50 Fun Facts About Famous Mikes and Michaels

Which Michael changed his surname because the actors' union already had a Michael Douglas?

Keaton was born Michael Douglas, a name already taken twice over: by the film star and by daytime host Mike Douglas. He says the new surname was a tribute to nobody.

Which Michael, born Maurice Micklewhite, took his stage surname from a film showing in Leicester Square?

Caine came from The Caine Mutiny, which was on at the Odeon while he phoned his agent from a booth in the square. He was later knighted under his birth name.

Michael Jackson's pet chimpanzee, who once took tea with the mayor of Osaka, had which name?

Bubbles was bought from a Texas research facility and joined the 1987 Bad tour in Japan. Quarantine laws kept him out of the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Michael was America's top boys' name almost every year from 1954 until which name took over in 1999?

Jacob then held first place from 1999 through 2012. Michael's only slip in those 45 years came in 1960, when David edged ahead.

Mike Wazowski, the one-eyed green monster of Monsters, Inc., is voiced by which comedian?

Billy Crystal took the part after regretting that he had turned down Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. He has called Mike his favorite role.

Which Michael left basketball in 1993 and spent a season batting .202 for the Birmingham Barons?

Jordan signed a minor-league deal with the Chicago White Sox, whose owner Jerry Reinsdorf also owned the Bulls and kept paying his basketball salary.

The white mask worn by Michael Myers in the 1978 film Halloween was made from a mask of which actor?

William Shatner's face, cast for a 1975 horror film, became a Captain Kirk mask that the crew bought on Hollywood Boulevard and spray-painted white.

Which Mike became boxing's youngest heavyweight champion at 20 by stopping Trevor Berbick in 1986?

Tyson took the WBC belt inside two rounds, aged 20 years and 4 months. He had turned professional only the previous year.

Michael Scott manages the Scranton branch of which paper company in the American version of The Office?

Dunder Mifflin's manager was offered to Ricky Gervais, who had played the equivalent boss, David Brent, in the British original. He turned the part down.

Which Michael won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, beating Mark Spitz's record of seven?

Phelps had come close four years earlier in Athens, where he left with six golds and two bronzes while still a teenager.

Which Michael wore golden spikes to win both the 200 and 400 meters at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?

Johnson was the first man to win both events at one Games, and his custom Nike shoes earned him a nickname as the man with the golden shoes.

Which Michael won five Formula One drivers' titles in a row for Ferrari from 2000 to 2004?

Schumacher won 72 Grands Prix in red and helped turn a struggling Ferrari into the most successful team in the sport's history.

Which Michael circled the Moon alone in Columbia while Apollo 11's other two astronauts walked on the surface?

Collins lost radio contact with Earth for 48 minutes of every orbit, behind the far side of the Moon. He said he felt not loneliness but something close to exultation.

Which Michael wrote the novel Jurassic Park and also created the television hospital drama ER?

Crichton earned a medical degree at Harvard in 1969 but never practiced, and ER grew out of a pilot script he had written back in 1974.

Which Canadian Michael, a crooner of old pop standards, topped the Billboard 200 with a Christmas album in 2011?

Bublé got his break singing at the wedding of a former prime minister's daughter, where he was introduced to the producer David Foster.

Which Michael, a bookbinder's apprentice who became a scientist, discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831?

Faraday joined the bookbinder's shop at 14 and read many of the books that passed through it. In 1813 the chemist Humphry Davy, his eyesight damaged in an accident, hired him as an assistant.

Which Soviet leader of the 1980s had a first name that is the Russian form of Michael?

Gorbachev was a Mikhail, the Russian and Belarusian form of the name, which the first Romanov tsar and the poet Lermontov also carried.

Which rock frontman, knighted in 2003 for services to popular music, was born Michael Philip?

Jagger, the Rolling Stones singer known to everyone as Mick, received the accolade from the Prince of Wales a year and a half after the knighthood was announced.

Michael Corleone, the youngest son who takes over the family in The Godfather, was played by which actor?

Al Pacino played him in all three films and was twice Oscar-nominated for the part, which Empire magazine ranked the 11th greatest movie character.

Michael J. Fox launched a research foundation in 2000 to find a cure for which disease?

Parkinson's disease was diagnosed in the actor in 1991, after his finger began twitching on the set of Doc Hollywood, and he kept it from the public for seven years.

Mike Myers plays both Austin Powers and which arch-enemy, owner of the hairless cat Mr. Bigglesworth?

Dr. Evil was a part Myers first hoped to hand to Jim Carrey, who had to pass because of a clash with Liar Liar.

Michael Douglas won his Best Actor Oscar for playing which ruthless trader in the 1987 film Wall Street?

Gordon Gekko was stitched together from several real financiers, among them Ivan Boesky, who was later convicted of insider trading.

Mike the Tiger, a live mascot renamed in 1936 for an athletic trainer, lives on a campus in which state?

Louisiana State University's first tiger arrived under the name Sheik. He was renamed for trainer Mike Chambers, who did most to bring him to Baton Rouge.

In the NATO phonetic alphabet, Mike stands for M; which code word follows it for the letter N?

November took over from Nectar in 1956, after trials showed Nectar was too easily confused with Victor.

Ivy Mike, set off on a Pacific atoll in 1952, was the first full-scale test of which type of weapon?

Hydrogen bomb testing began with a blast of 10.4 megatons that erased the island of Elugelab, leaving a crater 1.9 km wide where it had stood.

Hurricane Michael hit which state's Panhandle at Category 5 strength in October 2018?

Florida had never recorded a Category 5 landfall on its Panhandle, and no hurricane that strong had hit any US coast since Andrew in 1992.

Michaelmas, the feast of St Michael held on 29 September, is traditionally celebrated by eating which bird?

Goose fattened on the stubble of the harvested fields was the dish, and an old saying promised that eating it would keep you in money all year.

Mont-Saint-Michel, the tidal island abbey dedicated to the archangel Michael, belongs to which region of France?

Normandy's famous island is said to owe its church to a vision: in 708 the archangel told Aubert, the bishop of Avranches, to build on the rock.

The 2012 film Magic Mike was loosely based on which actor's own time as an 18-year-old stripper in Tampa?

Channing Tatum also played the title role. Matthew McConaughey asked for a strip scene the script had not given him, and it became the final number.

Which Michael won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature with Bowling for Columbine?

Moore partly funded his first film, Roger & Me, with a $58,000 settlement for wrongful dismissal and with money raised at bingo games.

Which Michael directed Armageddon, Pearl Harbor and the first five Transformers films?

Bay is known for big-budget action built around explosions, and two of his Transformers sequels won him the Golden Raspberry for Worst Director.

Which Michael created Paddington after buying a lone teddy bear in a London shop on Christmas Eve 1956?

Bond gave his bear a luggage label because he remembered wartime newsreels of child evacuees leaving London with labels around their necks.

Which Michael of Monty Python went on to circle the globe in 80 days for a BBC travel series?

Palin got the job only after Alan Whicker, the BBC's first choice, turned it down, and he had to follow the Jules Verne route without using aircraft.

Which Michael served three terms as mayor of New York City after building a financial data company?

Bloomberg could run a third time only because the city council voted 29 to 22 in 2008 to stretch the two-term limit.

Which Mike hosted talk radio in Indiana before becoming its governor and then Donald Trump's vice president?

Pence lost two races for Congress before turning to broadcasting in the 1990s, then won a House seat in 2000 at the third attempt.

Which Michael, raised in Chicago, shot to fame dancing in Riverdance during the interval of Eurovision 1994?

Flatley was also a boxer who won a Chicago Golden Gloves title in the 1970s. He left the show in 1995 to create Lord of the Dance.

Which Michael set an NFL season sack record with the Giants before co-hosting a talk show with Kelly Ripa?

Strahan's 22.5 sacks in 2001 edged past the 22 of Mark Gastineau, and he retired after helping New York win Super Bowl XLII.

Which Mike coached the Chicago Bears to victory in Super Bowl XX after starring for them at tight end?

Ditka had already won Super Bowl rings with Dallas as a player and as an assistant coach before his Bears beat New England 46 to 10.

Which Mike won five national titles coaching Duke men's basketball and three Olympic golds coaching Team USA?

Krzyzewski overtook Bob Knight, who had coached him at Army, to claim the most wins in Division I men's history in 2011.

Which Michael won the 2001 Ballon d'Or, three years after a famous solo World Cup goal against Argentina?

Owen was 18 when he ran from the halfway line to score that goal for England, and he took the award after a trophy-laden season with Liverpool.

Which Michael of The Monkees was the son of the secretary who invented Liquid Paper correction fluid?

Nesmith's mother, Bette, first mixed her correction fluid in a kitchen blender, built Liquid Paper into an international company and sold it to Gillette in 1979.

Which Mike recorded Tubular Bells, the 1973 album whose piano opening became the theme of The Exorcist?

Oldfield's album was the first ever release on Richard Branson's new Virgin label, and its use in the horror film later won him a Grammy.

Which Michael, a Budapest-born Hollywood director, won the Best Director Oscar for Casablanca?

Curtiz also directed James Cagney and Joan Crawford to the only Academy Awards either star ever won.

Mike Ehrmantraut, the fixer of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, was once a police officer in which city?

Philadelphia is where his son Matt was killed, a death his own corruption helped cause. He then followed his daughter-in-law and granddaughter to New Mexico.

Which Mike captained the United States hockey team and scored the winning goal against the Soviets in 1980?

Eruzione's goal won the Miracle on Ice, which Sports Illustrated named in 1999 the top sports moment of the 20th century.

Michael Knight fought crime in the 1980s series Knight Rider with the help of which talking car?

KITT, short for Knight Industries Two Thousand, was a modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am styled by another Michael, the customizer Michael Scheffe.

Which Michael, an American fashion designer, judged Project Runway until Zac Posen replaced him in 2012?

Kors was born Karl Anderson Jr. on Long Island and took his surname at five, when his mother married Bill Kors.

The name Michael, borne by an archangel in the Bible, comes from Hebrew words meaning what?

Who is like God is a rhetorical question whose implied answer is that nobody is. In Latin it runs Quis ut Deus.

Which Michael played Little Joe Cartwright in Bonanza and Charles Ingalls in Little House on the Prairie?

Landon was born Eugene Orowitz and picked his new name out of a telephone book. In 1954 he threw the javelin farther than any other American high schooler.

Which Michael started a computer business from his dormitory room at the University of Texas in 1984?

Dell was a pre-med freshman, studying to please parents who wanted a doctor. He dropped out at 19 to run the business full time.