99 Fun Facts About Entertainment

Which film won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture, at the 1929 ceremony?

Wings, William Wellman's 1927 aviation war film, took the inaugural Outstanding Picture award at the first ceremony in May 1929, and was the only fully silent film to win the category.

Which 1937 release was the first cel-animated feature film produced in the United States?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in December 1937 as Walt Disney's first animated feature; its success set the pattern of re-releasing Disney features to theatres every few years.

Who hosted NBC's The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992?

Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show for nearly 30 years, taking over from Jack Paar in October 1962 and signing off in May 1992.

Which song opened MTV's broadcast on its first day in 1981?

Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles was the first video MTV aired when it launched on 1 August 1981, a pointed choice for a music-video channel.

Which album is the best-selling album of all time?

Thriller, Michael Jackson's 1982 album, is the best-selling album ever with estimated worldwide sales above 65 million; Jackson won a record eight Grammys in 1984 on the back of it.

Which show signed off in 1983 with the most-watched US series finale ever?

M*A*S*H's finale, Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, drew about 106 million viewers on 28 February 1983, a record for any US broadcast until Super Bowl XLIV in 2010.

Smells Like Teen Spirit was the lead single from which 1991 Nirvana album?

Nevermind was Nirvana's second album and major-label debut on DGC Records, with the song as its opening track.

Which 1995 release was the first feature-length computer-animated film?

Toy Story, released by Pixar and Disney in November 1995, was the first fully computer-animated feature; director John Lasseter received a Special Achievement Academy Award in 1996 for it.

Which series holds the record as the longest-running American scripted primetime television show?

The Simpsons, on Fox since December 1989, has passed 35 seasons and 750 episodes, more than any other American scripted primetime series; Gunsmoke managed 20 seasons from 1955.

Stranger Things takes place in the fictional town of Hawkins, in which state?

Hawkins is a fictional town in Indiana; the 1980s-set series was shot mainly around Atlanta, with Jackson, Georgia standing in for the town's main street.

Which film was the first non-English-language winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture?

Parasite, Bong Joon-ho's Korean thriller, won Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards in February 2020, also taking Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature Film.

EGOT stands for four awards: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and which fourth?

The Tony Award, for Broadway theatre, completes the set covering television, music, film and stage; composer Richard Rodgers was the first to collect all four, in 1962.

Bohemian Rhapsody was the lead single from which Queen album?

Bohemian Rhapsody, written by Freddie Mercury, was released in October 1975 as the lead single from A Night at the Opera, Queen's fourth studio album.

Who racked up five Best Director nominations without ever winning one?

Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for Rebecca, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Rear Window and Psycho but never won; Rebecca took Best Picture in 1941, and he received only the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1968.

How many Academy Awards did Titanic (1997) win, tying the all-time record?

Titanic won 11 Academy Awards in March 1998, including Best Picture and Best Director, matching Ben-Hur's 1959 record; it was also the first film to gross a billion dollars worldwide.

Adjusted for inflation, which 1939 film remains the highest-grossing movie in history?

Gone with the Wind, released in December 1939, tops inflation-adjusted box-office lists; producer David O. Selznick's search for Scarlett O'Hara saw some 1,400 women interviewed before Vivien Leigh was cast.

James Cameron's Avatar is set on which lush habitable moon?

Pandora is a moon of the gas giant Polyphemus in the Alpha Centauri system; Cameron wrote an 80-page treatment in 1994 but waited more than a decade for effects technology to catch up.

The Beatles' first live US TV performance in 1964, seen by 73 million, was on which programme?

The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964 gave the Beatles their first live US television audience, a record 73 million viewers; they appeared again on the following two Sunday shows.

What was the working title of the sitcom that became Friends?

Insomnia Cafe was the title on David Crane and Marta Kauffman's original 1993 pitch; later working titles included Six of One and Friends Like Us before NBC settled on Friends.

Game of Thrones won how many Primetime Emmy Awards, the most for any drama series?

Game of Thrones won 59 Primetime Emmys across its 73 episodes, including Outstanding Drama Series in 2015, 2016, 2018 and 2019, the most ever for a drama series.

Who co-created the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, 'a show about nothing', with Jerry Seinfeld?

Larry David co-created a show whose 180 episodes ran on NBC from 1989 to 1998, mostly around Jerry's Upper West Side apartment.

How many nominations did Hamilton collect at the 2016 Tony Awards, a record?

Hamilton received 16 nominations at the 2016 Tonys, beating the 15 held by The Producers and Billy Elliot; it won 11 and also took the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Which musical is the longest-running show in Broadway history and the first to reach 10,000 performances?

Phantom of the Opera hit 10,000 performances on 11 February 2012; Michael Crawford originated the title role and won both the Olivier and the Tony.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats is based on a 1939 poetry collection by which writer?

T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939) supplied the Jellicle cats and most of the lyrics; his widow Valerie gave Lloyd Webber permission and the unpublished Grizabella fragment.

Paramount bought the film rights to The Godfather novel for how much before it became a bestseller?

$80,000 was Paramount's price for the film rights to Mario Puzo's unfinished manuscript, optioned in 1967 for $12,500; the novel went on to sell millions before the 1972 film.

Which actress holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations of any performer, with 21?

Meryl Streep won her first Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer after persuading the filmmakers to rewrite her character's courtroom testimony.

Who holds the record for the most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22?

Walt Disney won 22 competitive Academy Awards from 59 nominations, plus honorary awards including one in 1932 for creating Mickey Mouse, whom he voiced himself until 1947.

Which actress won a record four Academy Awards for Best Actress?

Katharine Hepburn won for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond; the first came for only her third film, in 1933, and nobody else has more than three.

How many players compete in the deadly children's games of Netflix's Squid Game?

456 players enter the games, and the prize grows by 100 million won per death to 45.6 billion won; Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote the story in 2009 but found no backer until Netflix in 2019.

Breaking Bad is set and was filmed in which city?

Albuquerque, New Mexico, is both the setting and the filming location; Vince Gilligan originally wrote the show for Riverside, California but moved it for New Mexico's film tax rebate.

I Love Lucy was the first US show to do what?

It topped the US ratings in four of its six seasons, then walked away while still on top.

Pac-Man designer Toru Iwatani has said the character's shape was inspired by what?

A pizza with a slice removed, Iwatani has said, gave Pac-Man his shape; he wanted a 1980 game that would appeal to women as much as men in arcades full of war and sports games.

Tetris was created in the mid-1980s by a software engineer from which country?

The Soviet Union's Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris in 1984 at the Academy of Sciences' Computer Centre in Moscow on an Elektronika 60; floppy copies spread freely before it reached the West.

The Oprah Winfrey Show was broadcast for 25 years from which city?

Chicago was the base: Winfrey took over the local AM Chicago in 1984, and the renamed Oprah Winfrey Show went national from the city in September 1986, later from her own Harpo Studios.

Which TV personality created Jeopardy!?

Merv Griffin created Jeopardy! in 1964 after his wife Julann suggested giving contestants the answers, and wrote its Think! theme; Art Fleming hosted first and Alex Trebek took over the syndicated show in 1984.

Sesame Street premiered on US public television in which year?

Sesame Street premiered on 10 November 1969 on National Educational Television, the forerunner of PBS; first-run episodes moved to HBO in 2016 and to Netflix in 2025.

Which 2012 song became the first YouTube video to reach one billion views?

Gangnam Style passed one billion views on 21 December 2012; Psy's hit peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped charts in more than 30 countries.

Which song became the first YouTube video to pass 10 billion views, in 2022?

Baby Shark by Pinkfong passed 10 billion views in January 2022, having already overtaken Despacito as YouTube's most-viewed video in November 2020; the tune is a campfire song decades older than the video.

Which Canadian pop star joined Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee on the 2017 remix of 'Despacito'?

Justin Bieber sang in both English and Spanish on the April 2017 remix, which spent 16 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped charts in 47 countries.

The Sound of Music (1965) is set in which Austrian city?

Salzburg, where the von Trapps lived, supplied locations including Mirabell Gardens and Nonnberg Abbey; the film retells Maria von Trapp's memoir, ending with the family's escape after the 1938 Anschluss.

Who directed Barbie (2023), co-writing it with her husband Noah Baumbach?

Greta Gerwig directed and co-wrote Barbie, which became 2023's highest-grossing film; Amy Schumer and then Anne Hathaway had been attached before the rights moved to Warner Bros. and Margot Robbie was cast.

Who won the first season of American Idol in 2002?

Kelly Clarkson beat Justin Guarini in the September 2002 final; the show grew out of Britain's Pop Idol and let viewers pick the winner by phone.

Survivor started life as Expedition Robinson, a 1997 show from which country?

Sweden's Expedition Robinson, created by Charlie Parsons, premiered in 1997; the US show followed on CBS in 2000 with a $1 million prize.

Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo in which state?

Mississippi: Elvis was born in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo on 8 January 1935; the family moved to Memphis when he was 13, and he began recording at Sun Records with Sam Phillips in 1954.

Which 2019 film was the highest-grossing ever until a 2021 Chinese re-release of Avatar overtook it?

Avengers: Endgame, the 22nd MCU film, picks up after Thanos erased half of all life.

George Lucas conceived Star Wars as a science-fiction film in the vein of which classic serial hero?

Flash Gordon was the model; Lucas tried to buy the rights and, refused, wrote his own after finishing American Graffiti in 1973. The film opened in 1977 and was later retitled Episode IV - A New Hope.

Adele's 21 spent how many weeks atop the Billboard 200, a record for a female artist?

24 weeks at No. 1 made 21 the longest-running chart-topper by a woman; it became the best-selling album of the 21st century on the strength of Rolling in the Deep and Someone like You.

The Doctor's time machine in Doctor Who, the TARDIS, is disguised as what?

A British police box, the blue street kiosk common in 1960s London, is the TARDIS's fixed disguise because its chameleon circuit broke; TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

Which two producers founded Eon Productions in 1961 and launched James Bond with Dr. No?

Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli and Harry Saltzman formed Eon in 1961 and produced Dr. No in 1962 with Sean Connery; Saltzman sold his stake in 1975, and Broccoli's heirs Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli later ran the company.

Which Estes Park, Colorado, landmark inspired Stephen King's The Shining?

The Stanley Hotel, where King and his wife stayed in Room 217 in 1974 as the only guests on the last night of the season, became the Overlook; the 1997 TV miniseries filmed on site.

The mechanical shark in Jaws was nicknamed 'Bruce' after Spielberg's what?

Lawyer Bruce Ramer, Spielberg's attorney, lent the shark his name; three pneumatic props were built and broke down so often that Spielberg kept the shark off screen, which made the film scarier.

The US version of The Office is set at a Dunder Mifflin branch in which city?

Scranton is real: John Krasinski visited the Pennsylvania city before filming and interviewed employees at actual paper companies.

Cheers bar owner Sam Malone was a former relief pitcher for which team?

Sam 'Mayday' Malone pitched in relief for the Boston Red Sox before drinking ended his career; Ted Danson's recovering alcoholic running a bar was a contradiction the show mined for eleven seasons.

How does the final scene of The Sopranos famously end?

The June 2007 finale cuts to black mid-scene as Tony looks up in Holsten's diner; many viewers assumed their cable had failed, and David Chase left Tony's fate unresolved.

What was the flight number of the Oceanic Airlines plane that crashes in Lost?

Oceanic Flight 815 was flying from Sydney to Los Angeles on 22 September 2004 when it came down; its digits 8 and 15 belong to the show's recurring sequence 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.

David Simon's The Wire is set and was produced in which US city?

Baltimore: Simon had spent years as a police reporter at The Baltimore Sun, and each season examines a different institution in the city, from the port to the schools.

Agent Dale Cooper investigates whose murder in Twin Peaks?

Laura Palmer's body, found wrapped in plastic, opens the April 1990 pilot; the question of who killed her became a national guessing game until the answer came in season two.

Which dairy farmer hosted the first festival at Worthy Farm in 1970, the seed of Glastonbury?

Michael Eavis staged the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival on 19 September 1970, the day after Jimi Hendrix died; 1,500 people paid £1, which included free milk from the farm.

Michael Jackson first performed the moonwalk on TV in 1983 during which song?

Billie Jean, an Epic release, was the only non-Motown song performed on the Motown 25 special, taped in March 1983 and aired that May; the moonwalk came midway through it.

ABBA won Eurovision with 'Waterloo' in 1974 in which English seaside town?

Brighton's Dome hosted the 6 April 1974 contest, staged by the BBC after two-time winner Luxembourg declined to host again; ABBA's win launched the Swedish quartet to worldwide fame.

Live Aid in 1985 was staged at Wembley Stadium and a stadium in which US city?

Philadelphia's JFK Stadium hosted the American half on 13 July 1985; billed as the 'global jukebox', the twin concerts were watched by an estimated 1.9 billion people in about 150 countries.

Who directed and produced the original Super Mario Bros. for Nintendo in 1985?

Shigeru Miyamoto designed it with Takashi Tezuka as a successor to the 1983 arcade game Mario Bros., with music by Koji Kondo; it launched in Japan in September 1985 and anchored the NES.

Which title is the best-selling video game of all time?

Minecraft, Markus Persson's block-building sandbox first released in full in 2011, passed 300 million copies sold in 2023; Microsoft bought its studio Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014.

The Legend of Zelda games take place mainly in which fantasy kingdom?

Hyrule is the kingdom Link fights to save from Ganon, who covets the wish-granting Triforce; Zelda is its princess, not the playable character.

Which 1978 Taito arcade hit was designed by Tomohiro Nishikado?

Space Invaders took Nishikado a year, including its custom hardware; he drew on Breakout, The War of the Worlds and Star Wars, and kept the invaders' speed-up as they died, originally a processor quirk.

Who directed the Broadway musical The Lion King, with its animal costumes and giant puppets?

Julie Taymor directed and designed the costumes and masks; in 1998 she became the first woman to win the Tony for directing a musical, and the show went on to become Broadway's highest-grossing production.

The musical Wicked is loosely based on a 1995 novel by which author?

Gregory Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West retells Oz from the witch's side; composer Stephen Schwartz heard about it on holiday in Hawaii and saw its stage potential.

Who is the youngest person ever to win a competitive Academy Award, aged ten?

Tatum O'Neal won Best Supporting Actress in April 1974, aged 10, for Paper Moon, in which she starred opposite her real father, Ryan O'Neal.

Anthony Hopkins became the oldest acting Oscar winner in 2021 for which film?

The Father, in which Hopkins plays a man with dementia, won him Best Actor at 83; he did not attend the ceremony, which had been reordered so the award closed the night in expectation of a Chadwick Boseman win.

Which film actually won Best Picture in 2017 after La La Land was wrongly announced?

Moonlight, Barry Jenkins's film, won after Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway had been handed a duplicate Best Actress envelope naming Emma Stone for La La Land, whose producers were mid-speech when the error surfaced.

Will Wright was inspired to create The Sims after losing his home in which 1991 disaster?

The Oakland firestorm of October 1991 destroyed Wright's house; rebuilding from scratch gave him the idea of a 'virtual doll house' where players manage everyday needs, released in 2000.

In E.T., Elliott lures the alien home with a trail of which candy?

Reese's Pieces got the part after Mars declined to let M&M's be used; Hershey agreed, and sales of the candy reportedly jumped sharply after the film's 1982 release.

Which 1974 release was the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture?

The Godfather Part II took Best Picture in April 1975; Robert De Niro won Best Supporting Actor as the young Vito Corleone, the role Marlon Brando had won Best Actor for two years earlier.

Which 2003 film won every one of its 11 Oscar nominations, the biggest clean sweep ever?

The Return of the King went 11 for 11 at the February 2004 ceremony, beating the nine-for-nine sweeps of Gigi and The Last Emperor, and was the first fantasy film to win Best Picture.

Which 2008 film was the first in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, distributed by Paramount?

Iron Man was a gamble on Robert Downey Jr., distributed by Paramount; a post-credits Nick Fury cameo teased the Avengers.

Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for playing which character?

The Joker made Ledger only the second actor to win posthumously, after Peter Finch for Network, and the first comic-book movie actor to win an acting Oscar.

SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg worked in which field before animation?

Marine biology was Hillenburg's first career: he taught at the Ocean Institute in Dana Point, California, where he drew The Intertidal Zone, a comic about tide-pool creatures that evolved into the show.

Which short is considered Bugs Bunny's official debut, introducing 'What's up, doc?'?

A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery and released in July 1940, is Bugs's official debut and introduced 'What's up, doc?'; the rabbit in 1938's Porky's Hare Hunt is regarded as a prototype.

Scooby-Doo is a talking dog of which breed?

Great Dane: designer Iwao Takamoto based Scooby on the breed but gave him bowed legs and a sloping chin, the opposite of a show dog, partly to set him apart from the comic-strip Great Dane Marmaduke.

Saturday Night Live is broadcast from which room at NBC's 30 Rockefeller Plaza?

Studio 8H, on the eighth floor, was built in 1933 as the world's largest radio studio and housed Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra; it was converted for television in 1950, long before SNL arrived in 1975.

Loreen in 2023 became the second performer to win Eurovision twice, after whom?

Logan won for Ireland in 1980 and 1987 and also wrote Linda Martin's 1992 winner, earning the nickname 'Mr Eurovision'.

Who created and presented the original Twilight Zone anthology series on CBS?

It ran five seasons from 1959 to 1964, and Serling wrote or co-wrote the majority of its episodes himself.

What is the registry number of the USS Enterprise in the original Star Trek?

NCC-1701 is painted on the saucer of the Constitution-class starship; Gene Roddenberry's series ran only three seasons from 1966, but syndication turned it into a lasting franchise.

In the Cheers spin-off Frasier, Dr. Crane hosts a radio show in which city?

Seattle's KACL radio is where Frasier dispenses advice; Kelsey Grammer played the character for 20 straight years across both shows, equalling James Arness's Matt Dillon as the longest-running live-action TV role at the time.

Which Elton John single is the best-selling in UK chart history?

Candle in the Wind 1997, rewritten for Princess Diana's funeral, entered at No. 1 after one day of sales and spent 14 weeks atop the US Hot 100; its UK sales passed 4.9 million.

Who wrote and first recorded 'I Will Always Love You', later a Whitney Houston smash?

Dolly Parton wrote it in 1973 as a farewell to mentor Porter Wagoner when she left his show, and declined Elvis's request because Colonel Parker wanted half the publishing; it topped the country chart in 1974.

Which musician was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature?

Bob Dylan was cited 'for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'; he skipped the December ceremony, sent a speech, and delivered his Nobel lecture by audio in June 2017.

Which Agatha Christie play holds the record for the longest run of any play in the world?

The Mousetrap opened in London in November 1952, moved from the Ambassadors to the neighbouring St Martin's Theatre in 1974 and passed 25,000 performances in 2012; audiences are asked not to reveal the twist ending.

The musical Rent is loosely based on which Puccini opera?

La bohème's Parisian bohemians became struggling artists in New York's East Village in the shadow of AIDS, with Mimì and Musetta reworked as Mimi and Maureen; Jonathan Larson died the night before the first preview in 1996.

The reality format Big Brother was first broadcast in 1999 in which country?

The Netherlands' Veronica channel aired the first series from September 1999; John de Mol's Endemol created it, and the format was sold internationally from 2000, becoming one of TV's most exported.

Who hosted the original British Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? from its 1998 debut?

Chris Tarrant hosted from the 4 September 1998 debut until the ITV original ended in 2014; the format spread to over 100 countries, including the Indian version at the heart of Slumdog Millionaire.

The Simpsons began as animated shorts on which 1987 Fox series?

The Tracey Ullman Show ran the shorts from April 1987: producer James L. Brooks wanted bumpers around commercial breaks, and Matt Groening sketched the family in minutes, naming them after his own relatives.

How many consecutive Jeopardy! games did Ken Jennings win in his record 2004 streak?

74 straight wins, ending in November 2004 against Nancy Zerg, earned Jennings more than $2.5 million; he later became the show's host after Alex Trebek's death.

Which Hayao Miyazaki film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003?

Spirited Away won at the March 2003 ceremony as the first hand-drawn and first non-English-language winner of the category; it had also shared the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2002.

Which film won the inaugural Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2002?

Shrek beat Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron at the March 2002 ceremony; DreamWorks' ogre comedy had also been the first animated film in competition at Cannes since 1953's Peter Pan.

Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible theme is written in which unusual meter?

5/4 time, Schifrin joked, was for people with five legs to dance to; the quintuple-meter theme, written for the 1966 series, has carried through every film and the 1988 revival.

The Emmy Award takes its name from 'immy', TV slang for what piece of equipment?

A camera image tube, the image orthicon that powered early TV cameras, was nicknamed the 'immy'; the statuette shows a winged woman holding an atom and was first awarded in 1949.

Pong was built by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise set by which Atari co-founder?

Bushnell had seen a similar tennis game on the Magnavox Odyssey; the first Pong cabinet jammed with quarters in a Sunnyvale bar.

When it was erected in 1923, what word did the Hollywood Sign actually spell out?

Hollywoodland advertised a real-estate development on Mount Lee and was meant to stand about 18 months; the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce removed the last four letters in 1949 when it restored the sign.