Page 55 - The 'X' Zone Book of Triviology

o Jack Johnson won the first African American World Heavyweight Boxing Championship title in 1908 and he also invented the common household wrench. o Thomas Selfridge, a Wright Bros. test-flight passenger, was the first airplane fatality. o A fever that Florence Nightingale caught in the Crimean War left her a semi-invalid for life. o Bobby Fischer was the youngest international grand chess master from 1958 to 1991. o John Harvard didn’t found the college; he left it a library and it was named for him later. o Lee Wallace, best-selling author of Ben Hur was also a Civil War general and U.S. senator. o Waylon Jennings lost a coin toss for the last seat on Buddy Holly’s plane that crashed. o Van Gogh’s self-portrait shows a bandaged right ear - he painted a mirror image. o Queen Victoria was one of the first women to use chloroform during childbirth. o The comic strip character Popeye was created by Elzie Crisler Segar in 1929. o Teddy Roosevelt was saved from an assassin’s bullet by a thick speech in his jacket. o Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of the state of Israel after WWII. o Abandoned at birth by a midwife as stillborn, Pablo Picasso was revived by an uncle. o Josef Stalin originally studied to become a priest. o Catherine Parr was married twice before she wed Henry VIII. She wed a fourth time after he died. o Benito Mussolini’s straight-arm salute was derived from the Roman Emperor’s Roman Salute. o Chaucer, Rabelais, Mark Twain, and Ben Franklin all have written about flatulence. o In the early part of his career, pianist Liberace performed under the name Walter Busterkeys. o Author Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) wrote over 500 books in his lifetime. o First player to hit a home run the major leagues: Ross Barnes, in 1876. o The “S” in Ulysses S. Grant stood for nothing; his real name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. o Grant finished his memoirs on July 19 and died on July 23; the book sold 300,000 copies. o The first woman in space was Valentina V Tereshkova. o Peter the Great, czar of Russia, practiced dentistry on his subjects. o Muppet Animal was modeled after Who drummer Keith Moon. o Eleanor of Aquitaine brought 300 women along on the second Crusade with hubby Louis VII. o First attempt on Martin Luther King’s life; 1958, a woman stabbed him in the chest. o Bradley, Voorhis, and Day owned an underwear company now known by their initials: BVD. o Conchita Cintron, first female professional bullfighter, mastered 1,200 bulls starting at age 12. o John Enders cultivated polio in a test tube and he - not Jonas Salk - got a Nobel prize for his work. o Chuck Berry’s famous duck walk came from his attempts to hide his wrinkled suit. o Margaret Sanger was against American Birth Control League’s name change to Planned Parenthood. o Eli Whitney created interchangeable parts to fill a large army order for muskets in 1797. o Playwright Tennessee Williams died when he accidentally swallowed a plastic bottle cap. o Johnny Weissmuller, TV’s Tarzan, was the first to break the 1-minute mark in the 100-meter swim. o Oppenheimer was classed a security risk in the McCarthy era for opposing the nuclear arms race. o Mike Tyson won $20 million in 91 seconds when he defeated Michael Spinks in 1988. o Astronauts gave Walter Cronkite an honorary astronaut title for his 24-hour Apollo 11 coverage. o Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung introduced the concepts of extrovert and introvert personalities. o First record to sell as million copies: Whispering by bandleader Paul Whiteman and orchestra. o The inventor of radio, Marconi, opened the first radio broadcasting station in Writtle, England. o Lionel Rothschild, House of Commons, was the first Jewish member of Parliament in 1858. o Lucy Luciano was arrested 25 times but convicted only once. o Mary Lyon founded the first women’s college in America, Mount Holyoke Seminary, in 1837.