50 Fun Facts About Famous Richards and Dicks

Richard Nixon's 1952 televised speech defending a campaign fund is named after which pet?

Checkers was a cocker spaniel sent to the Nixon children, and Nixon vowed to keep the gift whatever his critics said. About 60 million Americans watched or listened.

Dick Van Dyke played both Bert the chimney sweep and an elderly bank chairman in which musical film?

Mary Poppins credited its ancient banker, Mr. Dawes Senior, to Navckid Keyd, a scramble of the actor's own name. Heavy costuming made him look far older.

Which Beatle was born Richard Starkey and spent two years of childhood in a tuberculosis sanatorium?

Ringo Starr took the stage name from the rings he wore, and because it sounded country-and-western. After his hospital stay he skipped school to drum along to music on biscuit tins.

Richard III, the last English king killed in battle, was found in 2012 buried under what?

A car park in Leicester had covered the lost Greyfriars church where he was hastily buried in 1485. DNA from descendants of his sister Anne helped confirm the bones were his.

Which actor starred opposite Julia Roberts in both Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride?

Richard Gere composed and performed the piano theme he plays in Pretty Woman. The role brought him his second Golden Globe nomination.

Dick Cheney accidentally shot a 78-year-old lawyer on a Texas ranch while hunting which bird?

Quail were the quarry when Cheney's shotgun blast hit Harry Whittington in the cheek, neck and chest. Whittington survived, with about 30 pellets left in his body.

Stephen King published Thinner under which pen name, exposed by a bookstore clerk in 1985?

Richard Bachman's Thinner sold 28,000 copies at first, then ten times as many once the secret was out. A Washington clerk had noticed how alike the two writers' styles were.

Richard Harris played which Harry Potter character in two films before Michael Gambon took over?

Albus Dumbledore was a part Harris said he took only after his 11-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again. Chamber of Secrets was his final film.

Which American Bandstand host, dubbed America's oldest teenager, fronted New Year's Eve from Times Square?

Dick Clark earned the oldest-teenager tag for his youthful looks and his teenage audience. He first produced New Year's Rockin' Eve in 1972 and also hosted five versions of Pyramid.

Which actor won an Academy Award as Richard Williams, tennis-coach father of Venus and Serena?

Will Smith won Best Actor for King Richard, a film Venus and Serena Williams themselves helped make as executive producers.

Richard Branson's Virgin label made its debut in 1973 with which Mike Oldfield album?

Tubular Bells sold slowly until its opening piano motif turned up in the horror film The Exorcist. The surge laid the financial foundation for the whole Virgin Group.

Richard the Lionheart was fatally wounded by which weapon while besieging a French castle in 1199?

A crossbow bolt left a wound that turned gangrenous. As a final act of mercy he forgave the shooter, said by some chroniclers to be a boy, and sent him away with 100 shillings.

Dick Grayson, son of acrobats called the Flying Graysons, becomes the partner of which superhero?

Batman takes him on as the first Robin after Dick asks to become his aide, and the pair are known as the Dynamic Duo. In 1984 Dick grew up into the hero Nightwing.

Dick Dastardly schemes his way through Wacky Races alongside which dog with a wheezy, snickering laugh?

Muttley's rasping laugh is heard most often when his master's schemes fail. Voice actor Don Messick reused the same snicker for several other cartoon dogs.

Which actor produced, directed and played the title role in the 1990 film Dick Tracy?

Warren Beatty arrived after the project had passed through directors including Steven Spielberg and John Landis. The film won three Academy Awards, among them Best Makeup.

In English folklore, Dick Whittington rises from poverty to Lord Mayor of London thanks to which animal?

A cat makes his fortune when it is sold to a rat-infested country. The real Richard Whittington was of high birth and probably never owned one.

Legend says highwayman Dick Turpin rode 200 miles overnight from London to York on a mare with which name?

Black Bess and the ride were made famous by novelist William Harrison Ainsworth almost 100 years after Turpin was hanged. The ride itself never happened.

Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries blares from attacking helicopters in which Vietnam War film?

Apocalypse Now has its helicopters play the music as they attack a Vietnamese village. The piece is the prelude to the third and last act of Wagner's opera Die Walküre.

Which composer wrote Also sprach Zarathustra, whose fanfare is the main theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey?

Richard Strauss titled the fanfare Sunrise in his programme notes. The film used a 1959 Vienna Philharmonic recording conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

Which composer set Oscar Hammerstein's words to music in Oklahoma!, South Pacific and The Sound of Music?

Richard Rodgers was the first person to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, and he added a Pulitzer Prize as well. His earlier lyricist was Lorenz Hart.

Richard Burton twice married and twice divorced which screen star, his partner in eleven films?

Elizabeth Taylor was his second and third wife, and their turbulent romance kept him in the headlines. Despite seven Academy Award nominations, Burton never won.

Richard Attenborough, older brother of naturalist David, won the Best Director Academy Award for which biopic?

Gandhi also won him the Best Picture award. His own screen career began in 1942 with an uncredited part as a sailor deserting his post in In Which We Serve.

Which actor chased UFOs in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and won an Academy Award for The Goodbye Girl?

Richard Dreyfuss was 30 when The Goodbye Girl made him the youngest Best Actor winner up to that time, beating a mark Marlon Brando had held since 1955.

Which stand-up comedian teamed with Gene Wilder in the comedies Silver Streak and Stir Crazy?

Richard Pryor made four films with Wilder in all, and in 1998 he received the very first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Television producer Dick Wolf is best known for creating which long-running drama franchise?

Law & Order ran from 1990 to 2010 and was revived in 2022. Wolf is also co-creator of the FBI franchise.

Dick York and later Dick Sargent each played Darrin Stephens, husband of Samantha, in which sitcom?

Bewitched changed its leading man in 1969, when Dick Sargent replaced an ailing Dick York for the final three seasons.

Surf guitarist Dick Dale's Misirlou revived his career when it was used in which Quentin Tarantino film?

Pulp Fiction led to four new albums and world tours for Dale. A left-hander, he played a right-handed guitar flipped over, without restringing it.

Which American high jumper won 1968 Olympic gold by going over the bar back-first?

Dick Fosbury began experimenting with the style at 16 in high school. Sprinting in on a curve and leaping backward kept his centre of mass lower than older techniques did.

Which NASCAR driver won a record 200 Cup races and seven Daytona 500s driving the number 43?

Richard Petty also holds the marks for most wins in a season, 27, and most in a row, ten. His seven championships were later matched by Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson.

Which bongo-playing Nobel physicist dunked O-ring material in ice water at the Challenger disaster hearings?

Richard Feynman clamped a sample of the seal material and dipped it in ice-cold water during a televised hearing, showing that it lost its resilience in the cold.

Biologist Richard Dawkins coined which everyday internet word in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene?

Meme was his behavioural equivalent of a gene, meant to show that Darwinian principles could reach beyond biology. He has since distanced himself from the field of memetics.

Richard Trevithick built the first working example of which machine, tried at a Welsh ironworks in 1804?

A locomotive of his hauled a train along the Penydarren tramway in Merthyr Tydfil, the world's first railway journey of its kind. No plans for the engine survive.

Richard Gatling's rapid-fire gun, often called the first successful machine gun, first saw combat in which war?

The US Civil War began in 1861, the year Gatling invented the weapon, yet the Union Army used it only occasionally. He later patented improvements to toilets and bicycles.

Richard Adams wrote which novel about a group of rabbits who flee their doomed burrows to found a new home?

Watership Down was rejected by several publishers before it won the Carnegie Medal. The title is the Hampshire hill where the animals finally settle.

Richard Scarry set his children's picture books in which fictional town of animals, home to Lowly Worm?

Busytown and its friendly, helpful animal residents grew into a media franchise, including an educational video series that began in 1989.

Richard Kiel, who stood over seven feet tall, played which henchman in two James Bond films?

Jaws menaces Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, and was inspired by a hoodlum Ian Fleming described in a novel. Kiel later played Mr. Larson in Happy Gilmore.

Dick Francis set many crime novels in the world of which sport, having been a champion in it?

Horse racing made his name twice: as a champion jump jockey he won over 350 races and rode for the Queen Mother, then he set his first thriller, Dead Cert, in the same world.

Dutch artist Dick Bruna created which picture-book character, drawn with heavy lines and primary colours?

Miffy began in 1955, after Bruna watched a rabbit hopping around on holiday and tried to draw it. He said Japan's Hello Kitty was copied from her.

Richard Hammond suffered a brain injury when a jet-powered dragster crashed while filming which show?

Top Gear welcomed him back four months later with dancing girls and fireworks. Hammond then asked that the crash never be mentioned on the show again.

Richard Osman, creator of the BBC quiz Pointless, debuted as a novelist with which bestselling whodunnit?

The Thursday Murder Club, published in 2020, opened a best-selling series. Osman had pitched Pointless to the BBC while creative director at the TV company Endemol UK.

Which screenwriter wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill and co-founded the charity Comic Relief?

Richard Curtis also co-wrote the sitcom Blackadder. Comic Relief, which he started with Lenny Henry, has raised over £1 billion.

Which fitness personality became a television fixture with his Sweatin' to the Oldies aerobics videos?

Richard Simmons started out by opening Slimmons, a Beverly Hills gym that welcomed overweight people in a supportive atmosphere.

Richard Dawson, who played Corporal Newkirk in Hogan's Heroes, was the original host of which game show?

Family Feud was spun off from a round of Match Game, where Dawson had become a popular regular panelist. He hosted it from 1976 to 1985 and again in 1994.

Dick Winters and the paratroopers of Easy Company are the heroes of which HBO miniseries?

Band of Brothers cast Damian Lewis as Winters, an officer in the 506th Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division.

Explorer Richard Francis Burton, who reached Mecca in disguise, sought the source of which river?

The Nile quest, made with John Hanning Speke, made him the first European known to have seen Lake Tanganyika. He also translated One Thousand and One Nights.

Richard Cromwell succeeded his father Oliver in 1658 in which office, giving it up within a year?

Lord Protector was a post he formally renounced only nine months after succeeding. Royalists mocked his fall with the nicknames Tumbledown Dick and Queen Dick.

Which founding father published Poor Richard's Almanack for 25 years as Richard Saunders?

Benjamin Franklin announced the first edition in his own Pennsylvania Gazette in December 1732, and the yearly almanac brought him wealth and popularity.

Richard Sears of Sears, Roebuck got his start as a railway agent selling a refused shipment of what?

Watches arrived at his Minnesota station, where a local jeweller refused the delivery. Sears bought them himself and sold them at a profit to other station agents along the line.

Richard Hadlee became the first bowler to take 400 Test wickets while playing for which country?

New Zealand saw him reach the mark on his home ground in Christchurch, and he was knighted in 1990 while still an active Test cricketer.

Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager made the first non-stop, unrefuelled flight around the world in which aircraft?

Voyager was designed by Dick's brother Burt Rutan, and the flight lasted from 14 to 23 December 1986.