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149 short, true stories behind the things you use every day. Each one names its source.
In 1943 the US banned sliced bread.
Answer to read the story.For seven weeks, partly to save on wrapping. Read the story
In 1914 a cartoonist walked offstage into his own cartoon
In 1914 Winsor McCay went on stage with a whip and a film of Gertie, a dinosaur he had drawn by hand. She obeyed his orders, most of the time.
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The talkies began with a line Al Jolson had used for years
The Jazz Singer opened in New York on October 6, 1927. It was mostly a silent film with songs.
Homer's "D'oh!" came from a Laurel and Hardy villain
When Homer Simpson was still a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show, a script asked him for an "annoyed grunt." Dan Castellaneta, who voices him, answered with a long "d'ooooooh." He based it on Jimmy Finlayson, a Scottish actor in 33 Laurel and Hardy films.
Spock's salute began as a blessing Nimoy wasn't meant to see
In a 1967 episode of Star Trek, Leonard Nimoy gave Mr. Spock a greeting: one raised hand, the fingers split between the middle and ring fingers.
The first Oscar winners were announced three months early
The first Academy Awards dinner, on May 16, 1929, lasted 15 minutes. Nobody in the room had to wait for a result.
The Academy gave him an Oscar in case he lost, then he won
Harold Russell lost both hands in an Army training accident during World War II, and he was not an actor.
London's police lost a fight with the BBC over police boxes
London's Metropolitan Police designed the blue police box in 1929 and put up about a thousand of them.
A court ordered every copy of Nosferatu destroyed
Nosferatu (1922) was Dracula with the names changed, made without permission.
Most of the first projected cartoons ended up in the Seine
In 1892, three years before the Lumière brothers, Émile Reynaud began projecting hand-painted animated films for paying audiences at the Musée Grévin in Paris.
Television's first face belonged to a ventriloquist's dummy
On October 2, 1925, in a workshop in London's Soho, John Logie Baird got his television to show a face in shades of gray.
149 stories. Ten free a day.
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