44 Fun Facts About Unicorn

In the Harry Potter books, which part of a unicorn does Ollivander use as a wand core?

A tail hair from a unicorn is one of Ollivander's three wand cores, with phoenix feather and dragon heartstring; he rates such wands the most faithful and the hardest to turn to the Dark Arts.

What name is given to a unicorn's horn and the substance it was thought to be made of?

Alicorn was the name for both the unicorn's horn and its supposed substance; it was believed to purify poisoned water, and cups made of it were gifts for kings.

In 1638 the physician Ole Worm showed that Europe's prized 'unicorn horns' were really what?

Narwhal tusks were what Ole Worm found the 'unicorn horns' to be in 1638; the powerful had long prized cups of the 'horn' as protection against poisoned drinks.

Which ancient Greek writer gave the earliest description of the unicorn, in a book about India?

Ctesias of Cnidus described India's swift one-horned wild asses in his Indica of about 400 BC, relying on travellers' tales he heard while serving as a physician at the Persian court.

Which Roman writer described a one-horned beast with a stag's head, elephant's feet and boar's tail?

Pliny the Elder listed the beast among the real animals of India in his Natural History, gave it a deep bellow and a black horn two cubits long, and added that it could not be taken alive.

Which traveller described 'unicorns' as ugly, mud-wallowing brutes 'scarcely smaller than elephants'?

Marco Polo, writing of Sumatra, said its 'unicorns' were 'not at all such as we describe them' and loved to wallow in mud and mire.

What is the Hebrew Bible word that the King James Version translated as 'unicorn'?

Re'em is the Hebrew word the King James Version rendered 'unicorn' nine times, from Numbers 23:22 to Isaiah 34:7, following the Greek Septuagint's 'one-horned' reading.

In Harry Potter, unicorn foals are born gold and turn which colour before growing up white?

Silver comes between the gold of a newborn and the white of a grown unicorn; Hagrid tells his class that foals are more trusting than adults, which prefer a woman's touch, and 'don't mind boys so much'.

The royal arms of the United Kingdom are supported by a unicorn and what other animal?

A lion, England's royal beast, replaced one of the two unicorns that had held up the Scottish royal arms when James VI also became James I of England in 1603, pairing two animals that legend made enemies.

What hangs from the collar of the unicorn on the British royal coat of arms?

A gold chain runs from its crown-shaped collar, between the forelegs and over the back. Nobody is sure why, but the usual reading is that only a king could tame the untameable beast.

Which Scottish king introduced the coin called the unicorn in 1484?

James III introduced the unicorn, a coin showing the beast supporting the royal shield, in about 1484; James IV and James V continued the issue.

The seven late-Gothic tapestries called The Hunt of the Unicorn hang in which museum?

The Cloisters, New York, received them from John D. Rockefeller Jr., who paid about a million dollars in 1922 and hung them in a room of his own home until the museum was built.

Where were The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries rediscovered in the 1850s?

In a barn, where a peasant was reportedly using the 'old curtains' to cover vegetables; they had been looted from the La Rochefoucauld château during the French Revolution.

The 'Lady and the Unicorn' tapestries in Paris are usually read as an allegory of what?

The five senses fill five of the six hangings: touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. The sixth, captioned 'À mon seul désir', has no agreed meaning, and the Musée de Cluny itself floats courtly love or free will.

Recreations of The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries were woven for which Scottish royal residence?

Stirling Castle got the seven hangings because James V's inventories listed unicorn tapestries of his own; weavers took more than a decade to copy the originals by hand.

Which Renaissance artist's notebooks make the unicorn a symbol of intemperance?

Leonardo da Vinci's bestiary notes file the unicorn under intemperance: unable to control itself, it 'forgets its ferocity and wildness' and lets hunters take it.

The Arctic whale's famous spiral tusk is actually what?

An overgrown left canine, it pierces the upper lip and spirals out to around 3 metres, mostly in males; packed with nerve endings, it may help the whale sense how salty the water is.

What is the scientific name of the tusked Arctic whale?

Monodon monoceros ends in the Greek for 'one horn', the name classical writers gave the unicorn itself, so the whale's scientific label all but calls it a sea unicorn.

Elasmotherium, the extinct 'Siberian unicorn', was what kind of animal?

A giant rhinoceros of the Eurasian steppe, Elasmotherium lived until at least 39,000 years ago, alongside modern humans. No horn has ever been found: the 'unicorn' rests on a bony dome on its skull.

Which children's author wrote 'The Unicorn', the Irish Rovers' 1968 hit about Noah's ark?

Shel Silverstein, a Chicago cartoonist, wrote what sounds like an old Irish folk song; in it Noah sails without the unicorns, which is why nobody has seen one since.

The qilin, sometimes called the Chinese unicorn, is said to appear at the arrival or death of what?

The qilin is said to appear with the arrival or passing of a sage or great ruler; legend has one heralding the birth of Confucius in the 6th century BC.

The karkadann of Persian and Arabic legend was originally based on which real animal?

Karkadann is the Persian and Arabic word for rhinoceros; the legend grew from the one-horned Indian rhinoceros, which al-Biruni described in the 11th century.

A unicorn-like creature is the most common image on which Bronze Age civilisation's seals?

Indus Valley seals show a bull-like beast with one arching horn more often than any other image, and single-horned clay figurines suggest it was no two-horned bull drawn side-on.

In business, a 'unicorn' is a private startup valued at more than how much?

A unicorn is a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion, a threshold so rare in 2013 that the mythical beast seemed apt; companies past $10 billion are called decacorns.

In the Tintin adventure 'The Secret of the Unicorn', what is the Unicorn?

A sailing ship once commanded by Captain Haddock's ancestor Sir Francis, the Unicorn survives as three identical models, each hiding a scrap of parchment that points to the pirate Red Rackham's treasure.

Who wrote the 1968 novel The Last Unicorn?

Peter S. Beagle published The Last Unicorn in 1968; the novel has sold millions of copies and he also wrote the screenplay for its 1982 animated film.

In The Last Unicorn, what creature drove all the other unicorns into the sea?

The Red Bull, serving King Haggard, drove all the other unicorns into the sea; a butterfly tells the last unicorn that it 'ran close behind them'.

Which studio duo directed the 1982 animated film of The Last Unicorn?

Rankin/Bass directed it but had it drawn in Japan by Topcraft, the studio Hayao Miyazaki then hired for Nausicaä, and its core animators went on to form Studio Ghibli.

What is the name of the bumbling magician who travels with the unicorn in The Last Unicorn?

Schmendrick is a Yiddish word for a hapless fool, which suits a magician whose spells rarely work; he joins the unicorn after freeing her from Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival.

In Ridley Scott's 1985 film Legend, what does the Lord of Darkness want from the unicorns?

Their horns are what Darkness sends his goblins to cut off, so that night will never end; the moment the stallion loses his, winter falls across the world.

In Despicable Me 3, what animal is Agnes's supposed unicorn really?

Agnes's 'unicorn' is really a one-horned goat she finds in the woods of Freedonia; she names him Lucky and keeps him even after Gru breaks the news.

Which toy company launched My Little Pony in the early 1980s?

Hasbro shrank its hard-plastic My Pretty Pony, which could wiggle its ears and swish its tail, into six small colourful ponies; unicorns soon followed.

Which main pony in the 2021 film My Little Pony: A New Generation is a unicorn?

Izzy Moonbow strolls out of Bridlewood forest into the earth-pony town of Maretime Bay and sends the locals fleeing, because the three pony kinds now live apart in fear of one another.

Which coffee chain sold a colour-changing 'Unicorn' blended drink for five days in April 2017?

Starbucks sold the Unicorn Frappuccino from 19 to 23 April 2017: it started purple and sweet, turned pink and tart when stirred, and had no coffee in it at all.

In James Thurber's fable 'The Unicorn in the Garden', who ends up locked in an institution?

The wife calls the police and a psychiatrist to have her husband committed for seeing a unicorn, but he calmly tells them the unicorn is a mythical beast, so she is the one taken away.

In Through the Looking-Glass, what does the Unicorn call Alice on first seeing her?

Lewis Carroll's Unicorn, meeting Alice, exclaims 'I always thought they were fabulous monsters!' and offers to believe in her if she believes in him.

Which royal family had a throne made from 'unicorn horn'?

The Danish kings were crowned until 1840 on a chair at Rosenborg Castle, built for Frederick III from spiral tusks sold as unicorn horn in imitation of King Solomon's ivory throne in the Bible.

Which My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic unicorn was crowned a princess in season three?

Twilight Sparkle gained wings and a crown in the 2013 finale 'Magical Mystery Cure'; the news broke weeks early and worried many adult fans, who liked her as the bookish unicorn they identified with.

In Scottish towns, a carved unicorn often tops which traditional monument?

The market cross, or mercat cross, was a town's badge of its right to trade, and the unicorn on top, as at Prestonpans, put the king's own beast over the marketplace.

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Decius says hunters can trick a unicorn using what?

A tree: the hunter stood in front of one, goaded the unicorn into charging and stepped aside, leaving the horn stuck fast in the trunk. Decius says unicorns 'may be betray'd with trees'.

Which extinct animal do scholars think the King James Bible's 'unicorn' really was?

The Hebrew word behind 'unicorn' named the aurochs, the giant wild ox of the ancient Near East, shown in profile with one visible horn in Mesopotamian art; the last aurochs died in 1627.

Which forest animal of Vietnam and Laos, unknown to science until 1992, is nicknamed the 'Asian unicorn'?

The saola has two long parallel horns, not one, and is very rarely seen: science knew nothing of it until a skull turned up in a hunter's home in 1992.

In which 1982 film does the policeman Gaff leave an origami unicorn for Deckard?

In Blade Runner, Gaff's origami unicorn hints that Deckard's unicorn dream is an implanted memory; the dream sequence appears in the 1992 Director's Cut.

Which ancient Greek writer listed the oryx and the 'Indian ass' as one-horned animals?

Aristotle sorted them by their feet in his History of Animals: the Indian ass had one horn and a solid hoof, the oryx one horn and a cloven hoof. The ass he most likely took from an earlier writer's tales of India.