99 Fun Facts About 80th Birthday

Which Japanese emperor issued the 'Humanity Declaration' renouncing his divinity on January 1, 1946?

Hirohito issued the rescript on January 1, 1946, at the urging of the American-led occupation; scholars still argue that its careful wording gave up far less divinity than the West assumed.

Which US president was in office throughout 1946?

Harry S. Truman closed 1946 with Proclamation 2714 on December 31, officially ending hostilities in World War II more than a year after Japan's surrender.

Where did Winston Churchill give his famous 'Iron Curtain' speech in March 1946?

Fulton, Missouri, is home to Westminster College; to honour the speech it later shipped a bombed Christopher Wren church from England and rebuilt it on campus as a Churchill memorial.

Which swimsuit was first modelled in Paris on July 5, 1946?

Louis Réard unveiled the bikini at the Piscine Molitor in Paris on July 5, 1946, naming it after Bikini Atoll, where the US had tested an atomic bomb four days earlier.

Which early electronic computer was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946?

ENIAC was built to compute artillery trajectories for the US Army; the six women who programmed it by plugging cables and setting switches were not introduced at the 1946 unveiling.

In 1946 Jackie Robinson starred for which Brooklyn Dodgers farm team, a year before his major-league debut?

Montreal Royals star Robinson led the International League with a .349 average in 1946, and the Dodgers promoted him to break the major-league colour line the following April.

Which Italian scooter brand built its first model in 1946?

Piaggio's Vespa, designed by aeronautical engineer Corradino D'Ascanio, was patented in April 1946 and entered production that year at Pontedera.

Which famous film festival was held for the first time in September 1946?

Cannes opened on September 20, 1946, in a former casino; it had been due to launch in September 1939, but the outbreak of war cancelled that first edition.

Which Christmas film starring James Stewart was released in December 1946?

It's a Wonderful Life lost money on release in December 1946; it became a holiday staple only after its copyright lapsed in 1974 and television stations could air it for free.

Which 1946 film about three returning servicemen swept the Oscars, winning seven including the top prize?

The Best Years of Our Lives won seven Oscars; Harold Russell, a veteran who had lost both hands, won Best Supporting Actor and a second, honorary Oscar for bringing hope to fellow veterans.

Which actress performed 'Put the Blame on Mame' in the 1946 film Gilda?

Rita Hayworth mimed 'Put the Blame on Mame' in the nightclub scene to the voice of Anita Ellis, who dubbed her singing in Gilda.

Which Hitchcock thriller starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman came out in 1946?

Notorious hides uranium ore in wine bottles; the plot point was written in 1945, before Hiroshima made uranium front-page news.

Which comedy duo first performed together at Atlantic City's 500 Club in July 1946?

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first worked as a team at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946, and split exactly ten years later in July 1956.

Which food-storage brand introduced its airtight plastic containers to the public in 1946?

Earl Tupper, who had worked at DuPont, launched Tupperware's airtight polyethylene containers in 1946; the home-party selling that made the brand famous came later.

Which fortune-telling toy was invented in 1946 by Albert C. Carter and Abe Bookman?

The Magic 8 Ball began in 1946 as Carter and Bookman's Syco-Seer; Brunswick Billiards asked for the black billiard-ball housing in 1950.

Which Japanese electronics company was founded in May 1946 as Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering?

Sony's later name blends the Latin sonus, 'sound', with 'sonny', American slang for a young boy; founders Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita had started the firm on May 7, 1946.

Mensa, founded in Oxford in 1946, takes its name from the Latin for which piece of furniture?

Table is 'mensa' in Latin; the name was chosen to suggest a round-table society whose members meet as equals, whatever their background.

Which UN agency was created on December 11, 1946, to bring relief to countries devastated by war?

UNICEF began as an emergency fund to feed and care for children in war-ravaged countries; in 1953 it became a permanent part of the UN, dropping 'emergency' from its name but keeping the acronym.

In which city did the UN General Assembly hold its very first session in January 1946?

London hosted that first session at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, on January 10, 1946, where delegates of 51 nations elected Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak as the Assembly's first president.

Which Norwegian became the first Secretary-General of the United Nations in February 1946?

Trygve Lie had just lost the vote to preside over the first General Assembly to Belgium's Paul-Henri Spaak; three weeks later he was chosen as the first Secretary-General instead.

Which country voted in a June 1946 referendum to abolish its monarchy and become a republic?

Italy's referendum of June 2, 1946 chose a republic by roughly 12.7 million votes to 10.7 million, and King Umberto II left for exile in Portugal.

Which Asian nation became fully independent on July 4, 1946?

The Philippines had been American territory since Spain ceded the islands in 1898; Washington handed over sovereignty on July 4, 1946, its own Independence Day.

Which Nazi leader swallowed cyanide in his cell hours before he was due to hang at Nuremberg in October 1946?

Hermann Göring cheated the hangman on the night of October 15, 1946; in 2005 a former American guard said he had unwittingly carried the poison in, hidden inside a fountain pen.

Which Argentine leader was elected president in February 1946?

Juan Perón won on February 24, 1946, after turning the American ambassador's campaign against him into his own slogan: 'Braden or Perón'.

Which king came to the throne of Thailand in June 1946 and reigned until 2016?

Bhumibol Adulyadej became king on June 9, 1946, after his elder brother Ananda Mahidol was found shot dead, and reigned 70 years until October 2016.

Which city, the home of Fiat, staged the first race run to Formula One rules in September 1946?

Turin's Valentino Park hosted the race on September 1, 1946, and Achille Varzi won it; it is widely counted as the first Grand Prix under the formula that officially began in 1947.

Santa Claus Land, opened in Indiana in 1946, bills itself as the first theme park, nine years ahead of which rival?

Disneyland opened in 1955; Santa Claus Land was renamed Holiday World in 1984, when it added Halloween and Fourth of July sections to its Christmas one.

Whose weekly BBC radio talk Letter from America began in March 1946 and ran for almost 58 years?

Alistair Cooke was commissioned for just 13 talks in March 1946; Letter from America ran until 2004, the longest-running speech radio programme with a single presenter.

Project Diana in January 1946 bounced radar waves off what?

On January 10, 1946, Project Diana at Camp Evans, New Jersey, bounced radar signals off the Moon and received the echo about 2.5 seconds later, founding radar astronomy.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and which other president were born in 1946?

Donald Trump was born on June 14, 1946, Bush on July 6 and Clinton on August 19: three future presidents inside ten weeks, though Trump took office 24 years after Clinton.

Which member of Queen was born on September 5, 1946?

Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara in Zanzibar on September 5, 1946; his family left for England in 1964, the year revolution swept the island.

Which country music legend was born on January 19, 1946?

Dolly Parton was born in a Sevier County cabin on January 19, 1946, the fourth of twelve children; by ten she was singing on Knoxville television, and at thirteen on the Grand Ole Opry.

Which Rocky cast member was born on July 6, 1946, the same day as George W. Bush?

Sylvester Stallone's birth went wrong: forceps severed a facial nerve, leaving the drooping lip and slurred speech that became his trademark.

Which of these directors was born on December 18, 1946?

Steven Spielberg was born in Cincinnati on December 18, 1946; USC's film school turned him down, and he enrolled at Cal State Long Beach instead.

Which of these actresses was born on January 5, 1946?

Diane Keaton was born Diane Hall in Los Angeles on January 5, 1946; another Diane Hall was already on Actors' Equity's books, so she took her mother's maiden name.

Which of the Gibb brothers was born on the Isle of Man in September 1946?

Barry Gibb, the eldest, was born on the Isle of Man on September 1, 1946; the family emigrated to Australia in 1958, where the brothers first found success as the Bee Gees.

Which of these rock drummers was born on August 23, 1946?

Keith Moon, drummer of The Who, was born in Wembley on August 23, 1946; he died in 1978 from an overdose of the pills prescribed to wean him off alcohol.

Which of these writers died in 1946?

H. G. Wells died on August 13, 1946, aged 79; five years earlier he had proposed his own epitaph: 'I told you so. You damned fools.'

Which of these stage musicals premiered in 1946?

Annie Get Your Gun went to Irving Berlin only after Jerome Kern, first hired to compose it, died suddenly in 1945; Berlin's score includes There's No Business Like Show Business.

Nat King Cole made 'The Christmas Song' famous in 1946, but which fellow singer co-wrote it?

Mel Tormé and Bob Wells wrote it in under an hour during a sweltering summer in 1945, after Wells jotted down wintry images to cool himself off.

In Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, who is Phileas Fogg's French valet?

Passepartout, hired that very day, is swept along when Fogg bets £20,000, half his fortune, that he can circle the globe in eighty days.

At which gentlemen's club does Phileas Fogg make his wager in Around the World in Eighty Days?

The Reform Club is where Fogg must reappear within eighty days; he reaches London believing he has lost by five minutes, but travelling east has gained him a day, and he wins with seconds to spare.

The 80-20 rule, that most effects come from a few causes, is named after which economist?

Vilfredo Pareto observed that about 80% of his country's land was owned by 20% of its people; quality engineer Joseph Juran later named the rule after him.

Which leader was confirmed as president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in March 1946?

Ho Chi Minh was appointed president by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's first National Assembly in 1946; by December he was calling the country to war against France.

Which of these singers was born on May 20, 1946?

Cher was born on May 20, 1946; at 16 she met Sonny Bono, who got her work singing backup for Phil Spector, including on the Ronettes' 'Be My Baby'.

Which US nuclear test series began in the Marshall Islands on July 1, 1946?

Operation Crossroads set two atomic bombs against a fleet of more than ninety target ships; its second shot, on July 25, was the first underwater nuclear test.

Which airline was founded in Hong Kong in September 1946 by an American and an Australian?

Cathay Pacific grew out of the freight runs of wartime pilots Roy Farrell and Sydney de Kantzow, who flew goods from Australia to China in a DC-3 nicknamed Betsy.

Which of these writers won the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Hermann Hesse, German-born, had been a Swiss citizen since 1923; by his own account, his books were partly suppressed by the Nazis and had still not been republished in Germany when the prize came.

The UN General Assembly met from October 1946 in a 1939 World's Fair building in which part of New York City?

Flushing, Queens, housed the Assembly in the fair's New York City Building, which served as a skating rink before and after its years as a world parliament.

Which of these British actors was born on 21 February 1946?

Alan Rickman's film debut only came in 1988 with Die Hard, after years on stage that included a Tony nomination as Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Which of these performers was born on March 12, 1946?

Liza Minnelli, daughter of Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, made her screen debut at three as the baby carried on in the last shot of her mother's In the Good Old Summertime.

Which of these singer-songwriters was born on Christmas Day 1946?

Jimmy Buffett was born on December 25, 1946, in Pascagoula, Mississippi; his fans are Parrotheads and 'Margaritaville' grew into a chain of restaurants and hotels.

Which of these Hall of Fame baseball players was born on May 18, 1946?

Reggie Jackson lived up to the name Mr. October in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, hitting three home runs on three swings to clinch the title for the Yankees.

Which of these Italian designers was born in Reggio Calabria in 1946?

Gianni Versace was born in Reggio Calabria on December 2, 1946; Andrew Cunanan shot him outside his Miami Beach mansion, Casa Casuarina, in July 1997.

Whose Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946) sold 500,000 copies in six months?

Benjamin Spock's book had sold some 50 million copies by his death in 1998; in 1924 he had rowed to Olympic gold in the US eight at the Paris Games.

Bobby Troup's 1946 song, first cut by the King Cole Trio, celebrates which US highway?

Troup wrote '(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66' on a 1946 drive west; his wife Cynthia suggested the title after he had considered US 40, and the King Cole Trio cut it that year.

'Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah' debuted in which Disney film, premiered in Atlanta in November 1946?

Song of the South drew criticism for its rosy picture of plantation life; Disney had never released it on home video in the United States when it left the film off Disney+ in 2019.

Which London airport opened to civil flights in 1946 and was renamed in 1966?

London Airport was renamed Heathrow in 1966 to avoid confusion with Gatwick and Stansted, the other airports then serving the capital.

Which of these actors was born on 19 April 1946?

Tim Curry was born in Grappenhall, Cheshire, on 19 April 1946; he joined the 1968 cast of Hair, and five years later broke through as Frank-N-Furter in Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror Show.

Which Italian confectioner was founded in Alba, Piedmont, in 1946?

Pietro Ferrero's first product, a paste called Giandujot, stretched scarce post-war cocoa with local hazelnuts; reworked, it went on sale as Nutella in 1964.

In standard French, the word for 80 literally means what?

Four twenties is the literal meaning of quatre-vingts, a relic of counting in twenties; in parts of French-speaking Switzerland the word is simply huitante.

Which member of Pink Floyd was born in 1946?

David Gilmour was born in Cambridge on March 6, 1946; Pink Floyd brought him in to cover for the increasingly erratic Syd Barrett, who left the band within months.

In the US, a spirit labelled 80 proof contains what percentage of alcohol by volume?

40% is right because US proof is simply twice the alcohol by volume; the term goes back to an old test in which spirit-soaked gunpowder that still ignited was 'proved'.

Which Dickens novel did David Lean film in 1946, starring John Mills and Valerie Hobson?

Great Expectations grew out of a stage adaptation written by Alec Guinness; Lean saw it, and Guinness repeated his role as Herbert Pocket beside John Mills's Pip.

Bugsy Siegel opened the casino of which Las Vegas resort on December 26, 1946?

The Flamingo was begun by Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson; when he ran out of money Siegel took the project over and opened its casino on December 26, 1946.

George Kennan sent his 'Long Telegram' on Soviet intentions in 1946 from which city?

Kennan, deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in Moscow, sent the 5,000-word Long Telegram on February 22, 1946; Soviet ambassador Nikolai Novikov answered with his own analysis from Washington that September.

The League of Nations held its final session on 18 April 1946 in which city?

The League's final Assembly met in Geneva in April 1946 to wind itself up, handing its assets, the Palais des Nations among them, to the United Nations.

Which staple food went on the ration in Britain for the first time in July 1946?

Bread was rationed from 21 July 1946 until July 1948, something Britain had avoided throughout the war itself; food rationing as a whole ended only in July 1954.

Louis Slotin died in May 1946 after an accident with a plutonium sphere known as what?

The demon core had already killed Harry Daghlian nine months earlier; after Slotin's death its plutonium was melted down in the summer of 1946 and reused.

Which Middle Eastern kingdom dates its independence from Britain to 25 May 1946?

Jordan dates its independence to 25 May 1946, when its parliament proclaimed Emir Abdullah king after a treaty with Britain ended the mandate.

Which 1946 novel follows Willie Stark, a Southern governor widely likened to Huey Long?

All the King's Men won the Pulitzer Prize; Robert Penn Warren, who had taught in Louisiana in Huey Long's day, insisted that Willie Stark was not simply a portrait of Long.

Which engine first appeared in 1946, in the second book of Wilbert Awdry's Railway Series?

Thomas joined the series in its second book; Awdry had begun the stories in 1942 to amuse his son Christopher, who was in bed with measles.

John Hersey's 'Hiroshima' filled the entire 31 August 1946 issue of which magazine?

The New Yorker gave its entire August 31, 1946 issue to Hersey's account of six survivors of the bomb, and copies sold out at newsstands within hours.

Enos Slaughter's 'Mad Dash' in Game 7 won the 1946 World Series for which team?

The St. Louis Cardinals won it when Slaughter, running on the pitch, scored all the way from first base on Harry Walker's eighth-inning hit, beating Boston's relay home.

The NBA was formed in 1949 when the National Basketball League merged with which league, founded in 1946?

The Basketball Association of America was founded at New York's Commodore Hotel on June 6, 1946, by arena owners with hockey teams; the Celtics, Knicks and Warriors were charter members.

Oliver Stone shares his birthday, 15 September 1946, with which Men in Black star?

Tommy Lee Jones was born in San Saba, Texas, on 15 September 1946; at Harvard his roommate was Al Gore, the future vice president.

Which of these fashion designers was born on New Year's Eve 1946?

Diane von Furstenberg was born in Brussels on 31 December 1946, less than two years after her mother came out of the Nazi camps, Auschwitz among them; her jersey wrap dress made her name in the 1970s.

Which element has atomic number 80?

Mercury is element 80, one place after gold; liquid at room temperature, it was long called quicksilver, 'living silver', for the way it runs.

The Eighty Years' War, ending in 1648, won which state its independence from Spain?

The Dutch Republic's independence was recognised by Spain in the Peace of Münster in 1648; Spain kept the Southern Netherlands, roughly today's Belgium.

On 8 March 1946, which aircraft became the first helicopter certified for civilian use?

The Bell 47 won the world's first commercial helicopter licence on 8 March 1946; under its Army name, the H-13 Sioux, it went on to fly medical evacuations in the Korean War.

In November 1946 Vincent Schaefer seeded clouds over the Berkshires using what?

Dry ice dropped from a plane over a Massachusetts mountain in November 1946 made snow fall; Schaefer had found the effect in a laboratory freezer, and his colleague Bernard Vonnegut soon showed that silver iodide worked too.

Which country marks 17 April 1946, when the last French soldier left, as Independence Day?

Syria's Evacuation Day marks 17 April 1946, when the last French troops left; the country had declared independence in 1941 and was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945.

On 1 August 1946, Hungary replaced the hyperinflated pengő with which currency?

The forint replaced the pengő on 1 August 1946 at a rate of 400 octillion (4 x 10^29) pengő to one forint, ending the worst hyperinflation ever recorded.

Which BBC radio programme was first broadcast on 7 October 1946?

Woman's Hour began on 7 October 1946 with a male presenter, Alan Ivimey, billed by the Radio Times as a specialist 'in writing for and talking to women'.

Which Cretan author published Zorba the Greek in 1946?

Nikos Kazantzakis, whom the Greek Church came close to excommunicating, lies on the Venetian walls of Heraklion under the epitaph 'I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.'

Which Eugene O'Neill play, set in Harry Hope's saloon, premiered in October 1946?

The Iceman Cometh, written in 1939, was held back until 1946 and managed only 136 performances; a 1956 revival with Jason Robards made its reputation.

Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, first heard in 1946, varies a theme by which composer?

Purcell's rondeau from Abdelazer supplied the tune; Britten wrote the piece for an educational film about the instruments of the orchestra.

Whose 1946 debut album, The Voice, is sometimes called the first concept album?

Frank Sinatra had been known as 'The Voice' since his bobby-soxer triumphs of 1943; the album sets eight songs to Axel Stordahl's spare string arrangements, one sound from start to finish.

Joe Louis's first title defence after the war, in June 1946, was a rematch with which challenger?

Billy Conn was knocked out in the eighth round on 19 June 1946; it was of this fight that Louis said, 'He can run, but he can't hide.'

Soichiro Honda funded his 1946 institute by selling his piston-ring firm to which company?

Toyota had been a customer for the piston rings his firm Tokai Seiki made; the sale gave Honda the money for the Honda Technical Research Institute, which became Honda Motor in 1948.

BBC TV returned on 7 June 1946 with the cartoon it had closed with in 1939, starring whom?

Mickey Mouse starred in Mickey's Gala Premier, the last programme shown before television shut down, without a closing announcement, on 1 September 1939.

Which boxer died in a car crash in North Carolina in June 1946?

Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight champion, crashed on 10 June 1946 after driving off in anger from a diner that had refused to serve him.

In July 1946 Rajah Vyner Brooke ceded which territory to Britain, ending White Rajah rule?

Sarawak had been ruled by the Brooke family since 1841; Vyner Brooke ceded it to the Crown on 1 July 1946, in part because he lacked the money to rebuild after the Japanese occupation.

Bernard Lynch made the first live ejection-seat test from a Meteor in 1946 for which firm?

Martin-Baker turned to escape systems after co-founder Valentine Baker was killed test-flying its MB 3 fighter in 1942; Lynch ejected from a Meteor at 320 mph on 24 July 1946.

Which Powell and Pressburger film opened the first Royal Film Performance in 1946?

A Matter of Life and Death began as a government request for a film to improve relations between the British and the Americans; the answer was a fantasy about an airman pleading for his life before a court in the next world.

Yvon Petra, the 1946 Wimbledon men's champion, was the last to win a final wearing what?

Long trousers were Petra's trademark in the 1946 final, which he won in five sets against Geoff Brown; only a few years earlier he had been a prisoner of war in Germany.

Assault, the 1946 Triple Crown winner, was bred at which vast Texas ranch?

King Ranch bred Assault, who split a hoof on a surveyor's stake as a youngster and limped at a walk; at a gallop the 'Clubfooted Comet' won the Derby by eight lengths.

Tandy's TRS-80 home computer took the '80' in its name from which microprocessor?

The Zilog Z80 ran at 1.77 MHz in the TRS-80 Model I of 1977, sold for about $600 in Radio Shack stores; its keyboard was infamous for 'bounce' that typed letters twice.

Damon Runyon, who died in 1946, had his ashes scattered over which Manhattan street?

Eddie Rickenbacker piloted the plane that scattered Runyon's ashes over Broadway, the street his stories celebrated; those stories later became the musical Guys and Dolls.