40 Fun Facts About Famous Neils

Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline plays in the middle of the eighth inning at which baseball venue?

Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, has kept up the ritual since 2002. Diamond led the crowd in the song there in person days after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson got hate mail from children when his planetarium stopped calling what a planet?

Pluto was grouped with like objects instead of the planets at New York's Hayden Planetarium, where Tyson became director in 1996. In 2006 astronomers reclassified it as a dwarf planet.

Which two-word greeting did Neil Papworth send as the world's first text message in December 1992?

Merry Christmas was typed on a computer and sent to Vodafone director Richard Jarvis, who was at his office party. Papworth was 22 at the time.

Neil Patrick Harris found fame as a teenage doctor who kept a computer diary in which TV series?

Doogie Howser, M.D. ran on ABC from 1989 to 1993. Network executives opposed casting Harris, though he was the first actor the staff found who could convincingly play the part.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down on the Moon in July 1969 in a lunar module called what?

Eagle carried the pair to the Sea of Tranquility while Michael Collins orbited in the command module Columbia. Eagle's descent stage is still on the lunar surface.

Which actor plays John Keating, teacher of stage-struck student Neil Perry, in Dead Poets Society?

Robin Williams earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination as Keating. Neil wins the role of Puck in a local production of A Midsummer Night's Dream despite strong disapproval at home.

Neil Sedaka's hit Oh! Carol was named for his high-school girlfriend, who became which songwriter?

Carole King, born Carol Klein, dated Sedaka at school. She and her husband Gerry Goffin replied with a jokey answer song, Oh, Neil, which she recorded herself.

Neil Diamond wrote I'm a Believer, later covered by Smash Mouth for Shrek, as a hit for which band?

The Monkees held number one in the US for seven weeks with the song, sung by Micky Dolenz. It went on to be the biggest-selling single of 1967.

Neil Young's distorted guitar playing with Crazy Horse made him the Godfather of which rock genre?

Grunge stars Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder both named Young as a major influence. In 1995 he made the album Mirror Ball with Vedder's band Pearl Jam.

In Christopher Nolan's Tenet, which actor plays Neil, the handler who assists the Protagonist?

Robert Pattinson took some of Neil's mannerisms from the journalist Christopher Hitchens. John David Washington plays the hero, who is known only as the Protagonist.

Neil Armstrong was born near Wapakoneta in which US state, also home to astronaut John Glenn?

Ohio drew Armstrong back after he left NASA: he taught aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati until 1979. As a schoolboy he took flying lessons at Wapakoneta's airfield.

Which actor played Neil Armstrong in First Man, a biopic from La La Land director Damien Chazelle?

Ryan Gosling starred opposite Claire Foy, who played Armstrong's first wife, Janet. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Which song from Neil Young's 1972 album Harvest became the only US number-one single of his career?

Heart of Gold has James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt on backing vocals; both were in Nashville to appear on Johnny Cash's TV show. Young wrote such quiet acoustic songs partly because of a back injury.

Neil Diamond wrote and first recorded Red Red Wine, later a UK and US number one for which band?

UB40 knew only Tony Tribe's 1969 reggae cover and did not realise Diamond had written the song. Diamond went on to perform it live in their arrangement, not his own.

Neil Patrick Harris earned four Emmy nominations as which playboy in How I Met Your Mother?

Barney Stinson was first imagined as a John Belushi type before Harris won the part at an audition. His rule book for men, The Bro Code, appeared on the show's closing cards.

Neil Patrick Harris played which villain, who hunts the Baudelaire orphans' fortune, on Netflix?

Count Olaf is an actor who takes in the three children as a distant relative, then schemes to seize their inheritance before the eldest, Violet, comes of age.

Neil deGrasse Tyson hosted a 2014 revival of which science series first presented by Carl Sagan?

Cosmos reached broadcast TV thanks to the financial backing of producer Seth MacFarlane. Tyson had been inspired by Sagan when he was a high school student.

In which Neil Gaiman novella does a girl find a door to a world where her parents have button eyes?

Coraline is invited to stay in the Other World forever, but only if she lets buttons be sewn over her own eyes. The 2002 book became a stop-motion animated film in 2009.

Neil Gaiman co-wrote Good Omens, a comic novel about the End Times, with which English author?

Terry Pratchett had known Gaiman since 1985, and the two stayed close friends until Pratchett's death in 2015. Gaiman went on to create the 2019 TV adaptation and run it as showrunner.

In Michael Mann's crime film Heat, which actor plays the detective hunting thief Neil McCauley?

Al Pacino shares the screen for the first time with De Niro, who plays McCauley. Both starred in The Godfather Part II but never appeared in the same scene.

Which Neil Simon comedy pairs the uptight Felix Ungar with his slovenly roommate Oscar Madison?

The Odd Couple opened on Broadway in 1965 and won Simon a Tony Award. Twenty years later he rewrote it for two women, Florence Ungar and Olive Madison.

Neil Peart, nicknamed the Professor, was the drummer and main lyricist of which Canadian rock trio?

Rush hired Peart in 1974 to replace its original drummer, John Rutsey. His nickname came from his resemblance to the Professor on Gilligan's Island.

Neil Tennant quit the pop magazine Smash Hits to sing in which synth-pop duo with Chris Lowe?

Pet Shop Boys were listed by Guinness in 1999 as the most successful duo in British music history. Tennant coined the phrase imperial phase for a pop act's commercial and creative peak.

Neil Finn wrote Don't Dream It's Over as singer of which band, formed after Split Enz broke up?

Crowded House reached number two in the US with the song in 1987. Finn, born in Te Awamutu, New Zealand, later joined Fleetwood Mac for the band's 2018 tour.

Neil Kinnock lost elections to Margaret Thatcher and John Major as leader of which British party?

Labour led most opinion polls before the 1992 election, so its defeat was a surprise and Kinnock resigned soon afterwards. He later served as Vice-President of the European Commission.

Neil Gorsuch joined the US Supreme Court in 2017 in the seat left by the death of which justice?

Antonin Scalia had died almost a year before Donald Trump nominated Gorsuch. Gorsuch became the first justice to serve alongside one he had once clerked for, Anthony Kennedy.

Neil Jordan won an Oscar for writing which thriller, sold with a plea to keep its twist secret?

The Crying Game earned six Academy Award nominations, and Jordan, who also directed it, won for Best Original Screenplay. Stephen Rea stars as an IRA member who befriends a captured soldier.

Men Behaving Badly actor Neil Morrissey voiced which children's TV hero, scoring two UK number ones?

Bob the Builder topped the UK chart with Can We Fix It? and then with a reworked Mambo No. 5. Morrissey voiced Bob for more than a decade from 1999.

Neil Flynn, the dad in The Middle, played a character known only as the Janitor in which sitcom?

Scrubs cast Flynn for the first episode only, but he stayed for eight seasons. He had auditioned for the role of Dr. Cox.

Neil Druckmann of Naughty Dog co-created which franchise about Joel and Ellie, later an HBO drama?

The Last of Us follows a smuggler escorting an immune teenage girl across a post-apocalyptic United States. Druckmann first joined the studio as an intern.

Neil Aspinall quit accountancy to drive which band's van, and later ran their company Apple Corps?

The Beatles paid him more to drive their van than he earned as a trainee accountant. He had been in Paul McCartney's class at school and ran Apple Corps until 2007.

Neil Young co-founded which annual benefit concert in 1985 with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp?

Farm Aid grew from Bob Dylan's remark at Live Aid that some of the money might help American farmers. The first show drew 80,000 people to a stadium in Champaign, Illinois.

In the 1980s BBC sitcom The Young Ones, what is Neil, the morose housemate played by Nigel Planer?

A hippie and Peace Studies student, Neil lives with the punk fan Vyvyan. In character as Neil, Planer took a cover of Traffic's Hole in My Shoe to number two in the UK.

Artist Neil Harbisson, born without colour vision, has a skull antenna that turns colours into what?

Sounds reach him as vibrations through the bone of his skull, and the antenna even picks up infrared and ultraviolet. He was allowed to wear it in his UK passport photo.

Neil Innes, dubbed the seventh member, wrote Knights of the Round Table for which comedy troupe?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail also put Innes on screen, as a head-bashing monk and a serf crushed by a giant wooden rabbit. With Eric Idle he later created the parody band the Rutles.

Neil Robertson, an Australian who beat Graeme Dott in the 2010 world final, plays which sport?

Snooker's Triple Crown of world, UK and Masters titles had never been completed by a player born outside the UK until Robertson did it. He left school at 15 to turn professional.

Neil Buchanan, who denied online rumours that he was Banksy, presented which CITV children's show?

Art Attack ran from 1990 to 2007. Away from TV, Buchanan was a member of the heavy metal band Marseille, which toured America and performed with Judas Priest.

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death warned that which medium turns news into entertainment?

Television, he argued, reduces politics, news and history to entertainment by expressing ideas through images. He saw the result as closer to Huxley's Brave New World than to Orwell's 1984.

Reporter Neil Sheehan obtained which secret Vietnam War study for The New York Times in 1971?

Pentagon Papers coverage won The New York Times the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Sheehan later won a Pulitzer of his own for A Bright Shining Lie, his book about the war.

Neil Bartlett upended textbook chemistry by making the first compounds of which family of elements?

Noble gases were believed to be entirely inert until Bartlett's work, which then led other chemists to make several fluorides of xenon. He was teaching in Vancouver at the time.