Oscar Trivia: Did you know?
Posted on 25. Feb, 2010 by admin in Did you Know
• Only three films have ever won all top five Oscars – Best Film, Actor, Actress, Director and Writing. They are: It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs
• Walt Disney won more Oscars than anyone else. He was nominated for 64, and won 26!
• Bob Hope has hosted the Oscars 18 times; Billy Crystal is in second place with 8 times.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is the only film ever to have won every single Oscar it was nominated for.
• The shortest-ever Best Actor Oscar-winning performance was awarded to Anthony Hopkins in 1992, having appeared for less than 16 minutes of screen time as Dr Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs
• The oldest actress to win an Oscar is Jessica Tandy – at 81 she won the Best Actress Oscar in 1990 for her performance in Driving Miss Daisy. Tom Hanks is the youngest recipient of the Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which he received in 2002 at age 45.
• The first ceremony took place on May 16, 1929 in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The first televised Academy Awards show was the 25th annual, held on March 19, 1953.
• The longest Oscar awards ceremony was in 2000, running for 4 hours and 16 minutes – beating a previous record by 16 minutes.
• The first actor to receive an Oscar posthumously was Peter Finch who died of a heart attack while leaving the Beverly Hills Hotel to do a pre-Oscar ceremony TV interview with Good Morning America.
• George C. Scott refused his award for his portrayal of the title role in Patton in 1970. He said that “the whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don’t want any part of it.” Marlon Brando refused to accept his award personally, because of the way Native Americans are discriminated against by the US and Hollywood. Instead, he sent a woman named Sacheen Littlefeather to receive his prize, and gave her a fifteen page acceptance speech.
Did you know – Weird Fads that swept the world
Posted on 28. Jan, 2010 by admin in Did you Know
The Ask Doctor Spock Fad
Simple sells. In 1946, Spock wrote Baby and Child Care that outlined his revolutionary child-rearing advice. And what was that? Just relax. Americans lapped up the laissez faire methodology and in 10 years, Spock’s book became the second-best selling tome in the United States (after the Bible).
Telephone-Booth Stuffing
In 1959, 25 South African students climbed into a telephone booth announcing they’d set the world record for a non-existent event! Within weeks, college students across England, America, and Canada immediately set to work to outdo the South Africans from using physics to starving themselves. Arguments and accusations of cheating followed but later that year they all seemed to reach a truce when everyone abandoned phone booths in favor of Volkswagens, the latest people-stuffing container of choice!
Conical Bras
Movie producer and ladies man deluxe Howard Hughes touched off a decade-long fashion fad in 1943 when he designed a state-of-the-art cantilevered bra for actress Jane Russell – thus allowing women to stride confidently into the 1950s lifted, separated and pointed toward the future.
Ant Farms
Inspired by the events at an outdoor barbecue, “Uncle Milton” Levine modified a clear plastic tissue box into a prototype for an ant farm. Between 1956 and 1966, he sold almost 12 million of them (ants originally not included), thanks in part to creative product placement. Levine gave away fancy, mahogany ant farms to Dick Clark and other TV personalities who kept the trinkets on their on-screen desks and, thus, in the public eye.
For more weird and wonderful fads go to www.neatorama.com
Did you know – Christmas Marketing Trivia
Posted on 09. Dec, 2009 by admin in Did you Know
• “Rudolph the Reindeer” was actually created by Montgomery Ward in the late 1930’s for an in store holiday promotion. The rest is history.
• Coca Cola was the first beverage company to use Santa for a winter promotion.
• Hallmark introduced its first Christmas cards in 1915, five years after the founding of the company.
• More diamonds are sold around Christmas than any other time of the year.
• According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.
• During the Christmas buying season, Visa cards alone are used an average of 5,340 times every minute in the United States
• During the Christmas/Hanukkah season, more than 1.76 billion candy canes will be made.
• Frustrated at the lack of interest in his new toy invention, Charles Pajeau hired several midgets, dressed them in elf costumes, and had them play with “Tinker Toys” in a display window at a Chicago department store during the Christmas season in 1914. This publicity stunt made the construction toy an instant hit. A year later, over a million sets of Tinker Toys had been sold.
Did you know these sensational tabloid facts?
Posted on 26. Nov, 2009 by admin in Did you Know
• That Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union is currently part of a Louis Vuitton ad? A decade ago, Mr. Gorbachev’s appearance in a Pizza Hut commercial was generally greeted as a low point in his career.
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• The Sun was the first tabloid ever to print a picture of a topless model on Page 3
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• More than 1.6 million people read the National Enquirer compared to the 1.1 million that read the New York Times
• Matt Drudge is the internet’s hottest scoopster and the one-man news bureau that broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Now, his website gets 6 million visitors a month, making him the largest known online tabloid journalist. He has more readers than Time Magazine
• Think only tabloids create sensationalistic headlines? Consider these from CNN.com
“Dr. Phil bums out Star Wars fanatic’s wife”
“Students expelled for making out on bus”
“Nuns-and-nude ad upsets Catholics”
And MSNBC.com outré news headlines:
“Watch that hot drink! Airline offers naked flights”
“Dr. Phil defends intentions with Spears”
And Foxnews.com home page
“British Teen Films Herself Trying To Kill Parents”
“Husband Arrested After Wife’s Body Found in Freezer”
“Granny Locks Boy in Cage, Says He Poisoned Her”
Did you know these Green facts?
Posted on 28. Oct, 2009 by admin in Did you Know
• If you took all the aluminium cans recycled since 1972 — an estimated 1,099 billion — and laid them end to end in a giant can-chain, they’d stretch all the way to the moon and back 174 times.
• The Shoreham nuclear power plant in East Shoreham, New York cost $6 billion to build and was closed in 1989 without generating a single watt of electricity!
• If you chopped down a 15-year-old tree and used it to make paper grocery bags, you’d wind up with about 700. That’s roughly the number of bags your local supermarket goes through in an hour.
• The U.S. is the #1 trash-producing country in the world at 1,609 pounds per person per year. This means that 5% of the world’s people generate 40% of the world’s waste.
• A modern glass bottle would take 4000 years or more to decompose — and even longer if it’s in the landfill.
Did You Know?
Posted on 09. Oct, 2009 by admin in Did you Know
• UK citizens have paid off more of its credit card debt in February 2009 than at any other time in years.
• During the Great Depression, a record 60-80 million Americans went to the movies every week with the biggest blockbusters being King Kong, The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.
• The recession has even affected the SEX trade. Spain’s National Association of Brothel Owners reported an overall 30% decrease in trade in 2008.
• “Black Tuesday” describes the Stock Market crash on October 29, 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression which only ended ten years later, in 1939.
• The board game Monopoly first became available and immensely popular in 1935, perhaps because players could become rich—at least in their imaginations!
Did You Know?
Posted on 27. Aug, 2009 by admin in Did you Know
Did you know that…
• That although Mahatma Gandhi became famous for his principles of pacifism, he served in the Anglo Boer War and enlisted to fight with the British in WW1 but a bad case of pleurisy resulted in him going back to India. So much for being peaceful.
• The term “bluewash” describes how companies pad their CSR profile by using their associations with the United Nations various agencies.
• Paul Newman was listed 91 in the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics 2008 because he donated 100 percent of post-tax profits and royalties from the sale of his “Newman’s Own” brand of food products totalling more than $250 million!
• Bill Gates, business leader and philanthropist earns US$250 every SECOND, that’s about US$20 Million a DAY and US$7.8 Billion a YEAR and if he were a country, he would be the 37th richest country on earth!
Did You Know These Art Facts?
Posted on 29. Jul, 2009 by admin in Did you Know
Did you know these art facts?
• Le Rêve (The Dream) by Pablo Picasso (1932) was owned by casino magnate Steve Wynn. In 2006 he agreed to sell the painting for $139 million, but accidentally put his elbow through the canvas the day before the sale was to be completed!
• Most artists are left handed.
• Art has surpassed the stock market in appreciation over the past twenty years.
• An art collector of the Indian born British sculptor Anish Kapoor was recently awarded £350,000 in damages after an art storage company mistook a work for rubbish and threw it away.
• A woman in France was arrested and charged for kissing a Cy Twombly painting worth more than 2 million dollars. She said she was overcome with passion and just couldn’t help herself.
• The Spanish / Mexican artist Santiago Sierra created a stir with his exhibition of human excrement at London’s Lisson Gallery. The 21 blocks of excrement each measure 215 x 75 x 20cm and was collected by faeces “scavengers” in New Delhi and Jaipur, India. Apparently he was making a smelly statement.
• The World’s Smallest Sculpture was created by Willard Wigan. He used rice or grains of sand and a surgical blade to create his “micro sculpture”. They’re so small that they can fit into the eye of a needle (see picture) and he uses the hair from flies as a paint brush to decorate them!