108 Fun Facts About Famous People

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

The photoelectric effect: the citation passed over relativity, which some physicists still doubted and the prize's presentation speech called a subject of lively debate.

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

Salvator Mundi: it smashed the auction record even though the panel was badly damaged and not every expert accepts it as Leonardo's own work.

Cleopatra VII, last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, came from a royal dynasty of what origin?

Macedonian Greek: the line began with Ptolemy I Soter, a general of Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra was the first of its rulers known to have learned Egyptian.

On which Mediterranean island was Napoleon Bonaparte born in 1769?

Corsica: France had acquired the island only the year before, and Napoleon's father had joined Pasquale Paoli's resistance to French rule.

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

Ford's Theatre: Booth, a star actor, had performed there, and in November 1863 Lincoln had watched him play in The Marble Heart on that very stage.

Which element did Marie Curie name after her native country?

Polonium: Poland was then partitioned among Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, so naming an element after it made a political statement about its lost independence.

Which composer died in Vienna in 1791, aged 35, leaving his Requiem unfinished?

Mozart: decades after his death, a rumour spread that the composer Antonio Salieri had poisoned him, but there is no basis for it.

Beethoven's 1802 Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers, revealed his despair over what?

His growing deafness: Beethoven never sent the letter but kept it hidden among his papers for the rest of his life, and it was found only after his death.

Where did Nelson Mandela spend 18 of his 27 years behind bars?

Robben Island: he laboured in its lime quarry and wrote the first draft of Long Walk to Freedom there.

Which British prime minister won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Winston Churchill was cited for his histories and his oratory, but he could not attend the Stockholm banquet, so his wife Clementine read his speech for him.

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

Alexandrina: christened Alexandrina Victoria, she was only fifth in line to the throne at birth, yet she reigned simply as Victoria from 1837.

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

Pirates: in Plutarch's telling he mocked their ransom demand as too low, warned he would crucify them, and once freed caught them and did exactly that.

Which philosopher tutored Alexander the Great until he was 16?

Aristotle: as payment, Alexander's father Philip II rebuilt Aristotle's hometown of Stagira, which Philip himself had razed, and brought its exiled citizens home.

In which Normandy city was Joan of Arc burned at the stake in 1431?

Rouen: 25 years later a retrial authorised by Pope Calixtus III annulled her conviction, and in 1920 the Church declared her a saint.

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

Under house arrest at his villa at Arcetri near Florence, Galileo, almost totally blind, still got his Two New Sciences published in Leiden in 1638.

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

HMS Beagle: Darwin's father at first objected to the voyage as a waste of time, until Darwin's uncle Josiah Wedgwood answered his objections and he relented.

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

Croatia: Tesla's father, an Orthodox priest, wanted him to join the priesthood but promised him engineering school if he survived cholera, and he did.

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

Howland Island: the Coast Guard cutter Itasca waited offshore to guide her in, but radio contact failed, and a massive two-week search never found her.

Which astronaut earned a student pilot certificate at 16, before holding a driver's licence?

Neil Armstrong: years later, on Gemini 8, he steadied a violent spin caused by a stuck thruster by using fuel meant for re-entry.

Which civil rights leader was born 'Michael' in 1929 and renamed as a small boy?

Martin Luther King Jr.: his father, also born Michael, took the name in honour of the German reformer Martin Luther, and his son followed.

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

Frida Kahlo, who had survived polio at six, began painting in bed after the crash, and she married the muralist Diego Rivera twice.

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

Spain: Nazi German bombers backing Franco's Nationalists attacked the Basque town on 26 April 1937, and an outraged Picasso painted Guernica that year.

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

Marilyn Monroe: tired of dumb-blonde roles, she left Hollywood for New York to study acting with Lee Strasberg.

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

Tupelo: after the family moved to Memphis, Elvis paid to cut his first record at what became Sun Studio.

Which boxer won Olympic gold in 1960 and lit the cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?

Muhammad Ali: stripped of his titles for refusing the draft in 1967, he was cleared when the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.

Which studio grew out of the Lucasfilm computer graphics group that Steve Jobs bought in 1986?

Pixar: Jobs kept pouring his own money into the studio, and its Toy Story became the first feature film made entirely with computer animation.

As of 2025, which individual holds the record for the most Academy Awards won?

Walt Disney won 22, and he was also the original voice of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie and the early cartoons.

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

Chaplin settled at Corsier-sur-Vevey on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where he died in 1977; he returned to Hollywood only once, for an honorary Oscar in 1972, having co-founded United Artists in 1919.

On which island was Freddie Mercury born in 1946?

Zanzibar: in 1964 his family fled a violent revolution there and settled in England.

Which reggae star was shot in December 1976 yet still performed at the Smile Jamaica concert two days later?

Bob Marley still took the stage, then left Jamaica for exile in England and did not return home until 1978.

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

Bruce Lee, born in San Francisco while his father toured with a Cantonese opera company, died at 32, just before Enter the Dragon was released.

Which Brazilian club did Pelé join at 15?

Santos: after European clubs came calling, Brazil's president had Pelé declared a national treasure to stop him being transferred abroad.

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

Birmingham Barons: Jordan batted just .202 for the White Sox' Double-A club in 1994, then returned to the Bulls and won three more NBA titles.

Which talk show host was nominated for an Oscar for playing Sofia in The Color Purple?

Oprah Winfrey was named after the biblical figure Orpah, but the easier-to-say Oprah soon stuck.

Which playwright's will left his wife his second-best bed?

William Shakespeare: the best bed was often kept for guests, so the second-best may have been the couple's own marital bed.

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

She was found at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, registered under the surname of her husband's mistress; her wartime dispensary work gave her the knowledge of poisons that runs through her plots.

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

Harry Houdini took his name from Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin and spent his later years exposing fraudulent mediums, before dying on Halloween 1926.

In which city did Mahatma Gandhi train as a lawyer before moving to South Africa?

London: he trained at the Inner Temple, but his law practice back in Bombay struggled, so he took a job in South Africa.

Which un-academic job took Isaac Newton away from Cambridge in his final decades?

Master of the Royal Mint: Newton joined the Mint as Warden in 1696, became Master three years later, and set out to punish counterfeiters.

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

Genoa, by scholarly consensus: yet Columbus sailed for Ferdinand and Isabella, after Portugal turned down his plan.

Which physicist held Isaac Newton's old Cambridge chair, the Lucasian professorship, from 1979 to 2009?

Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21 and doctors predicted he would not live long, yet he lived more than 50 more years.

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

The Secret Annex, concealed rooms in the building where Otto Frank worked, was raided in August 1944, and Otto, the family's only survivor, published Anne's diary in 1947.

Which word was Helen Keller's breakthrough when Anne Sullivan spelled it into her palm in 1887?

Water: as pump water ran over one hand, Anne Sullivan spelled w-a-t-e-r into the other, and Keller went on to graduate from Radcliffe College.

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

Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever was taped in March 1983 and aired on NBC that May; Jackson, the eighth of ten children from Gary, Indiana, died in 2009 at 50 from propofol given by his doctor.

Which film, opposite Gregory Peck, won Audrey Hepburn her Best Actress Oscar?

Roman Holiday: as a teenager in the occupied Netherlands during the war, Hepburn is said to have helped the Dutch resistance.

Which film director was knighted just months before dying in 1980?

Alfred Hitchcock: the Master of Suspense also slipped a brief cameo appearance into most of his own films.

Which player holds the Open Era record of 23 women's Grand Slam singles titles?

Serena Williams won the 23rd at the 2017 Australian Open while already pregnant with her daughter, passing Steffi Graf's 22.

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

Mark Twain: in 1909 he predicted he would go out with the comet, and died the day after its closest approach to the Sun.

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

Indonesia: his mother had married an Indonesian student, Lolo Soetoro, and at ten Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

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

Temüjin: in the earliest tradition his father named him after a Tatar captive, and the details of his burial were kept secret.

Which Crimean War nurse became the first woman elected to the Royal Statistical Society, for her charts of army deaths?

Florence Nightingale: her data showed that far more soldiers were dying from diseases such as cholera than from battle wounds.

Which saint was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910?

Mother Teresa: critics later alleged that her homes for the dying lacked proper care and painkillers, despite the millions her order raised.

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

Maria Theresa bore sixteen children; Marie Antoinette left Vienna at 14 to marry the future Louis XVI, and her spending earned her the nickname Madame Déficit.

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

Big Machine Records: her old masters were sold in 2019 and again in 2020, but in 2025 she bought them back.

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

Montgomery: the boycott lasted 381 days and ended only after a court ruling struck down segregation on the city's buses.

Who became the youngest-ever Nobel laureate when she shared the 2014 Peace Prize at 17?

Malala Yousafzai had been shot by a Taliban gunman on a bus two years earlier, targeted for campaigning for girls' education.

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

After her mother's death in 1895 her father left the three girls at the convent orphanage of Aubazine, where the nuns taught her to sew; at 18 she moved to Moulins and sang in a cabaret.

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

Francis I: one of Leonardo's last commissions was a mechanical lion that could walk and open its chest to reveal lilies.

Which puppeteer built the first Kermit in 1955 from his mother's discarded spring coat and a halved ping-pong ball?

Jim Henson's first Kermit was a vague lizard-like creature rather than a frog. Henson performed the character himself from 1955 until his death in 1990.

Which Dr. Seuss book was written after his editor bet $50 that he couldn't write one using only 50 different words?

Green Eggs and Ham won Dr. Seuss the $50 wager with his editor, Bennett Cerf. His earlier hit The Cat in the Hat had needed 236 different words.

Which astronaut, whose mother's maiden name was Moon, became the second person to walk on the lunar surface in 1969?

Buzz Aldrin later lent his nickname to Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear. On the lunar surface he privately took communion, the first food and drink consumed there.

Which nursery rhyme did Thomas Edison recite to test his first tinfoil phonograph in 1877?

Mary Had a Little Lamb, spoken onto a sheet of tinfoil, has been called the first recorded verse. The 1877 recording itself was not preserved.

Which footballer's first agreement with Barcelona was written on a paper napkin in December 2000, when he was 13?

Lionel Messi's family had demanded proof that the club was serious, and director Carles Rexach had no other paper at hand. Messi had been diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency at 10.

Which animal fatally injured 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin while he filmed on the Great Barrier Reef in 2006?

A stingray's barb pierced Steve Irwin's chest at Batt Reef, off Queensland. His death is believed to be the only stingray fatality ever captured on video.

Which pop star's stage name was derived from a Queen song title, by the account of her early producer Rob Fusari?

Lady Gaga got the name, Fusari said, when he texted her 'Radio Ga Ga' and his phone's spell checker changed 'Radio' to 'Lady'. She was born Stefani Germanotta.

Which member of the Beatles narrated the first two series of the children's television show Thomas & Friends?

Ringo Starr read the stories, which are based on books by the Reverend W. Awdry. He then played Mr. Conductor in the American spin-off Shining Time Station.

Which Surrealist painter of The Persistence of Memory also designed the Chupa Chups lollipop logo in 1969?

Salvador Dalí said the soft, melting watches in that 1931 painting were inspired by a Camembert cheese melting in the sun, not by the theory of relativity.

Which British royal trained as a driver and mechanic with the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1945?

Elizabeth II, then a princess, rose to honorary junior commander within five months. On Victory in Europe Day she and her sister slipped incognito into the celebrating crowds.

Which poison did the philosopher Socrates drink in 399 BC after an Athenian jury condemned him for impiety?

Hemlock was the death sentence for Socrates, who was also convicted of corrupting the youth. He authored no texts, so his ideas survive through students such as Plato and Xenophon.

Which archaeologist found the intact tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in November 1922?

Howard Carter made the find in what his backer, Lord Carnarvon, had agreed would be one more funded season. Asked if he could see anything, Carter by his own later account replied: 'Yes, wonderful things!'

Which escaped slave, nicknamed 'Moses', led about 70 people to freedom along the Underground Railroad?

Harriet Tubman made some 13 rescue missions, travelling by night in extreme secrecy, and later said she 'never lost a passenger'.

Which Scottish scientist discovered penicillin in 1928 after mould spoiled a culture plate left out while he was away?

Alexander Fleming famously remarked 'That's funny' on seeing bacteria destroyed around the fungus. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in medicine with two other scientists for the discovery.

Which Soviet cosmonaut became the first human in space when Vostok 1 launched in April 1961?

Yuri Gagarin completed a single orbit of Earth in a flight of 108 minutes, using the call sign Kedr, the Siberian pine. He died seven years later, aged 34.

Ada Lovelace, often called the first computer programmer, was the only legitimate child of which Romantic poet?

Lord Byron signed a deed of separation from Ada's mother four months after the birth and left England for good a few days later.

Which sitting US vice president fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel at Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1804?

Aaron Burr met Hamilton at the same spot where Hamilton's eldest son, Philip, had been killed in a duel three years earlier.

Which former US president died on 4 July 1826, just hours after his old rival Thomas Jefferson?

John Adams died on the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. His last words included 'Thomas Jefferson survives', but Jefferson had died several hours before.

Which Carthaginian general invaded Italy by marching North African war elephants across the Alps?

Hannibal left Iberia with 37 elephants, and about 30 were still with him at the Battle of the Trebia that December. Most of them died in the cold winter that followed.

Which New Zealand beekeeper reached the summit of Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay on 29 May 1953?

Edmund Hillary kept bees with his father and brother, tending 1,600 hives and taking between 12 and 100 stings a day.

Which French painter's hazy view of the port of Le Havre, 'Impression, Sunrise', inspired the name of Impressionism?

Claude Monet said he told the catalogue's compilers to 'Put Impression' because the scene couldn't really pass for a view of the port. Critic Louis Leroy seized on the word in an 1874 review.

Which Renaissance sculptor signed only one work, his Pietà, reportedly after overhearing it credited to another artist?

Michelangelo, by Giorgio Vasari's account, added his name after overhearing a visitor credit the marble to Cristoforo Solari. He never signed another piece.

Which pop artist survived being shot at his New York studio, the Factory, by the writer Valerie Solanas in June 1968?

Andy Warhol had to wear a surgical corset for the rest of his life after a follow-up operation left his abdominal muscles improperly repaired.

Which novelist left school at 12 to paste labels on pots of boot blacking while his father sat in a debtors' prison?

Charles Dickens worked ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse for six shillings a week. He spent his Sundays at the Marshalsea prison, where his father was held.

Which English novelist's four books published in her lifetime all appeared anonymously, the first credited to 'A Lady'?

Jane Austen's debut, Sense and Sensibility, carried 'By A Lady' on the title page where a name might have been. Her novels were moderate successes that brought her no public fame while she lived.

Which American novelist was almost fatally injured in two successive plane crashes on a trip to Africa in 1954?

Ernest Hemingway won the Nobel Prize in Literature months later. One biographer suggests he suspected that the obituary notices printed after the accidents had played a part in the decision.

Which Stephen King debut novel survived only because his wife Tabitha rescued its first pages from the trash?

Carrie was written in a trailer in Hermon, Maine, where King lived with his wife and two children. He had given up on the story, feeling it would never be successful.

Which American writer was found semiconscious in Baltimore in October 1849, wearing clothes that were not his own?

Edgar Allan Poe died soon afterwards, aged 40, never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in that state. The cause of his death remains unknown.

Which British children's author was a Second World War fighter ace who later became an intelligence officer?

Roald Dahl once dreamed of inventing a chocolate bar that would win the praise of Mr Cadbury himself, which later inspired Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

John F. Kennedy won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for which book about US senators who risked their careers?

Profiles in Courage was drafted in 1954 and 1955 while Kennedy, then a senator himself, lay recovering from back surgery. His speechwriter Ted Sorensen served as its ghostwriter.

Outside which Manhattan apartment building, overlooking Central Park, was John Lennon shot in December 1980?

The Dakota had been Lennon's home since 1973, picked because it was more secure. Hours before the shooting he autographed an album there for the man who went on to kill him.

Which rock star's permanently dilated left pupil came from a punch thrown by a school friend in a fight over a girl?

David Bowie stayed on good terms with the friend, George Underwood, who went on to create the artwork for his early albums.

Which country star wrote 'I Will Always Love You' as a farewell to her mentor and business partner Porter Wagoner?

Dolly Parton released it as a country single in 1974, and Elvis Presley indicated that he wanted to record it. Whitney Houston's pop-ballad version came with the 1992 film The Bodyguard.

Which Caribbean island nation declared the singer Rihanna a National Hero during its 2021 ceremony to become a republic?

Barbados, where she was born in the parish of Saint Michael, had already named her an ambassador in 2018. Prime Minister Mia Mottley announced the honour.

Which Hollywood star served two years as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, after winning election in April 1986?

Clint Eastwood donated his $200 monthly salary to the Carmel Youth Center. In office he helped make it legal to eat ice cream on city streets.

Which blockbuster director was turned down by the University of Southern California's film school over mediocre grades?

Steven Spielberg never got in as a student, yet the same university awarded him an honorary degree in 1994.

Which world chess champion lost a six-game match to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in New York in May 1997?

Garry Kasparov became the first world champion to lose a match to a computer under standard time controls. He had taken the title in 1985, at 22, by defeating Anatoly Karpov.

Which gymnast is generally credited with the first perfect 10 at an Olympics, on the uneven bars in Montreal in 1976?

Nadia Comăneci's score stumped the scoreboard, which had not been programmed to show a 10 because its maker had been led to believe no competitor could receive one.

Which English runner, later a neurologist, ran the first sub-four-minute mile at Oxford's Iffley Road track in May 1954?

Roger Bannister broke the barrier on minimal training while practising as a junior doctor, with Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher setting the pace for him.

Which Indian batsman became the first cricketer to score 100 international centuries, against Bangladesh in March 2012?

Sachin Tendulkar made his Test debut against Pakistan in Karachi at just sixteen. After his final match in 2013 he was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award.

Which Mali Empire ruler gave away so much gold in Cairo on his 1324 pilgrimage that its value reportedly dropped?

Mansa Musa's wealth came mainly from his empire's control and taxing of the trade in salt and in gold from Bambuk and Bure.

Which Danish astronomer wore a prosthetic nose for life after losing part of his own in a sword duel at age 20?

Tycho Brahe's false nose was long said to be silver and gold, but researchers who analysed his exhumed remains reported in 2012 that it was actually brass.

Which first emperor of China was buried in a city-sized mausoleum guarded by a life-sized Terracotta Army?

Qin Shi Huang also joined older state walls into a single Great Wall. One hypothesis holds that he was poisoned by a mercury elixir taken in his quest for immortality.

Which Russian tsar ordered his courtiers to cut off their long beards and charged nobles an annual tax to keep them?

Peter the Great set the beard tax at one hundred rubles a year for boyars. He also made his courtiers and officials swap their caftans for European clothing.

Which Hollywood star co-invented a frequency-hopping guidance system for Allied torpedoes with composer George Antheil?

Hedy Lamarr and Antheil designed it to defeat radio jamming by the Axis powers. Similar technology entered operational use only in 1962, three years after their patent expired.

In which African country did Diana, Princess of Wales, tour a minefield in a helmet and flak jacket in January 1997?

Angola gave the anti-landmine campaign pictures that were seen worldwide. The minefield, at Huambo, was being cleared by the HALO Trust, a charity that removes landmines and other debris left behind by war.

Which American-born dancer spied for the French Resistance and was inducted into the Panthéon in Paris in 2021?

Josephine Baker was the first black woman to receive that honour, one of the highest in France. She had starred in the 1927 French silent film Siren of the Tropics.

In which Middle Eastern capital was the actor Keanu Reeves born in 1964, before being raised in Toronto?

Beirut-born Reeves has an English mother, a costume designer, and an American father from Hawaii of Native Hawaiian, Chinese, English and Portuguese descent.

Explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in 1521 during a battle on Mactan, an island in which modern country?

The Philippines is where the chief Lapulapu's warriors overwhelmed Magellan after a poisoned arrow struck his unarmoured legs. His crew completed the first circumnavigation of Earth in 1522.

Which Roman emperor, according to the historian Suetonius, planned to make his horse Incitatus a consul?

Caligula was itself a nickname, 'little boot', given affectionately by his father's soldiers. Ancient sources are clear that the horse never actually became consul.