50 Fun Facts About Famous Georges

Which baseball slugger, christened George Herman in Baltimore in 1895, learned to play at a Catholic reform school?

Babe Ruth was coached at St. Mary's Industrial School by Brother Matthias, the prefect of discipline, whose hitting and running style his own came to resemble.

Swiss engineer George de Mestral invented which fastener after burrs clung to his dog's fur on a 1941 hunting trip?

Velcro takes its name from two French words, velours for velvet and crochet for hook, which describe the two strips that grip each other.

George Harrison co-founded HandMade Films in 1978 to rescue which Monty Python comedy after EMI pulled its funding?

Life of Brian was saved by a fan: Harrison and his business partner raised about £3 million after the original backer quit just days before filming.

Comedian George Carlin hosted the very first episode of which long-running American sketch show in October 1975?

Saturday Night Live opened with Carlin doing only stand-up: at his own request, he did not appear in any of the sketches.

A popular myth wrongly claims that George Washington wore dentures carved from which material?

Wood was never used: his dentures combined hippopotamus ivory, brass, gold and human teeth, and his accounts record a 1784 payment to enslaved people for nine teeth.

Former US president George H. W. Bush celebrated his 80th, 85th and 90th birthdays by doing which daring activity?

Skydiving was nothing new to him: as a young Navy pilot in World War II he bailed out of his stricken bomber and was rescued by a submarine.

George Weah, the AC Milan striker who won the 1995 Ballon d'Or, was later elected president of which country?

Liberia swore him in as president in January 2018, making him the first African former professional footballer to become a head of state.

Filmmaker George Lucas named which adventure movie hero after the Alaskan Malamute he owned in the 1970s?

Indiana Jones took the dog's name, and the same big shaggy pet was the model for the Star Wars character Chewbacca.

The creators of Curious George fled which European capital by bicycle in June 1940, carrying the manuscript with them?

Paris was about to fall to the German army when H. A. and Margret Rey, a Jewish couple, rode out on bicycles they had built themselves.

George Foreman lost his heavyweight title to Muhammad Ali in the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle, staged in which country?

Zaire's ruler Mobutu Sese Seko agreed to host the fight for the publicity it would bring, and Foreman won a world title back in 1994, aged 45.

King George III bought which London residence as a private family home for his wife, Queen Charlotte?

Buckingham Palace was then plain Buckingham House, soon known as The Queen's House, and 14 of the couple's 15 children were born there.

King George V renamed Britain's royal house in 1917, dropping the German-sounding Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for which name?

Windsor was borrowed from the royal castle at a moment when German Gotha bombers were raiding London and anti-German feeling was at its peak.

Which actor won an Oscar for playing the stammering George VI, Britain's wartime monarch, in a 2010 film?

Colin Firth played the reluctant monarch in The King's Speech, opposite Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue, the Australian therapist who became his friend.

King George II became the last British monarch to lead his troops into battle at which 1743 clash with the French?

Dettingen saw the 59-year-old king lead an allied army of British, Hanoverian and Austrian troops to victory during the War of the Austrian Succession.

According to legend, Saint George, the patron saint of England, saved a king's daughter by slaying which creature?

A dragon appears nowhere in the earliest accounts of his life: the story was a later addition, first recorded in the 11th century.

Before entering politics as a state governor, George W. Bush was managing partner of which Major League Baseball team?

Texas Rangers shares that he bought with a group of investors in 1989 brought him over $15 million when he sold them in 1998.

George Armstrong Custer, who graduated last in his West Point class, was killed in 1876 at which battle?

Little Bighorn cost Custer his life along with every soldier in the five companies he led against a coalition of Native American tribes in Montana.

Which actor became the first to decline the Best Actor Oscar, awarded for playing the title general in Patton?

George C. Scott had warned the Academy months in advance that he would refuse, because he believed performances cannot be compared with one another.

English climber George Mallory vanished in 1924 near the summit of which mountain, where his body was found in 1999?

Mount Everest kept his body for 75 years, and nobody knows whether he and his partner Sandy Irvine reached the top before they died.

Tuskegee scientist George Washington Carver published a 1916 bulletin giving 105 ways of preparing which crop as food?

Peanuts made him a celebrity after he testified to Congress in 1921, though he is often wrongly credited with inventing peanut butter.

Which English novelist, born Eric Blair, took a pen name from a Suffolk river and wrote Animal Farm?

George Orwell took his first name from England's patron saint, and he wrote his last novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, on the remote Scottish island of Jura.

Which Victorian novelist, born Mary Ann Evans, published Middlemarch and Silas Marner under a man's name?

George Eliot scandalised Victorian society by living for 24 years with the married critic George Henry Lewes, whom she called her husband.

French novelist George Sand, born Aurore Dupin, spent the winter of 1838 on Mallorca with which composer, her lover?

Frédéric Chopin and Sand lodged that winter in a formerly abandoned Carthusian monastery at Valldemossa, where the cold and damp made his illness worse.

George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, about a flower seller's elocution lessons, became which 1956 Broadway musical?

My Fair Lady is a romanticized version of the play, whose 1938 film screenplay earned Shaw an Academy Award to go with his Nobel Prize in Literature.

George R. R. Martin's fantasy novels of Westeros, A Song of Ice and Fire, were adapted as which HBO series?

Game of Thrones ran for eight seasons, while Martin kept writing the books in WordStar on an old MS-DOS computer to avoid spell-checkers and distractions.

George Gershwin composed which 1935 opera set in Catfish Row, a Black neighbourhood of Charleston, South Carolina?

Porgy and Bess opened with a cast of classically trained African-American singers, a daring choice in 1935, and its lullaby Summertime became a standard.

George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah, home of the Hallelujah chorus, was first performed in 1742 in which city?

Dublin heard it first at a charity concert, which raised money for prisoners' debt relief and two of the city's hospitals.

French composer Georges Bizet died in 1875, three months after which opera shocked and scandalised its first audiences?

Carmen became one of the world's most performed operas, but Bizet died of a heart attack at 36, unaware that it would ever succeed.

Painter Georges Seurat, creator of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, pioneered which technique?

Pointillism builds colour from tiny dots that blend in the viewer's eye, though Seurat himself preferred to call his method Divisionism.

George Michael, once half of a pop duo with Andrew Ridgeley, won the Album of the Year Grammy for which solo debut?

Faith has sold over 25 million copies, and Michael wrote and produced every track on it himself except one, which he co-wrote with a friend.

Which actor left his role as ER's Dr. Doug Ross and later won Oscars for Syriana and for producing Argo?

George Clooney is also a drinks mogul: Casamigos, the tequila he created with friends for their own use, sold to Diageo in 2017 for up to $1 billion.

George Takei, who spent part of his childhood in US internment camps, played which Star Trek helmsman?

Hikaru Sulu was the Enterprise's helmsman in the original 1960s series, and Takei's wartime years behind barbed wire later inspired the Broadway musical Allegiance.

Australian model George Lazenby had no film acting experience when he was cast as which screen hero in 1969?

James Bond was his for a single film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service: he replaced Sean Connery but declined to return for any sequel.

George Reeves, one of Scarlett O'Hara's suitors in Gone with the Wind, became which superhero on 1950s television?

Superman made him a household name from 1952 to 1958; he was no relation to Christopher Reeve, who played the role in the 1978 film.

Director George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead popularized the modern portrayal of which horror monster?

Zombies are never named in the film, whose flesh-eaters are called ghouls, yet it fixed the image of the shambling undead for every movie that followed.

Australian director George Miller, a physician before he made films, created which post-apocalyptic film series?

Mad Max began in 1979 and returned decades later with Fury Road, and in between Miller won an Oscar for the animated penguin film Happy Feet.

Boy George, born George O'Dowd, rose to fame as lead singer of which 1980s band known for Karma Chameleon?

Culture Club became the first group since the Beatles to score three top-ten hits in America from a debut album.

Which Belfast-born singer of Brown Eyed Girl and Moondance was given the first names George Ivan at birth?

Van Morrison shortened his middle name for the stage, and Moondance, released in 1970, established him as a major artist.

George Wendt earned six straight Emmy nominations as beer-loving regular Norm Peterson in which Boston-set sitcom?

Cheers featured Wendt in all 275 of its episodes, and his real-life wife supplied the voice of Norm's never-seen wife, Vera.

George Bailey, a small-town banker shown a world without him by a guardian angel, is the hero of which 1946 film?

It's a Wonderful Life lost money in cinemas and became a Christmas classic only after its copyright lapsed in 1974, letting TV stations air it for free.

George Eastman put photography in amateur hands in 1888 with a roll-film camera sold under which invented brand name?

Kodak was a word Eastman made up himself, and the camera came loaded with enough film for 100 exposures.

George Westinghouse challenged Thomas Edison's direct current by buying the AC motor patents of which inventor?

Nikola Tesla's brushless induction motor gave Westinghouse the key patented piece he needed to build a complete alternating current system.

Engineer George Ferris built his original giant wheel for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in which American city?

Chicago's organisers had challenged American engineers to design a monument that would surpass the Eiffel Tower, the star of the 1889 exposition in France.

Which English mathematician, a professor in Cork, Ireland, devised the true-or-false algebra behind digital circuits?

George Boole set out his algebra of logic in The Laws of Thought in 1854, long before the computers whose circuits and programs now depend on it.

Investor George Soros made a profit of about $1 billion on Black Wednesday in 1992 by betting against which currency?

Pound sterling crashed out of Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism that day, earning Soros the nickname of the man who broke the Bank of England.

Shipbuilding executive George Steinbrenner led the group that bought which baseball team from CBS in 1973?

The New York Yankees won seven World Series under Steinbrenner, nicknamed the Boss, who had failed in a bid to buy the Cleveland Indians a year earlier.

Belfast-born winger George Best won the 1968 European Cup and the Ballon d'Or while playing for which English team?

Manchester United signed him after a scout who had watched the 15-year-old play told manager Matt Busby by telegram that he had found a genius.

Union general George Meade took command of the Army of the Potomac just three days before which 1863 battle?

Gettysburg was won by a newcomer to high command: Meade reached the battlefield only after the first day's fighting, then defeated Robert E. Lee.

Army engineer George Washington Goethals supervised the construction and 1914 opening of which famous waterway?

The Panama Canal made Goethals the first governor of the Canal Zone, and a bridge linking New Jersey with Staten Island still carries his name.

Seinfeld's George Costanza, a character based largely on co-creator Larry David, was played by which actor?

Jason Alexander's character took his surname from Michael Costanza, a real-life friend of Jerry Seinfeld.