Page 56 - The 'X' Zone Book of Triviology

o The wreckage of Glenn Miller’s plane was never found. o King Tut’s third inner coffin was made of about 243 lb. (110 kg) of gold. o JFK was the first Catholic elected as U.S. president. o Most people know about Profiles in Courage, but JFK also wrote Why England Slept. o Omar Bradley was the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. o The only horse to defeat Man O’ War was named Upset. o James Madison was the only president to face enemy fire while in office during the War of 182. o The first helicopter flight was in 1921 by French aviator Etienne Oehmichen. o Coco Chanel introduced her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, in France in 1921. o The first U.S. patent issued was in 1790 for a process to make potash. o Fanny Wright became the first female public speaker on public affairs in America. o A coffee pot with a sieve to strain the grounds was not invented until 1806. o Cyrus McCormack’s reaper took almost 30 years to catch on. o The first typewriter was produced by gun makers E. Remington & Sons in 1874. o Derek Walcott was the first African American writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature. o Future publishing greats Simon & Schuster published the first crossword puzzle collection in 1924. o Cruciverbalist: a crossword puzzle devotee. o Popular pin-up girls were used as the model for Tinker Bell in the movie Peter Pan. o Gandhi began wearing his loincloth as an act of solidarity with hard-pressed textile workers. o Alice Paul founded the first female political party in the U.S called the National Woman’s Party. o Peter the Great of Russia taxed Russians that wore beards. o Actors buried in Arlington Cemetery: Fay Bainter, Audie Murphy, and Lee Marvin. o Boxing champ Joe Louis is buried at Arlington Cemetery. o Pavarotti likes to have a bent nail in his pocket for good luck on stage. o The first published drawing by Charles Schulz was in a 1937 Ripley’s Believe It Or Not cartoon. o Liu Ch’ung, a Chinese man, had two sets of pupils in each of his eyes. th o Through the early 20 century, boys wore dresses often up to age 5. o The Chinese invented the first waterproof umbrella using wax and lacquer. o Shirley Temple received 135,000 presents on her eighth birthday. o Queen Elizabeth I of England suffered from anthophobia (fear of roses). o After Larry Fine’s stroke in 1970 The Three Stooges never performed again. o Bill Gates is richer than the poorest 114 million people in the U.S. combined. o Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists, had her teeth pulled for refusing to renounce Christianity. th o Leonardo da Vinci made a sketch for contact lenses in the 15 century. o Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., discovered the adrenal gland. o Marian Anderson was the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera. o Freud pioneered the use of cocaine as a local anesthetic when he was a neurologist. o Freud’s praise of cocaine to treat minor pains resulted in a wave of cocaine addiction in Europe. o There really was a Dr. Scholl: William Scholl was a podiatrist who became a shoemaker. o James H. Salisbury, a red-meat advocate, gave his name to Salisbury steak. o Maya Ling Yin, a 21-year-old Yale architectural student, designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. o The almost 20-foot-tall female atop the U.S. Capitol is named the Statue of Freedom. o The lights on the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed when Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra died. o Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to fly in an airplane. o Wilbur and Orville Wright had two other brothers: Lorin and Reuchlin.