99 Fun Facts About Famous Mothers

Who voices Marge Simpson?

Julie Kavner was already in the cast of The Tracey Ullman Show when the Simpsons shorts began there in 1987, so she was handed Marge, and she voices Marge's sisters Patty and Selma too.

Marge Simpson's blue beehive was partly inspired by which film character?

The Bride of Frankenstein was one model for the hair; the other was the beehive Matt Groening's mother, Margaret, wore in the 1960s, and Marge takes her name as well.

In Gilmore Girls, Lorelai raises Rory in which Connecticut town?

Stars Hollow. Lorelai had Rory at 16, fled her parents' Hartford mansion, and started out as a maid at the Independence Inn, living with her baby in its converted potting shed.

Which actress played Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter films?

Julie Walters trained as a nurse in Birmingham before giving it up for drama school, and went on to play the Weasley matriarch across the Potter series.

Which Death Eater does Molly Weasley kill in a duel in the final Harry Potter book?

Bellatrix Lestrange had just nearly hit Ginny with a Killing Curse; J.K. Rowling said she always meant Molly to finish her, setting a mother's love against Bellatrix's obsession with Voldemort.

In Pride and Prejudice, which of Mrs. Bennet's five daughters runs off with the charming scoundrel Wickham?

Lydia, the youngest, runs off with Wickham, and the family is spared disgrace only because Mr. Darcy quietly tracks the pair down and pays Wickham to marry her.

In which novel do four sisters call their mother Marmee?

Little Women. Louisa May Alcott drew the March family from her own childhood as the second of four sisters, and wrote the book quickly because her family needed the money.

Which Toni Morrison novel centres on Sethe, a formerly enslaved mother, and won the Pulitzer Prize?

Beloved grew from the true story of Margaret Garner, who escaped a Kentucky plantation in 1856 and, when slave catchers cornered her family in Ohio, killed her young daughter rather than see her taken back.

In which epic poem does a monster's mother rise from a lake to avenge her son's death?

Beowulf. After the hero kills Grendel, the monster's mother raids the hall of Heorot, and he must dive to her underwater lair and slay her with an ancient sword he finds there.

Which scientist and her daughter are the only mother and daughter to have both won Nobel Prizes?

Marie Curie and her daughter Irène drove mobile X-ray units to the front together in the First World War; Marie died in 1934, a year before Irène shared the chemistry prize.

Who was the first woman to be both the wife of one US president and the mother of another?

Abigail Adams never saw the second half of that record: she died in 1818, six years before her son John Quincy Adams won the presidency.

Which matriarch raised a president and two US senators among her nine children?

Rose Kennedy outlived four of her nine children, among them the assassinated John and Robert, and died in 1995 at the age of 104.

Mother Teresa was born to Albanian parents outside Albania, in which Balkan city that is now a national capital?

Skopje was an Ottoman city when Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu was born there in 1910; she left at 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto in Ireland and reached India the following year.

Which pope declared Mother Teresa a saint?

Pope Francis declared her a saint only 19 years after her death; her cause had opened within two years, after John Paul II waived the usual five-year wait.

Princess Diana's sons broke royal tradition by attending which school rather than their father's Gordonstoun?

Eton College. Their father had called his own Scottish boarding school 'Colditz in kilts', and Eton stands in Windsor, a short walk from their grandmother's castle.

Which 2018 memoir by Michelle Obama became America's best-selling book of the year within 15 days of release?

Becoming. In it she revealed that she had suffered a miscarriage and that her daughters Malia and Sasha were conceived through IVF.

What is the name of Beyoncé's first child, born in January 2012?

Blue Ivy could be heard crying on her father Jay-Z's song 'Glory' two days after she was born, and at nine she shared a Grammy with her mother for 'Brown Skin Girl'.

Tennis great Serena won the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant by beating which player in the final?

Venus Williams. Serena beat her older sister in straight sets, revealed three months later that she had been pregnant throughout, and gave birth to her daughter Olympia that September.

Before Jacinda Ardern, who was the only elected head of government to give birth in office?

Benazir Bhutto kept her pregnancy secret even from her cabinet, gave birth to her daughter Bakhtawar in January 1990, and went back to work as soon as her doctor allowed.

Who is Kris Jenner's only son?

Rob Kardashian shares his name with his father, Robert, the lawyer who reactivated his lapsed licence to help defend his friend O. J. Simpson.

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar gave all 19 children names starting with which letter?

J. Every one of the 19 has a name beginning with their father Jim Bob's initial, and TLC had to retitle its show twice as the family grew from 17 children.

Which Oscar-winning actress adopted her first child, Maddox, from Cambodia in 2002?

Angelina Jolie said that once she committed to Maddox she would 'never be self-destructive again'; Cambodia later made her a citizen in honour of her humanitarian work there.

Which actress played Joyce Byers, the mother convinced her missing son is speaking through the house lights, in Stranger Things?

Winona Ryder made her name in 1980s films such as Beetlejuice and Heathers, and the series, set in that same decade, brought her back to stardom with Golden Globe and SAG nominations.

Which actress played Carol Brady on The Brady Bunch?

Florence Henderson got the part after her best friend Shirley Jones turned it down; a year later Jones took the mother's role in The Partridge Family instead.

June Cleaver was the mother on which classic sitcom?

Leave It to Beaver's June did the housework in pearls and high heels: the pearls hid a hollow in the actress's neck, and the heels kept her taller than her growing TV sons.

In which fictional Illinois town does Roseanne Conner raise Becky, Darlene and D.J.?

Lanford. The show grew out of Roseanne Barr's 'domestic goddess' stand-up act, and its working-class family went all the way to No. 1 in the Nielsen ratings.

Which actress played Peggy Bundy on Married... with Children and later voiced Leela on Futurama?

Katey Sagal spent years as a backing singer before Peggy made her famous, touring behind Bette Midler as one of the Harlettes.

Who played Kitty Forman, Eric's doting mother, on That '70s Show?

Debra Jo Rupp returned to the role 17 years after the show ended, when Kitty and Red took in their granddaughter for the summer in the sequel That '90s Show.

Which actress played Livia Soprano, the mother who helped arrange a hit on her own son Tony?

Nancy Marchand died in June 2000 before her character's planned storyline could be filmed, so Livia's last scene with Tony was pieced together from old footage and computer imagery.

In which Hitchcock film does a motel owner keep his dead mother's preserved body in the family home?

Psycho. Norman Bates, a keen taxidermist, has kept his mother's body for years and speaks in her voice; her mummified corpse is finally discovered in the fruit cellar.

Which actress played Sarah Connor, mother of the future resistance leader, in the first two Terminator films?

Linda Hamilton had a ready-made double for Terminator 2: her identical twin sister, Leslie, stood in for scenes that needed two Sarah Connors on screen at once.

Which 1983 film about mother Aurora Greenway and her daughter Emma won the Oscar for Best Picture?

Terms of Endearment won five Oscars, and its screen mother beat its screen daughter to one of them: Shirley MacLaine took Best Actress over her co-star Debra Winger.

Whose adopted daughter wrote the 1978 exposé Mommie Dearest?

Joan Crawford had disinherited Christina and her brother Christopher, and the book came out the year after the star's death; Faye Dunaway played her in the 1981 film.

In Freaky Friday (2003), how do mother and daughter switch bodies?

Chinese fortune cookies do it in the 2003 film; the 1976 original never explains the swap, which simply happens when mother and daughter wish it at the same moment on Friday the 13th.

In Disney's Bambi, what happens to Bambi's mother?

She is shot by a hunter, though the film keeps her death off screen; Paul McCartney has said the scene made him grow up thinking hunting 'isn't cool'.

In Greek myth, which Titan mother saved baby Zeus by giving Cronus a rock to swallow?

Rhea wrapped the stone in swaddling clothes and hid the real baby in a cave on Crete; once grown, Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge the children he had already swallowed.

Which Greek goddess's grief over her abducted daughter Persephone explains the seasons?

Demeter was so distraught while she searched for her daughter that she neglected the harvest and famine followed, which is how the myth accounts for the barren months of the year.

Which American-born painter gave his 1871 portrait of his mother the title Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1?

James McNeill Whistler. One unverified story has his mother stepping in when a model failed to turn up; France bought the picture in 1891, and it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay.

Which American Impressionist became famous for paintings of mothers and children?

Mary Cassatt never married, yet the pictures that made her name in Paris, where she showed with the Impressionists, were of mothers bathing, holding and tending their small children.

Which Yorkshire prophetess is said to have been born in a cave at Knaresborough in 1488?

By legend, Mother Shipton was born Ursula Sontheil during a violent thunderstorm, and her mother refused to name the father even before a magistrate and raised her in the cave for two years.

Which humorist's syndicated column about suburban motherhood ran from 1965 to 1996?

Erma Bombeck started the column once her three children were in school, saying she felt 'too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security and too tired for an affair'.

In which US state was the first Mother's Day church service held in 1908?

West Virginia. Founder Anna Jarvis was not at the service in her late mother's church in Grafton: she spoke the same day at a far larger gathering in Philadelphia.

Which flower, her mother's favourite, did Anna Jarvis choose as the emblem of the first Mother's Day?

Carnation. Jarvis sent 500 white ones to the first service in 1908, and the custom later grew of wearing red or pink for a living mother and white for one who had died.

Which US president issued the 1914 proclamation making the second Sunday in May Mother's Day?

Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday in 1914; its founder, Anna Jarvis, was so dismayed by how commercial it became that she spent her last years trying to have it abolished.

Who voices Lois Griffin, matriarch of Family Guy?

Alex Borstein based Lois's nasal voice on a cousin from Long Island, and Seth MacFarlane asked her to speed it up before the show went to air.

The Macedonian queen Olympias was the mother of which conqueror?

Alexander the Great. After he died, Olympias fought on for her grandson Alexander IV, but Cassander besieged her at Pydna and she was put to death in 316 BC.

Agrippina the Younger, mother of Nero, was the fourth wife and niece of which Roman emperor?

Claudius married his niece in AD 49 and, at her urging, adopted her son Nero as heir ahead of his own boy Britannicus; ancient writers suspected she poisoned him five years later.

Which Hollywood star was the mother of Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher?

Debbie Reynolds outlived her daughter by a single day: Fisher died on December 27, 2016, and Reynolds suffered a fatal stroke the next day.

On which Greek island was Mamma Mia!, the story of Sophie and her mother Donna, mostly filmed?

Skopelos. The film's island of Kalokairi does not exist: the name is simply the Greek word for summer, the season when the cast spent weeks filming there in 2007.

Which actress played both Kevin's frantic mother in Home Alone and Moira Rose in Schitt's Creek?

Catherine O'Hara played Kate McCallister in two Home Alone films, then won a Primetime Emmy and a Golden Globe three decades later as Moira Rose.

Which California city takes its name from the mother of Saint Augustine, remembered for weeping over her wayward son?

Santa Monica honours Saint Monica: in one account, a pair of local springs was said to recall the tears she shed over her son's early impiety.

Paul McCartney's mother, who died when he was 14, inspired which Beatles hit after appearing to him in a dream?

Let It Be grew out of that dream, though many listeners hear its comforting figure as the mother of Jesus; McCartney says people can interpret the song however they like.

Which American landmark does Emma Lazarus's sonnet The New Colossus call the Mother of Exiles?

The Statue of Liberty earned the name in a poem written to raise money for its pedestal, and a bronze plaque carrying the sonnet was mounted inside that pedestal in 1903.

Which structures inside human cells carry their own DNA, normally inherited only from the mother?

Mitochondria from the father's sperm are usually destroyed by the egg after fertilisation, which is why researchers can trace a maternal line far back in time.

Jimmy Carter's mother Lillian joined which organisation at 68 and spent 21 months helping leprosy patients in India?

The Peace Corps sent her to the Godrej Colony outside Mumbai, and the letters she wrote home from India were later published as a book.

Which 1950s sitcom star's real pregnancy was written into the script, her TV son arriving the same day as her own?

Lucille Ball had Desi Arnaz Jr. by caesarean twelve hours before the episode aired, and the newborn went on to appear on the cover of the first TV Guide.

Which Golden Girls actress played Sophia, mother of Bea Arthur's Dorothy, despite being a year younger than Arthur?

Estelle Getty relied on wigs, clothing and heavy makeup to pass for a mother in her 80s.

Which singer headlined the 2023 Super Bowl halftime show while pregnant with her second child?

Rihanna had not performed live since 2018, and confirmation that she was expecting came only once the show had ended.

Which singer-songwriter named Mother and Child Reunion after a chicken-and-egg dish he saw on a restaurant menu?

Paul Simon recorded the track in Kingston, Jamaica, with Jimmy Cliff's backing group, making it one of the few reggae-tinged hits of its day by a non-Jamaican.

Which actress played Forrest Gump's devoted mother despite being only ten years older than Tom Hanks?

Sally Field had co-starred with Hanks six years earlier in Punchline, and her turn as Mrs. Gump earned BAFTA and SAG nominations.

Which Saturday Night Live star played Regina's mother in Mean Girls, though only seven years older than Rachel McAdams?

Amy Poehler got a part Tina Fey wrote with her in mind, even though the studio worried she was too young to pass as a teenager's parent.

Which actress finally appeared as the title character of How I Met Your Mother in the season 8 finale?

Cristin Milioti had never watched the sitcom when she filmed that first scene; the creators chose her partly for her musical ability, since the character played in a band.

In Pixar's Brave, a spell turns Princess Merida's mother, Queen Elinor, into which animal?

A bear is what Elinor becomes, and Pixar first announced the film under the title The Bear and the Bow.

In Neil Gaiman's Coraline, what does the sinister Other Mother have in place of eyes?

Buttons mark everyone in her world, and she offers to let Coraline stay forever if the girl will have a pair sewn over her own eyes.

Which Game of Thrones character is known as the Mother of Dragons after hatching three eggs on a funeral pyre?

Daenerys walks into her husband's pyre with the eggs and is found in the ashes the next morning, alive and unburned, with three hatchlings.

Which Star Wars character, elected queen of Naboo at fourteen, is the mother of the twins Luke and Leia?

Padmé Amidala dies soon after giving birth, so the twins grow up apart and Leia is left with only faint memories of her.

Which Friends character gives birth to triplets as a surrogate for her half-brother Frank and his wife Alice?

Phoebe Buffay delivers the three babies in the sitcom's 100th episode, then has second thoughts and asks whether she can keep one of them.

In which science-fiction horror film does the crew of the Nostromo address the ship's computer as Mother?

Alien has Ripley question Mother directly, which is how she uncovers the company's secret order to bring the creature back whatever the risk to the crew.

Which actress won an Oscar for the 2015 film Room, playing a mother raising her young son in captivity?

Brie Larson researched trauma and nutrition to play a woman held for seven years, and added the BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG awards to her Oscar.

Which duchess was queen of France, then queen of England, and mother of kings Richard the Lionheart and John?

Eleanor of Aquitaine backed her sons' 1173 revolt against their father, Henry II, who kept her imprisoned until his death in 1189.

Which Indian prime minister was the daughter of one prime minister and the mother of another, Rajiv?

Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, and Rajiv succeeded her after two of her own bodyguards assassinated her.

Which Roman empress, mother of Constantine the Great, is said by ancient tradition to have found the True Cross?

Helena is also credited with building or beautifying the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

In the Hebrew Bible, Bathsheba secures the throne of the ageing King David for which son, ahead of older heirs?

Solomon was the son of a marriage that began in scandal: Bathsheba had been the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whom David had killed so that he could marry her.

In the Book of Genesis, which wife of Abraham laughs when she overhears that she will have a son at ninety?

Sarah went on to give birth to Isaac, and Judaism, Christianity and Islam all remember her as a pious woman renowned for her hospitality.

In later legend, which sea goddess dipped her infant son Achilles in the River Styx, holding him by one heel?

Thetis left that one heel untouched by the waters, which is why a fatal weak point is still called an Achilles' heel.

In Greek myth, which queen of Thebes unknowingly marries her own son, Oedipus, and has four children with him?

In Sophocles' telling, Jocasta takes her own life once his identity is discovered; the children of the marriage include Antigone and Ismene.

In Norse myth, Frigg made every object on earth vow never to hurt her son Baldr, except which plant?

Mistletoe seemed too young to swear an oath, so Loki armed the blind god Höðr with it and tricked him into killing his own brother.

Which Egyptian goddess revived her murdered husband Osiris and then bore and protected his heir, Horus?

Isis was considered the divine mother of every pharaoh, because the living king was likened to Horus.

Which land mammal's mothers carry a calf for nearly two years and then wait at least four more before the next?

Elephant pregnancies run so long because the extra months give the calf's brain and trunk more time to develop.

Which rapper recorded Dear Mama, a tribute to his mother Afeni now preserved in the National Recording Registry?

Tupac Shakur does not hide his mother's crack addiction in the song, arguing instead that his love and respect for her outweigh the bad memories.

Which US highway did John Steinbeck call the Mother Road in a novel about families fleeing the Dust Bowl?

Route 66 got the nickname from The Grapes of Wrath, which follows Dust Bowl migrants along it; the road is also known as the Main Street of America.

Which photographer took Migrant Mother, a 1936 portrait of a farm worker in California during the Great Depression?

Dorothea Lange's subject stayed anonymous for four decades, until a newspaper journalist's work identified her in 1978.

Which labour organiser, branded the most dangerous woman in America in 1902, gives her name to a US magazine?

Mother Jones earned the label from a district attorney at her trial for defying an injunction that banned meetings by striking miners.

Which actress posed nude and seven months pregnant for a 1991 Vanity Fair cover by photographer Annie Leibovitz?

Demi Moore's cover was controversial at the time, yet it made late-pregnancy portraits fashionable, and many celebrities have posed for similar ones since.

Which television journalist is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, the heiress who pioneered designer jeans?

Anderson Cooper's mother was famous long before he was: as a child she was at the centre of a high-profile custody trial between her own mother and her aunt.

Which iridescent material, lining the inside of some mollusc shells, is commonly known as mother-of-pearl?

Nacre is also what pearls themselves are made of, a strong and resilient layer laid down continuously on the inner surface of the shell.

Which conqueror was the son of Hö'elün, a noblewoman abducted soon after her wedding by his father, Yesügei?

Genghis Khan was born Temüjin; his mother had only just married a Merkit aristocrat when Yesügei carried her off to be his primary wife.

Which tennis player won the 2009 US Open as a wild card, the first mother to win a major since 1980?

Kim Clijsters had come out of retirement after giving birth and took the title in only her third tournament back.

Which athlete, a mother of two nicknamed the Flying Housewife, won four gold medals at the 1948 London Olympics?

Fanny Blankers-Koen was the most successful athlete of those Games at 30, and her wins are credited with helping to end the belief that motherhood ruled out elite sport.

Mother Ann Lee led which celibate religious sect from England to New York in 1774?

The Shakers were named for the ecstatic dancing of their worship, and her followers held Ann Lee to be the second coming of Christ.

Which author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic also wrote a pacifist Mothers' Day Proclamation in 1870?

Julia Ward Howe wrote the hymn as new words to the marching song John Brown's Body, at a friend's suggestion, and some 4,000 people sang it at her memorial service.

Which country fixed its Mother's Day on 12 August, the birthday of Queen Sirikit?

Thailand has kept that date since 1976, and children there mark the day by giving their mothers white jasmine.

Mothering Sunday, marked in the UK and Ireland since the Middle Ages, falls on the fourth Sunday of which season?

Lent brought a day when worshippers went back to their mother church, where they had been baptised, and servants were later given the day off to make the visit.

In Greek myth, which goddess was denied shelter by every land while pregnant with the twins Apollo and Artemis?

In the best-known telling, Leto was being punished by Hera: Zeus had fathered the twins, and his jealous wife ordered every land to shun the mother-to-be.

In the tragedy by Euripides, which sorceress punishes Jason for leaving her by killing their two sons?

Medea may owe that crime to Euripides himself: an ancient note on the play suggests that in older tradition the Corinthians killed her children after she escaped.

Which empress fought King Stephen for the English crown but saw only her son win it, as Henry II?

Matilda captured Stephen in 1141 yet was never crowned, and she once escaped a siege at Oxford Castle by crossing the frozen Thames at night.

Which German dramatist wrote Mother Courage and Her Children, about a canteen woman in the Thirty Years' War?

Bertolt Brecht has his heroine lose all three of her children to the very war she is trying to profit from.

Which emperor's mother, Letizia, was granted the official court title Madame Mère because of her son's rank?

Napoleon I's mother was a Corsican noblewoman and the matriarch of the Bonaparte family; her title is simply French for Madame Mother.

Which flightless New Zealand bird lays an egg that can weigh up to a fifth of the mother's body weight?

Kiwi are only about the size of a domestic chicken, yet their eggs are about six times the size of a hen's.