49 Fun Facts About Pegasus

Through his link with the Muses, Pegasus became a modern symbol of inspiration in which art?

Poetry: the 'poets' horse' image is mostly modern, because ancient myth tied Pegasus to the Muses only through a spring of theirs that he created.

Pegasus was born from the blood of which monster as she died?

Medusa was the only mortal one of the three Gorgon sisters, so she was the only one a hero could kill; Stheno and Euryale could not die.

Which god sired Pegasus, in his role as god of horses?

Poseidon ruled horses and the sea alike, and in one Arcadian myth he turned himself into a stallion to pursue the goddess Demeter.

Which brother of Pegasus, born at the same moment, has a name meaning 'golden sword'?

Chrysaor got the name because, the myth says, he sprang out already holding a golden blade; he went on to father three-bodied Geryon, whom Heracles killed.

An ancient derivation ties Pegasus's name to his watery birthplace, from a Greek word meaning what?

A well, or spring: the Greek word is pege, though this may be a folk etymology, since the name's ending points to a non-Greek origin.

The spring Hippocrene, sacred to the Muses, was said to have formed when Pegasus did what?

Struck his hoof on the ground: in one telling the Muses' mountain was swelling skyward in delight at their singing, and Pegasus kicked its summit to stop it.

The Hippocrene spring lies on which mountain?

Helicon was the Muses' home, so its horse-made spring was said to inspire anyone who drank from it; the name Hippocrene simply means 'horse's fountain'.

Bellerophon carried a sealed letter to King Iobates asking the king to do what?

Kill the bearer, it said, but Iobates had already feasted his guest for nine days and feared the taboo on killing one, so he sent him on a supposedly fatal monster hunt instead.

What did Athena give Bellerophon to help him tame Pegasus?

A golden bridle lay beside him when he woke: the seer Polyeidos had told him to sleep in Athena's temple, and the goddess handed it to him in a dream.

Bellerophon caught Pegasus drinking at the Pirene spring in which Greek city, the hero's home?

Corinth made the winged horse its civic badge and stamped him on its silver coins; Bellerophon was a grandson of its founder-king Sisyphus, the boulder-roller of myth.

Riding Pegasus, Bellerophon killed which fire-breathing monster?

The Chimera died, in one version, when he drove a lead-tipped spear down its throat and its own fiery breath melted the metal and choked it.

The fire-breathing beast Bellerophon slew is shown as a lion with a serpent's tail and which animal's head on its back?

A goat's head rose from the middle of its back, and in some ancient descriptions that head, not the lion's, was the one that breathed the fire.

After Bellerophon survived every deadly errand, Iobates of Lycia gave him his daughter's hand and what else?

Half his kingdom went with the bride in the oldest telling, because the king decided that a man who came through all that must be the child of a god.

What did Zeus send to make Pegasus throw Bellerophon when the hero tried to fly to Olympus?

A gadfly stung Pegasus so that he reared and threw his rider, and in the oldest telling the hero ends his days wandering the Aleian plain alone, shunning other people.

After reaching Olympus, Pegasus was given what job by Zeus?

Carrying his thunderbolts was the horse's work on Olympus, and for that faithful service Zeus later set him among the stars.

Which Greek poet of around 700 BC tells how Pegasus was born?

Hesiod's other famous poem, Works and Days, is farming advice aimed at his brother Perses, urging him to drop their quarrel and get back to work.

Which defeated ruler surrendered to the British aboard HMS Bellerophon, a warship named after Pegasus's rider?

Napoleon had fled to the port of Rochefort hoping to sail for America, but the Royal Navy had it blockaded, so he gave himself up to the ship's captain instead.

Bellerophon's grandson Glaucus tells the hero's story to an enemy warrior in which epic poem?

The Iliad has Glaucus tell it to his Greek enemy Diomedes, and when the pair find their grandfathers were friends they swap armour, gold for bronze, instead of fighting.

Pegasus is one of the 48 constellations catalogued by which 2nd-century astronomer?

Ptolemy listed them in his Almagest around AD 150, and all but one are still in official use today: only the great ship Argo was later broken up, into three smaller constellations.

The constellation Pegasus traditionally shows only which part of the winged horse?

The front half is all the sky shows, and one ancient telling said the figure was not Pegasus at all but Melanippe, a centaur's daughter who was turned into a mare.

The Great Square of Pegasus is completed by a star that officially belongs to which constellation?

Andromeda now owns the star Alpheratz outright, but the ancient Greeks counted it twice, as both the horse's navel and the top of the chained princess's head.

Maximillion Pegasus, a game inventor whose left eye is a magical ancient relic, appears in which anime?

Yu-Gi-Oh makes him the creator of Duel Monsters, the card game the whole series turns on, which he modelled on a mysterious game played in ancient Egypt.

The Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine, with four swivelling nozzles, lets which warplane take off straight up?

The Harrier needed no runway, and that was the point: in wartime it was meant to leave its vulnerable airfields and fight from rough strips and hidden clearings.

51 Pegasi b, discovered in 1995, was the first exoplanet found orbiting what?

A Sun-like star should not, by the theories of 1995, have had a giant planet circling it every four days, far inside Mercury's distance, so astronomers had to rethink how planets form.

Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who discovered 51 Pegasi b, shared which honour in 2019?

The Nobel Prize in Physics was split that year: half went to the cosmologist James Peebles and the pair shared the rest, for a planet they spotted by the tiny wobble it gives its star.

51 Pegasi b is officially Dimidium, Latin for 'half', for having about half the mass of which planet?

Jupiter is the yardstick, and astronomers did not pick the name: a Swiss astronomy club proposed it, and it won a worldwide public vote that drew over half a million votes in 2015.

The angels at the start of which Christmas film are based on images of Stephan's Quintet, a galaxy group in Pegasus?

It's a Wonderful Life used it for heaven, yet the quintet is partly an illusion: only four of the galaxies truly travel together, and the fifth sits far in the foreground, much closer to Earth.

In 2022, a huge mosaic of Stephan's Quintet in Pegasus was among the first colour images from which space telescope?

James Webb's mosaic, its largest image at the time, caught huge shock waves spreading through the group as one of the galaxies smashes its way through the others.

Einstein's Cross, in Pegasus, is a quasar whose light has been split into four images by what?

Gravitational lensing by a galaxy works because mass bends light, as general relativity predicted, and here the lens lies 400 million light-years away, twenty times nearer than the quasar behind it.

British airborne troops, whose emblem shows Bellerophon riding Pegasus, wear berets of which colour?

Maroon berets first went into action in North Africa in late 1942, and the German troops who fought the paratroops there gave them a nickname that stuck, the Red Devils.

Pegasus Bridge, seized by British troops in the first minutes of D-Day, crosses which waterway?

The Caen Canal crossing was renamed within weeks for the winged-horse badge on the sleeves of the men who took it, and the original span now rests in a museum park beside its 1994 replacement.

How did the British soldiers who seized Pegasus Bridge minutes into D-Day arrive without a sound?

In wooden gliders, cast off from their tow planes near the coast, they crash-landed within yards of the bridge just after midnight and took it intact in about ten minutes.

Which oil brand took a red winged horse as its trademark in the 1930s?

Mobil's affiliate Magnolia Petroleum set a revolving neon Pegasus on its Dallas tower in 1934, and the city grew so fond of it that when rust brought it down, a rebuilt copy was lit at the start of 2000.

Which Hollywood studio's logo features Pegasus flying across the screen?

TriStar Pictures was launched in 1982 by three partners, the film studio Columbia, the pay-TV channel HBO and the broadcaster CBS, but CBS sold its share only three years later.

A Pegasus copied from a 1537 coin attributed to Benvenuto Cellini flies on the flag of which Italian region?

Tuscany's wartime resistance committee adopted the horse as a badge of freedom under German occupation, and the regional government put it on its banner in 1975.

Why did the computer maker Asus keep only the last four letters of Pegasus as its name?

To top alphabetical lists, a company representative explained in 2003, and when Asus later spun off its factory arm, that firm took the start of the word instead: Pegatron.

Pegasus, the notorious phone spyware, was created by a company based in which country?

Israel's NSO Group sells it to governments, and it was exposed in 2016 when the activist Ahmed Mansoor forwarded a suspicious link to researchers instead of tapping it, which led Apple to patch the flaws within about ten days.

When Florida's Pegasus World Cup horse race was first run in 2017, it took which world title from the Dubai World Cup?

Richest race was a title the owners paid for themselves: the $12 million purse came from twelve backers who each put up $1 million for a place in the starting gate.

Despite its Greek name, the low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines is based in which country?

Turkey knew it as a holiday charter airline from 1990, and it only became a budget scheduled airline in 2005, after a new owner bought it and changed course.

The Pegasus rocket, first flown in 1990, was unusual for being launched how?

Dropped from an aircraft in flight, it fell for five seconds from about 40,000 feet before its motor lit, so the reusable carrier plane did the work of a costly first-stage booster.

Which sportswear company launched its Pegasus running shoe in 1983?

Nike pitched it as the shoe for every runner, with a wedge of air under the heel, and chose the name to suggest movement, quickness and the allure of flying.

Greek myth gave Pegasus to Bellerophon, but the 1981 film Clash of the Titans gives him to which hero?

Perseus must capture and tame him first, the last of the great winged horses, in a film whose monsters were the final work of the stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen.

In Fantasia (1940), pegasi appear in the segment set to which composer's Pastoral Symphony?

Beethoven wrote it as a portrait of a day in the country, but Disney moved the music into a world of Greek myth, where a black winged stallion and his white mate glide over a lake with their foals.

In Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (2005), the winged horse is revealed to be Princess Annika's what?

Her sister Brietta had been turned into a flying horse by the wizard Wenlock for refusing to marry him, which is why the king and queen kept such a close watch on Annika.

A racehorse named Fusaichi Pegasus won which race in 2000?

The Kentucky Derby had not gone to the favourite since 1979 until he won it at odds of 2-1, and Louisville's race-week Pegasus Parade, first held in 1956, had a namesake to cheer at last.

In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books, Percy's pegasus friend is called what?

Blackjack insists on calling Percy 'boss', and in 2009 the author posted a mock interview in which the black-winged steed takes the credit for landing two of the series' book covers.

Which science-fiction series is set in the Pegasus galaxy, where aliens called the Wraith feed on human life?

Stargate Atlantis puts the legendary lost city not on Earth but in another galaxy, as the abandoned home of an advanced race called the Ancients, and sends a team from Earth to move in.

A silver Pegasus on a blue shield is the emblem of London's Inner Temple, a centuries-old society of which profession?

Barristers of the Inn cannot be sure where it came from, but the commonly held view traces it to the Christmas revels of 1561, when Robert Dudley played the patron of a make-believe order of the Pegasus.

In Aristophanes' comedy Peace, a parody of Bellerophon's ride on Pegasus has the hero fly to the gods on a giant what?

A dung beetle, fattened up by his disgusted slaves, carries Trygaeus to Olympus to complain about the war, only for him to find that the gods have packed up and left.