine-day General Strike of May 1926 called to support?

Coal miners held out for months after the strike collapsed, and most were back at work only by the end of November. About 1.7 million other workers had walked out for them.

Which Puccini opera, left unfinished when he died, had its premiere under Arturo Toscanini in April 1926?

Turandot was completed from Puccini's sketches by Franco Alfano, almost a year and a half after the composer's death.

Which amateur golfer became the first player to win the US Open and the British Open in the same year, in 1926?

Bobby Jones won the two titles just two weeks apart, and took the American one by a single stroke with a birdie on the final hole.

Which Swiss watchmaker launched the Oyster in 1926, a waterproof wristwatch it displayed in shop-window aquariums?

Rolex found a livelier test a year later, when a long-distance swimmer wore an Oyster on her necklace through hours in open sea.

Which Florida city was devastated by a September 1926 hurricane that ended the state's land boom?

Miami took the storm's landfall on September 18. The $100 million in damage brought the Great Depression to Florida years ahead of the rest of the country.

Which actor, born in Mount Airy, North Carolina, in June 1926, played the widowed sheriff of Mayberry on television?

Andy Griffith made his film debut in A Face in the Crowd, and came back to television in the 1980s as the lawyer Ben Matlock.

Which actor, born in Saskatchewan in February 1926, found fame late as a deadpan comic in The Naked Gun films?

Leslie Nielsen had been a serious leading man in films such as Forbidden Planet before Airplane! recast him as a comedian in 1980.

Which Warner Bros. sound-on-disc system made its debut in August 1926 with the premiere of the feature film Don Juan?

Vitaphone gave Don Juan a recorded symphonic score and sound effects but no spoken dialogue, so the film is still counted as a silent.

Which magazine, launched by Hugo Gernsback in April 1926, was the first devoted solely to science fiction?

Amazing Stories slipped out of Gernsback's hands in 1929, when he was forced into bankruptcy, but by then it had launched a whole publishing genre.

Which scholar, called the father of Black history, launched the first Negro History Week in February 1926?

Carter G. Woodson picked the second week of February because it held the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The week later grew into Black History Month.

Which New York dance hall, opened on Lenox Avenue in March 1926, turned 2,000 people away on its first night?

Savoy Ballroom regulars included the finest Lindy Hop dancers of the day, and the hall kept its doors open until 1958.

Which novelist turned down the 1926 Pulitzer Prize, which had been awarded to his medical novel Arrowsmith?

Sinclair Lewis was said to be still upset that his earlier novel Main Street had been passed over. Four years later he accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which Irish political party did Éamon de Valera found in 1926 after splitting from Sinn Féin?

Fianna Fáil broke away so that its members could take their seats in the Irish parliament, which Sinn Féin refused to recognise.

Which country's elected government was overthrown in May 1926 in a coup led by Marshal Józef Piłsudski?

Poland's coup lasted three days and cost hundreds of lives. Piłsudski remained the country's dominant politician until his death in 1935.

Which tennis star beat American champion Helen Wills in straight sets in the 1926 Match of the Century in Cannes?

Suzanne Lenglen never met Wills in singles again. Later that year she quit amateur tennis and became the first leading player to turn professional.

Which name was given to the NHL team that Madison Square Garden president Tex Rickard launched in 1926?

Rangers began as a sports editor's pun, Tex's Rangers. Rickard already had one hockey team at the Garden and had promised it that it would be the only one.

Which German animator used cut-out silhouettes to make The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a 1926 feature film?

Lotte Reiniger spent three years moving cardboard cut-outs under a camera. With two earlier features lost, hers is the oldest animated feature film that survives.