Pointless Facts Thread

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Bats are the only mammals that are able to fly. The "flying squirrel" can only do what the gliding opposum does — glide for short distances.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

According to a recent survey, 75 percent of people who play the car radio while driving also sing along with it.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Medical experts have observed that people who stutter rarely do when they are alone or talking to a pet.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The first inductees into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936 were Ty Cobb (center field), Walter Johnson (pitcher), Christy Mathewson (pitcher), Babe Ruth (right field), and Honus Wagner (short stop). They were selected by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Ninety-nine percent of all forms of life that have existed on Earth are now extinct.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Use of less fertilizer at precisely the right times can cut costs by up to 17 percent for farmers in developing countries and reduce damage to the environment.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

In 1912, French actress Sarah Bernhardt became the first great actress of the stage to appear in the new medium of films.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Silent film star Francis X. Bushman was the first film actor to be called "King of the Movies." That label would later be affixed to Clark Gable, where it has since remained.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Theda Bara was American cinema's first "vamp," and its first female sex symbol. Born Theodosia Goodman, the exotic actress was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Elmo Lincoln was filmdom's first Tarzan. Formerly an Arkansas policeman, bit actor Elmo Linkenhelt's shirt was partially torn off while filming a fight scene, revealing his muscular chest. Reportedly, director D.W. Griffith called him over and told him, "That's quite a chest you have there." Griffith modified his screen name to Elmo Lincoln and featured him in several of his films, including The Birth of a Nation. In 1918, Lincoln was given the title role in Tarzan of the Apes a few days after film production began. World War I had just begun, and the man first contracted to play the apeman -- Winslow Wilson, a husky actor and ukelele player -- unexpectedly quit and enlisted. Tarzan of the Apes was a box office hit, one of the first movies to bring in more than $1 million dollars.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The first film star to commit suicide during the height of their career was the lovely and popular actress Olive Thomas. The former Ziegfeld showgirl was the main star at Selznick Studios by age 20, and she was happily married to Jack Pickford, the successful actor-brother of Mary Pickford. In 1920, Thomas was found dead from an overdose of mercuric chloride in Paris. Her tragic death made headlines around the world. An investigation revealed her lurid private life, including drug addiction, which was far removed from the ingenue roles she believably portrayed on the screen.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Sterling Holloway was the first Hollywood actor drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. Actor James Garner was the first man from the state of Oklahoma drafted into the Korean War.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The first kiss in a Japanese film was finally allowed in Twenty-Year-Old Youth in 1946.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

James Dean was the first actor to be nominated for an Oscar posthumously in 1956. Dean was killed in an auto accident six months earlier, only a few days after he completed filming on Giant, the film for which he received his nomination. Dean did not win; Yul Brynner was the winner of the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the musical The King and I.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The 1987 Empire of the Sun was the first major Hollywood movie to be made in the People's Republic of China. This required long face-to-face negotiations that took about a year to complete.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The first television picture was broadcast in 1926 from Arlington, Virginia to Washington, D.C. The technological achievement was of a picture of a weather map.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, father of Candice Bergen, was the first president of the Television Academy.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

In 1950, the sitcom laugh track was introduced in the U.S. on "The Hank McCune Show"; that TV program was canceled during midseason.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The first televised tour of the White House, led by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and hosted by Charles Collingwood, was broadcast simultaneously by CBS and NBC in 1962. The tour was watched by an estimated 46,500,000 viewers, offering them their first opportunity to see many of the rooms of the President's home.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The Avengers, which aired in the United States on ABC from 1966 to 1969, was the first British show ever to air in a U.S. network's prime time fall schedule. The tongue-in-cheek spy show starred Patrick Macnee as John Steed, the urbane British undercover agent.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

As a college sophomore, Oprah Winfrey was the first African-American news co-anchor on a local U.S. TV station.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

In 1990, Upjohn ran the first TV commercial in the U.S. during which an actor said he had diarrhea.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

The first jukebox was installed at Palais Royal Hotel in San Francisco in 1899.

 

[Erik Magnus Lehnsherr]

In December 1925, American composer George Gershwin appeared as a soloist at a concert in New York's Carnegie Hall. He played his Concerto in F, the first jazz concerto for piano in musical history.