60 Fun Facts About Famous People

Albert Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded chiefly for his discovery of the law of what?

Relativity was still considered too controversial for the committee, so the citation named his 1905 work on light and electrons instead.

Which Leonardo-attributed painting sold for a record US$450.3 million in 2017?

Leonardo spent his final years in France as a close friend of King Francis I and died at the manor of Clos Lucé in 1519.

Cleopatra VII descended from Alexander's general Ptolemy I Soter, making her ethnically what?

She is the only ruler of the dynasty known to have bothered to learn Egyptian, on top of several other languages, which helped her present herself as a native pharaoh.

On which Mediterranean island was Napoleon Bonaparte born in 1769?

France had only acquired the island the year before. His first exile was on Elba, his last and fatal one on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.

At which Washington venue was Abraham Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865?

He died the next morning in a boarding house across the street. Booth, a well-known actor, had performed at the theatre himself.

Marie Curie named the first element she discovered after her native country. What is the element?

She remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and her notebooks and even her cookbooks are still radioactive enough to be stored in lead-lined boxes.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna in 1791 at what age?

He completed more than 800 works in that short life; his sister recalled him composing little pieces at five for their father to write down.

What is Beethoven's despairing 1802 letter about his failing hearing called?

He was never totally deaf; even late in life he could still hear low tones and sudden loud noises. He died in Vienna in 1827 at 56.

How many years did Nelson Mandela spend in prison before his release in February 1990?

He was held at Robben Island, Pollsmoor and finally Victor Verster, and his prisoner number, 46664, later became the name of his AIDS charity concerts.

Winston Churchill won a Nobel Prize in 1953. In which category?

The award recognised his historical writing and speeches. He had lost the general election of 1945 within weeks of victory in Europe, then returned as prime minister in 1951.

What first name, honouring her Russian godfather, did Queen Victoria later drop?

Her nine children married into royal houses across the continent, earning her the nickname the grandmother of Europe.

As a young man travelling to Rhodes, Julius Caesar was captured and held for ransom by whom?

He was later killed by senators led by Brutus and Cassius on the Ides of March, 44 BC. The month of his birth was renamed in his honour and his calendar reform lasted 1,600 years.

Which philosopher tutored Alexander the Great until he was 16?

Alexander went on to found more than twenty cities and was undefeated in battle before dying in Babylon at 32. His horse Bucephalas was named for its ox-shaped head.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431. In which year was she made a saint?

The retrial that annulled her conviction came in 1456, but canonisation took nearly five centuries; she was declared a patron saint of France two years after it.

After his 1633 trial by the Inquisition, how did Galileo Galilei spend the rest of his life?

He was found vehemently suspect of heresy and forced to recant. He had discovered Jupiter's four largest moons in January 1610 with a telescope of his own making.

Charles Darwin's five-year voyage from 1831 to 1836 was aboard which Royal Navy ship?

He had trained for medicine at Edinburgh and for the clergy at Cambridge before the trip. He is buried in Westminster Abbey close to Isaac Newton.

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in the village of Smiljan, which lies in which modern country?

He was an ethnic Serb born inside the Austrian Empire's Military Frontier. He died in a New York hotel in 1943, and the SI unit of magnetic flux density was named for him in 1960.

Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific in July 1937 while heading for which tiny island?

She and navigator Fred Noonan were flying a Lockheed Electra 10E on a round-the-world attempt. She was declared dead in absentia in January 1939.

Neil Armstrong earned his student pilot certificate at 16, before he had which other document?

He went on to fly 78 combat missions in Korea, test the X-15 rocket plane and perform the first docking in space on Gemini 8 before commanding Apollo 11.

Which civil rights leader was born 'Michael' in 1929, renamed after his father visited Germany?

He was 35 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and was assassinated in Memphis on 4 April 1968.

Which Mexican painter took up art while recovering from a 1925 bus crash that impaled her pelvis?

She had already survived polio at six. She married the muralist Diego Rivera twice, and her blue house in Coyoacán is now a museum.

Of the roughly 860 oil paintings Vincent van Gogh produced, most were made in which period of his life?

He severed part of his left ear in Arles in December 1888 after a row with Gauguin, and died in July 1890 aged 37, two days after shooting himself.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) was painted in response to the bombing of a town in which country?

The town was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso's baptismal name ran to a full sentence of saints and relatives, and he co-founded Cubism with Georges Braque.

Which Hollywood star was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926?

She founded her own production company in 1955, married Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, and won a Golden Globe for Some Like It Hot before dying at 36 in 1962.

In which Mississippi town were Elvis and his stillborn twin Jesse Garon born?

Elvis was drafted and served in the US Army from 1958 to 1960, then died at Graceland in Memphis in August 1977, aged 42.

Which boxer, born Cassius Clay, won 1960 Olympic gold and lit the Atlanta cauldron 36 years later?

He refused induction into the army in 1967 and lost his titles; the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in 1971. He beat Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974.

In 1986 Steve Jobs bought the Graphics Group from Lucasfilm for $10 million. What did the company become?

He had been pushed out of Apple the year before after a power struggle with CEO John Sculley, and founded NeXT the same year. He returned to Apple in 1997.

Walt Disney holds the record for the most competitive Academy Awards won by an individual. How many?

That came from 59 nominations. He also voiced Mickey Mouse himself from Steamboat Willie in 1928 until 1947.

Barred from the US in 1952, Charlie Chaplin settled in which country for the rest of his life?

He returned to Hollywood only once, to accept an honorary Oscar in 1972. He had co-founded United Artists in 1919 with Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith.

Which rock frontman was born Farrokh Bulsara to a Parsi family in Zanzibar in 1946?

He wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and played it first to DJ Kenny Everett, who predicted it would be number one for centuries. He died in 1991, a day after confirming he had AIDS.

Two days after being shot in 1976, Bob Marley performed at which Jamaican concert?

He played to 80,000 people with his injuries. The cancer that killed him in 1981, at 36, began as a melanoma under his right big toe that he declined to have amputated.

Which martial arts star won Hong Kong's Crown Colony Cha-Cha Championship in 1958?

He was born in San Francisco while his parents toured with a Cantonese opera company, and died in Hong Kong in 1973 at 32, weeks before Enter the Dragon was released.

Pelé, born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, was named by his parents after which famous person?

He remains the only player to win three World Cups, scoring twice in the 1958 final at 17. The nickname probably came from his childhood mispronunciation of a goalkeeper called Bilé.

What is Usain Bolt's 100 m world record, set in Berlin in 2009?

He set the 200 m mark of 19.19 at the same championships, won eight Olympic golds, and in 2018 briefly tried professional football with Australia's Central Coast Mariners.

When Michael Jordan quit basketball in 1993 to play minor-league baseball, which team did he play for?

He hit .202 for the Chicago White Sox affiliate before returning to win three more NBA titles. As a high-school sophomore he had been left off the varsity team for being too short at 5 ft 11.

Which media mogul was named Orpah but became known by a mispronunciation?

Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi in 1954, she was a millionaire by 32 and by 2000 the richest African American of the 20th century. Her show ran 25 seasons.

In his will, William Shakespeare famously left his wife Anne Hathaway which single item?

Scholars still argue whether it was a snub or a sentimental gift, since the best bed was often kept for guests. He married her at 18 and they had three children.

In which English town was Agatha Christie found after her 11-day 1926 disappearance?

Her wartime work in hospital dispensaries gave her the working knowledge of poisons that runs through her plots. Her books have sold more than two billion copies.

Which escape artist, born Erik Weisz in Budapest, took his stage name from a French magician?

He died on Halloween 1926 of peritonitis after being punched in the stomach in Montreal, and spent his last years exposing fraudulent mediums.

Mahatma Gandhi was called to the bar in London at 22 after studying at which Inn of Court?

He then spent 21 years in South Africa, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize repeatedly without winning, and was shot dead at a prayer meeting in Delhi in January 1948.

In his final decades Isaac Newton left Cambridge for a very un-academic job. What was it?

He personally pursued counterfeiters, first as Warden from 1696 and then as Master until his death in 1727. Queen Anne knighted him in 1705.

Christopher Columbus was born around 1451 in which Italian maritime republic?

His four voyages for the Spanish crown ran from 1492 to 1504, and he died in Valladolid in 1506 still insisting he had reached Asia rather than a new continent.

Which Cambridge chair, once held by Isaac Newton, did Stephen Hawking occupy from 1979 to 2009?

Diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21 and given roughly two years, he lived another 55, and his ashes lie in Westminster Abbey between Newton and Darwin.

What is the concealed hiding place of Anne Frank's family in Amsterdam usually called in English?

Police stormed it on 4 August 1944. Anne died at Bergen-Belsen at 15; Otto, the only survivor, published her diary in 1947.

Which word did Anne Sullivan spell into Helen Keller's palm as the substance ran over her other hand?

She lost her sight and hearing to illness at 19 months, graduated from Radcliffe in 1904 as the first deafblind American with a college degree, and helped found the ACLU.

On which 1983 television special did Michael Jackson first perform the moonwalk, during Billie Jean?

He was the eighth of ten children from Gary, Indiana. Thriller remains the best-selling album ever, and he died in 2009 at 50 from propofol administered by his doctor.

Audrey Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar for her first starring role, opposite Gregory Peck. Which film?

Born in Brussels, she survived the Dutch famine of 1944-45 as a teenager in Arnhem, later became a UNICEF ambassador and is one of the few EGOT winners.

Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for the Best Director Oscar five times. How many did he win?

The Academy gave him the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award instead. He was knighted in December 1979, four months before he died, and made cameos in most of his films.

How many Grand Slam singles titles did Serena Williams win, a women's Open Era record?

She won the 2002 French Open through the 2003 Australian Open back to back, beating sister Venus in every final. Together they won 14 major doubles titles without losing a final.

Which American author was born with Halley's Comet in 1835 and died at its 1910 return?

His pen name is the riverboat leadsman's call for two fathoms of safe depth, from his years piloting steamboats on the Mississippi.

Barack Obama spent four childhood years, from age six to ten, living in which country?

Born in Honolulu in 1961, he later became the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, and won the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year as US president.

What was Genghis Khan's birth name before he took his famous title at an assembly of tribes in 1206?

He died on campaign in 1227 and his burial place has never been found. His grandson Kublai founded China's Yuan dynasty.

Which learned body elected Florence Nightingale its first woman member in 1859 for her army death-rate charts?

Her polar-area 'rose' diagram is still taught in data-visualisation courses. She was named after the Italian city where she was born, and International Nurses Day falls on her birthday, 12 May.

Which saint, born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979?

She founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950 and was canonised by Pope Francis in 2016. Private letters later revealed decades of religious doubt.

Marie Antoinette was the youngest daughter and 15th child of which empress?

She left Vienna to marry the future Louis XVI at 14. Her spending earned her the nickname Madame Déficit, though court records never tied her to the Diamond Necklace fraud.

Taylor Swift began re-recording her early albums after a masters dispute with which label?

She was named after James Taylor, and her parents liked that the name was unisex in case it helped her in business. Her Eras Tour became the first to gross $1 billion, then $2 billion.

Rosa Parks's 1955 refusal to give up her bus seat sparked a boycott in which Alabama city?

She had attended the Highlander Folk School activist training centre in Tennessee only that summer.

How old was Malala Yousafzai when she became the youngest Nobel laureate in history in 2014?

She shared the Peace Prize with India's Kailash Satyarthi and later read PPE at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Where did Coco Chanel learn to sew as a girl after her mother died?

Her father sent his three daughters to the convent of Aubazine; she left at 18 for a Catholic boarding house in Moulins, where she sang in a cabaret.

At whose invitation did Leonardo da Vinci spend the last three years of his life in France?

He was born out of wedlock near the Tuscan town of Vinci and trained in Florence under Andrea del Verrocchio before dying in France in 1519.