60 Fun Facts About Famous People

Albert Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded chiefly for his discovery of the law of what?

The citation named 'the law of the photoelectric effect', his 1905 explanation of light ejecting electrons as quanta; relativity was judged too controversial for the committee.

Which Leonardo-attributed painting sold for a record US$450.3 million in 2017?

Salvator Mundi, a half-length Christ blessing the world, fetched $450.3 million at Christie's New York in November 2017, then the highest auction price paid for any artwork.

Cleopatra VII, last queen of Ptolemaic Egypt, was ethnically what?

The Ptolemies were a Macedonian Greek dynasty founded by Ptolemy I Soter; Plutarch says Cleopatra was the only one of them who learned Egyptian, which helped her pose as a native pharaoh.

On which Mediterranean island was Napoleon Bonaparte born in 1769?

Napoleon was born at Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769, a year after France acquired the island; his exiles were Elba and then Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.

At which Washington venue was Abraham Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865?

Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street; Lincoln died the next morning in the Petersen boarding house across the street, and Booth, a well-known actor, had performed at Ford's himself.

Marie Curie named the first element she discovered after her native country. What is the element?

She remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and her notebooks and even her cookbooks are still radioactive enough to be stored in lead-lined boxes.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna in 1791 at what age?

Mozart was 35, born in Salzburg on 27 January 1756 and dead in Vienna on 5 December 1791; he left more than 600 works, and his sister recalled him composing at five.

What is Beethoven's despairing 1802 letter about his failing hearing called?

The Heiligenstadt Testament, written in October 1802 in the village outside Vienna where he was resting, was addressed to his brothers and found among his papers after his death in 1827.

How many years did Nelson Mandela spend in prison before his release in February 1990?

Mandela served 27 years, from his August 1962 arrest to 11 February 1990, at Robben Island, Pollsmoor and finally Victor Verster; his prisoner number 46664 later named his AIDS charity concerts.

Winston Churchill won a Nobel Prize in 1953. In which category?

The award recognised his historical writing and speeches. He had lost the general election of 1945 within weeks of victory in Europe, then returned as prime minister in 1951.

What first name, honouring her Russian godfather, did Queen Victoria later drop?

She was christened Alexandrina Victoria, the first name honouring her godfather Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and reigned as Victoria alone from her accession in 1837.

As a young man travelling to Rhodes, Julius Caesar was captured and held for ransom by whom?

Cilician pirates seized him near the island of Pharmacusa around 75 BC; he mocked their ransom as too low, paid it, and once freed hunted them down and had them crucified.

Which philosopher tutored Alexander the Great until he was 16?

Aristotle taught him at Mieza from 343 BC, when Alexander was 13, until he became regent at 16; Alexander went on to found some twenty cities and died undefeated in Babylon at 32.

Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431. In which year was she made a saint?

The retrial that annulled her conviction came in 1456, but canonisation took nearly five centuries; she was declared a patron saint of France two years after it.

After his 1633 trial by the Inquisition, how did Galileo Galilei spend the rest of his life?

He was found vehemently suspect of heresy and forced to recant. He had discovered Jupiter's four largest moons in January 1610 with a telescope of his own making.

Charles Darwin's five-year voyage from 1831 to 1836 was aboard which Royal Navy ship?

HMS Beagle, a ten-gun brig-sloop under Robert FitzRoy, sailed from Plymouth on 27 December 1831; Darwin had trained for medicine at Edinburgh and for the clergy at Cambridge before the trip.

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in the village of Smiljan, which lies in which modern country?

Smiljan lies in the Lika region of modern Croatia; Tesla, an ethnic Serb born inside the Austrian Military Frontier, died in a New York hotel in 1943, and the SI unit of magnetic flux density took his name in 1960.

Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific in July 1937 while heading for which tiny island?

She was bound for Howland Island, a speck in the central Pacific where a runway had been built for her, flying from Lae with navigator Fred Noonan in a Lockheed Electra 10E; she was declared dead in January 1939.

Neil Armstrong earned his student pilot certificate at 16, before he had which other document?

Armstrong got his student pilot certificate on his sixteenth birthday, before he held a driver's licence; he later flew 78 combat missions in Korea, tested the X-15 and made the first space docking on Gemini 8.

Which civil rights leader was born 'Michael' in 1929 and renamed as a small boy?

Martin Luther King Jr. was Michael King until his father, back from a 1934 Baptist congress in Berlin, renamed them both for the reformer; he won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and was assassinated in Memphis on 4 April 1968.

Which Mexican painter took up art while recovering from a 1925 bus crash that impaled her pelvis?

Frida Kahlo, who had survived polio at six, began painting in bed after the crash; she married the muralist Diego Rivera twice, and her blue house in Coyoacan is a museum.

Of the roughly 860 oil paintings Vincent van Gogh produced, most were made in which period of his life?

Most of the 860 oils date from his last two years, 1888 to 1890, in Arles, Saint-Remy and Auvers; he cut part of his left ear in Arles in December 1888 and died in July 1890 aged 37.

Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) was painted in response to the bombing of a town in which country?

Guernica, in Spain's Basque Country, was bombed by German and Italian planes on 26 April 1937 during the Spanish Civil War; Picasso painted the mural for the Spanish pavilion at that year's Paris Exposition.

Which Hollywood star was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926?

Marilyn Monroe founded her own production company in 1955, married Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, and won a Golden Globe for Some Like It Hot before dying at 36 in August 1962.

In which Mississippi town were Elvis and his stillborn twin Jesse Garon born?

Elvis was born in a two-room shotgun house in Tupelo on 8 January 1935, his twin Jesse Garon stillborn; the family moved to Memphis in 1948, and he died at Graceland in August 1977, aged 42.

Which boxer, born Cassius Clay, won 1960 Olympic gold and lit the Atlanta cauldron 36 years later?

Muhammad Ali refused induction into the army in 1967 and was stripped of his titles; the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in 1971, and he beat Foreman in the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle.

In 1986 Steve Jobs bought the Graphics Group from Lucasfilm for $10 million. What did the company become?

He had been pushed out of Apple the year before after a power struggle with CEO John Sculley, and founded NeXT the same year. He returned to Apple in 1997.

Walt Disney holds the record for the most competitive Academy Awards won by an individual. How many?

That came from 59 nominations. He also voiced Mickey Mouse himself from Steamboat Willie in 1928 until 1947.

Barred from the US in 1952, Charlie Chaplin settled in which country for the rest of his life?

Chaplin settled at Corsier-sur-Vevey on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where he died in 1977; he returned to Hollywood only once, for an honorary Oscar in 1972, having co-founded United Artists in 1919.

Which rock frontman was born Farrokh Bulsara to a Parsi family in Zanzibar in 1946?

Freddie Mercury wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, which DJ Kenny Everett aired repeatedly on Capital Radio before its release; he died on 24 November 1991, a day after publicly confirming he had AIDS.

Two days after being shot in 1976, Bob Marley performed at which Jamaican concert?

Smile Jamaica, held on 5 December 1976 in Kingston, drew about 80,000 people; Marley, shot two days earlier at his Hope Road home, played the set with his injuries.

Which martial arts star won Hong Kong's Crown Colony Cha-Cha Championship in 1958?

Bruce Lee, born in San Francisco in 1940 while his father toured with a Cantonese opera company, died in Hong Kong in 1973 at 32, days before Enter the Dragon premiered.

Pelé, born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, was named by his parents after which famous person?

His parents named him Edson after the inventor Thomas Edison; the nickname Pele probably began as his childhood mispronunciation of Bile, a goalkeeper at his father's club.

What is Usain Bolt's 100 m world record, set in Berlin in 2009?

Bolt ran 9.58 seconds in the 2009 Berlin final, cutting 0.11 from his own mark; he set the 200 m record of 19.19 there too and won eight Olympic golds.

When Michael Jordan quit basketball in 1993 to play minor-league baseball, which team did he play for?

Jordan hit .202 in 1994 for the Birmingham Barons, the Chicago White Sox' Double-A affiliate, before returning to the Bulls to win three more NBA titles.

Which media mogul was named Orpah but became known by a mispronunciation?

Oprah Winfrey, born in Kosciusko, Mississippi, in 1954, was registered as Orpah, after the figure in the Book of Ruth; The Oprah Winfrey Show ran 25 seasons from 1986 to 2011.

In his will, William Shakespeare famously left his wife Anne Hathaway which single item?

Scholars still argue whether it was a snub or a sentimental gift, since the best bed was often kept for guests. He married her at 18 and they had three children.

In which English town was Agatha Christie found after her 11-day 1926 disappearance?

She was found at the Swan Hydropathic Hotel in Harrogate, registered under the surname of her husband's mistress; her wartime dispensary work gave her the knowledge of poisons that runs through her plots.

Which escape artist, born Erik Weisz in Budapest, took his stage name from a French magician?

Harry Houdini took his name from the French conjuror Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin; he died on Halloween 1926 of peritonitis after being punched in the stomach in Montreal, having spent his last years exposing fraudulent mediums.

Mahatma Gandhi studied for the bar in London at which Inn of Court?

Gandhi enrolled at the Inner Temple in 1888 and was called to the bar in June 1891; he then spent 21 years in South Africa and was shot dead at a prayer meeting in Delhi in January 1948.

In his final decades Isaac Newton left Cambridge for a very un-academic job. What was it?

He personally pursued counterfeiters, first as Warden from 1696 and then as Master until his death in 1727. Queen Anne knighted him in 1705.

Christopher Columbus was born around 1451 in which Italian maritime republic?

Columbus was born in the Republic of Genoa, probably in 1451, the son of a wool weaver; his four voyages for Ferdinand and Isabella ran from 1492 to 1504, and he died in Valladolid in 1506.

Which Cambridge chair, once held by Isaac Newton, did Stephen Hawking occupy from 1979 to 2009?

The Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, founded in 1663 and held by Newton from 1669, was Hawking's from 1979 to 2009; diagnosed with motor neurone disease at 21, he lived another 55 years.

What is the concealed hiding place of Anne Frank's family in Amsterdam usually called in English?

The Secret Annex, the rear rooms behind Otto Frank's office at Prinsengracht 263, was raided on 4 August 1944; Anne died at Bergen-Belsen at 15, and Otto, the only survivor, published her diary in 1947.

Which word was Helen Keller's breakthrough when Anne Sullivan spelled it into her palm in 1887?

The word was 'water', spelled w-a-t-e-r as pump water ran over her hand in April 1887; she lost sight and hearing at 19 months and graduated from Radcliffe in 1904, the first deafblind American with a degree.

On which 1983 television special did Michael Jackson first perform the moonwalk, during Billie Jean?

Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever was taped in March 1983 and aired on NBC that May; Jackson, the eighth of ten children from Gary, Indiana, died in 2009 at 50 from propofol given by his doctor.

Audrey Hepburn won the Best Actress Oscar for her first starring role, opposite Gregory Peck. Which film?

Born in Brussels, she survived the Dutch famine of 1944-45 as a teenager in Arnhem, later became a UNICEF ambassador and is one of the few EGOT winners.

Alfred Hitchcock was nominated for the Best Director Oscar five times. How many did he win?

The Academy gave him the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award instead. He was knighted in December 1979, four months before he died, and made cameos in most of his films.

How many Grand Slam singles titles did Serena Williams win, a women's Open Era record?

Serena won 23, from the 1999 US Open to the 2017 Australian Open; her 'Serena Slam' ran from the 2002 French Open to the 2003 Australian Open, beating Venus in every final.

Which American author was born with Halley's Comet in 1835 and died at its 1910 return?

Mark Twain's pen name is the leadsman's call for two fathoms of safe depth, from his years piloting Mississippi steamboats; Samuel Clemens was born two weeks after the comet's 1835 perihelion and died a day after its 1910 return.

Barack Obama spent four childhood years, from age six to ten, living in which country?

He lived in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 1967 to 1971 with his mother and Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro; born in Honolulu in 1961, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in his first year as president.

What was Genghis Khan's birth name before he took his famous title at an assembly of tribes in 1206?

Temüjin, named after a Tatar chief his father had captured, was proclaimed Genghis Khan at a kurultai on the Onon River in 1206; he died on campaign in 1227 and his grave has never been found.

Which learned body elected Florence Nightingale its first woman member for her army death-rate charts?

The Statistical Society of London, now the Royal Statistical Society, elected her its first woman member for her polar-area 'rose' diagrams of Crimean War deaths; she was named after Florence, where she was born.

Which saint, born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje in 1910, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979?

Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta in 1950 and was canonised by Pope Francis in September 2016; her private letters, published after her death, revealed decades of religious doubt.

Marie Antoinette was the youngest daughter and 15th child of which empress?

Maria Theresa, Habsburg empress and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, bore sixteen children; Marie Antoinette left Vienna at 14 to marry the future Louis XVI, and her spending earned her the nickname Madame Déficit.

Taylor Swift began re-recording her early albums after a masters dispute with which label?

Big Machine Records, her label from 2006, sold her first six albums' masters in 2019, prompting the 'Taylor's Version' re-recordings; she was named after James Taylor, and her Eras Tour was the first to gross $1 billion.

Rosa Parks's 1955 refusal to give up her bus seat sparked a boycott in which Alabama city?

The Montgomery bus boycott began on 5 December 1955 and lasted 381 days; Parks had attended the Highlander Folk School activist training centre in Tennessee only that summer.

How old was Malala Yousafzai when she became the youngest Nobel laureate in history in 2014?

She was 17, born in July 1997 and named laureate in October 2014; she shared the Peace Prize with India's Kailash Satyarthi and later read PPE at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Where did Coco Chanel learn to sew as a girl after her mother died?

After her mother's death in 1895 her father left the three girls at the convent orphanage of Aubazine, where the nuns taught her to sew; at 18 she moved to Moulins and sang in a cabaret.

At whose invitation did Leonardo da Vinci spend the last three years of his life in France?

Francis I, the young French king, gave him the manor of Clos Lucé at Amboise in 1516; Leonardo, born out of wedlock near Vinci and trained under Verrocchio in Florence, died there in 1519.