50 Fun Facts About Famous Williams

Which Oscar-winning actor, a William who goes by his middle name, first won notice as a hitchhiker in Thelma & Louise?

Brad Pitt was born William Bradley Pitt and shares his first name with his father, William Alvin Pitt, who ran a trucking company.

William Shakespeare was 18 when he married which bride, who was 26 and already expecting their first child?

Anne Hathaway received only one bequest in her husband's will: his second-best bed with its furniture.

William Shatner, Star Trek's Captain Kirk, flew to the edge of space in 2021 at age 90 with which company?

Blue Origin's founder Jeff Bezos, a Star Trek fan, invited him aboard a New Shepard capsule for a suborbital flight launched from West Texas.

Bill Clinton, born William Jefferson Blythe III, played which instrument on The Arsenio Hall Show in 1992?

Saxophone was his instrument from his school days, when he won first chair in the Arkansas state band's section.

Billy the Kid, who used the alias William H. Bonney, was shot dead in 1881 by which New Mexico sheriff?

Pat Garrett had already captured the outlaw once, but the prisoner broke out of jail before he could be hanged and stayed free for more than two months.

Bill Gates, born William Henry Gates III in Seattle, dropped out of which university in 1975 to co-found Microsoft?

Harvard is also where he met Steve Ballmer, the fellow student who stayed to graduate and later succeeded him as the head of Microsoft.

Which actor directed himself as Scottish rebel William Wallace in the Oscar-winning 1995 epic Braveheart?

Mel Gibson took home the Best Director Oscar for the film, one of five Academy Awards it won, Best Picture among them.

Prince William met his future wife, Catherine Middleton, while both were students at which Scottish university?

St Andrews is where the prince started out studying art history before switching his main subject to geography.

William the Conqueror won the English crown in 1066 by defeating King Harold at which battle in Sussex?

Hastings came less than three weeks after Harold had rushed north to beat a Norwegian invasion at Stamford Bridge, then hurried his men back south.

The rapper and producer will.i.am, born William Adams in Los Angeles, formed which chart-topping group in 1995?

Black Eyed Peas started out as a rap trio: he formed the group alongside fellow rappers apl.de.ap and Taboo.

Billy Joel, born William Martin Joel in the Bronx, is nicknamed after which signature song he released in 1973?

Piano Man retells his six months playing a Los Angeles piano bar under the name Bill Martin while he tried to escape a record contract.

Which Italian composer wrote the 1829 opera William Tell, whose overture finale became the theme of The Lone Ranger?

Rossini never wrote another opera after it, even though he lived for nearly 40 more years.

William F. Cody, a frontier scout turned showman, toured America and Europe with his Wild West show under which name?

Buffalo Bill took the show to London in 1887, where Queen Victoria attended a performance during her Golden Jubilee year.

William Howard Taft is the only person to have served as US president and later in which other high office?

Chief Justice was the post he had long wanted: he turned down earlier offers of a Supreme Court seat, then got the top one in 1921.

William Henry Harrison died just 31 days into his presidency in 1841 and was succeeded by which vice president?

John Tyler was the first vice president to take over from a president who died, and opponents mocked him as His Accidency.

William McKinley's assassination in 1901 made which man, then aged 42, the youngest president in US history?

Theodore Roosevelt had been vice president for only six months when the shooting at the Pan-American Exposition put him in the White House.

William Wordsworth's most famous poem was inspired by a lakeside walk with his sister Dorothy past which flowers?

Daffodils grew in a long belt along the shore of Ullswater in the Lake District, where the pair came upon them in April 1802.

Which Nobel Prize winner wrote Lord of the Flies, a 1954 debut novel about schoolboys stranded on an island?

William Golding knew boys well: he worked as a schoolmaster, teaching English and music, before the novel made his name.

Which London poet and engraver, who said he saw angels in a tree as a boy, wrote The Tyger?

William Blake also wrote the verses that became the anthem Jerusalem, and produced his books himself by a method called illuminated printing.

Which English Quaker was granted a vast tract of American land by King Charles II in 1681 and founded Philadelphia?

William Penn received the land because the king owed money to his father, an admiral, and the grant settled the debt.

William Clark was invited to co-lead the 1804 expedition across the American West by which captain and close friend?

Meriwether Lewis was President Jefferson's pick to lead the Corps of Discovery, sent to explore the land gained in the Louisiana Purchase.

Captain William Bligh was set adrift in an open launch in 1789 when the crew of which ship mutinied?

HMS Bounty's mutineers left him with 18 loyal men, and he steered the small boat more than 3,600 nautical miles to safety in Timor.

Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst was the main inspiration for the lead character of which Orson Welles film?

Citizen Kane gave its tycoon a vast estate called Xanadu, a stand-in for the real Hearst Castle in California.

Who made his money in lumber before founding a Seattle aircraft company in 1916 that still carries his surname?

William Boeing had dropped out of Yale to go into lumber, and his aircraft firm only took his own name a year after he founded it.

William Wrigley Jr. sold soap and baking powder before switching to which product he had been giving away free?

Chewing gum was his giveaway with each can of baking powder, until he found customers wanted the freebie more than the product.

Animator William Hanna and his partner Joseph Barbera created which cat-and-mouse duo at MGM in 1940?

Tom and Jerry went on to win seven Academy Awards, with Hanna himself supplying the vocal effects for both characters.

Bill Watterson, born William Boyd Watterson II, drew which comic strip about a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger?

Calvin and Hobbes has almost no official merchandise because he refused to license it, saying mugs and T-shirts would devalue the characters.

Psychologist William Moulton Marston, who helped invent an early lie detector, created which comic book superhero?

Wonder Woman binds villains with a magic lasso that forces them to tell the truth, a fitting weapon from a pioneer of lie detection.

Bill Murray, born William James Murray, plays a weatherman stuck in a time loop in which 1993 comedy?

Groundhog Day is set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, but it was filmed almost entirely in Woodstock, Illinois.

Which Northern Irish actor, christened William John, played Oskar Schindler in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List?

Liam Neeson was named after a local priest, and as a boy he boxed, winning regional titles before he quit at 17.

William Wilberforce, a member of Parliament for Yorkshire, led the long campaign to abolish what in the British Empire?

The slave trade was his target in Parliament for 20 years until the Slave Trade Act of 1807, and he lived just long enough to hear that slavery itself would be abolished.

William Harvey, physician to King Charles I, is famous for a 1628 treatise that described which process in the body?

Circulation of the blood, driven by the heart, was the subject of De Motu Cordis, which he published in Frankfurt and dedicated to the king he served.

William Herschel, a chapel organist in Bath, discovered which planet in 1781 with a telescope he built himself?

Uranus looked to him like a comet at first, and he tried to name the new planet the Georgian star after King George III.

William Thomson, the Belfast-born physicist who fixed the value of absolute zero, is better known by which title?

Lord Kelvin took his title from the River Kelvin, which runs past the University of Glasgow, where he was a professor for 53 years.

William Booth and his wife Catherine began preaching in London's East End in 1865, founding which Christian charity?

Salvation Army members take military-style ranks, and Booth himself served as its first General from 1878 until 1912.

Schoolboy William Webb Ellis is credited with inventing which sport by running with the ball during a football match?

Rugby still honours the story, true or not: the trophy handed to the winners of the Rugby World Cup is the Webb Ellis Cup.

Bill Russell, born William Felton Russell, won eleven NBA championships in thirteen seasons as the center of which team?

Boston Celtics made him player-coach for his last three seasons, and he became the first African American coach to win an NBA title.

W. E. B. Du Bois, whose first initial stands for William, helped found which civil rights organization in 1909?

NAACP readers knew his voice well: he edited its journal, The Crisis, and published many influential pieces there.

The dramatist W. S. Gilbert, christened William, wrote fourteen comic operas such as The Mikado with which composer?

Arthur Sullivan set his words to music, and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company they helped found kept the works on stage for over a century.

Director William Friedkin followed The French Connection with which 1973 horror film about a possessed girl?

The Exorcist came from a best-selling novel by another William, William Peter Blatty, and earned Friedkin a Best Director nomination.

General William Tecumseh Sherman captured which Georgia city in 1864, a victory that helped re-elect Abraham Lincoln?

Atlanta was the starting point of his March to the Sea, which ended with him offering Lincoln the port of Savannah as a Christmas gift.

William Tyndale was arrested in Antwerp and executed in 1536 after translating which book into English?

The Bible he translated outlived his executioners: the 47 scholars who made the King James Version drew extensively on his wording.

William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential nominee, helped prosecute a teacher in 1925 for teaching what?

Evolution was his late-life cause: he opposed Darwinism on religious grounds, and he died soon after the Scopes trial ended.

Physicist William Shockley shared the 1956 Nobel Prize for work at Bell Labs on which device?

The transistor also seeded Silicon Valley: eight researchers quit his California company in 1957 and went on to found Fairchild Semiconductor.

William of Orange, a Dutch prince, took the English throne in the Glorious Revolution and reigned alongside which queen?

Mary II was his wife as well as his co-monarch, and their joint reign, which lasted until her death in 1694, is still known as William and Mary.

Victorian designer William Morris, famous for his wallpaper and textile patterns, was a leading force in which movement?

Arts and Crafts values ran through all his work, down to the Kelmscott Press he founded in 1891 to publish limited-edition books.

William Caxton brought the printing press to England in 1476 and produced which poem as his first known book there?

The Canterbury Tales came off the press he set up at Westminster after seeing the new printing industry at work in Cologne.

Which English satirical artist of Gin Lane and A Rake's Progress gave his name to a 1735 copyright law for engravers?

William Hogarth's law, the Engravers' Copyright Act, was the first copyright law to cover visual works and to recognise an individual artist's rights.

William Faulkner took the title of which 1929 novel about the Compson family from a soliloquy in Macbeth?

The Sound and the Fury had the working title Twilight, and it was the first of his books to feature the Compsons, who return in his later fiction.

Irish poet William Butler Yeats, winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, co-founded which Dublin theatre in 1904?

The Abbey was his project with Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge, and he ran it in its early years before serving two terms as an Irish senator.