Topical Tens: Top Facts

Presenting the favourite 120 things I learned from researching this blog during 2025:

January

The word “sleuth”, meaning detective, derives from “slough dogs” a term used for bloodhounds used to track down criminals in 14^th century Scotland.
Virginia Woolf once accidentally baked her wedding ring into a suet pudding.
The title of the novel The Maltese Falcon was inspired by the tribute the Knights of Malta were required to pay Charles I of Spain in exchange for the island – one Maltese falcon per year.
Telly Savalas was Jennifer Aniston’s godfather.
In 1989 a 74-year-old retired vicar admitted beating his wife to death with a radio because she wouldn’t let him listen to Desert Island Discs.
UK prime minister Lloyd George had an affair with his daughter’s teacher, Frances Stevenson and later married her. The letters they wrote to each other were published under the title My Darling Pussy.
Puccini also pitched the music for the Te Deum at the end of Act 1 of Tosca to match the great bell of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Queen Elizabeth II was a big fan of bagpipes and would be woken each morning by her personal piper who would play outside her window. Prince Philip, however, hated the instrument.
The extras in the flooded city scenes in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis were 500 children from Berlin's poorer districts who had to stand in cold water for the 14 days it took to shoot the scene.
John Major’s chosen luxury on Desert Island Discs was a full-size replica of the Oval cricket ground, and a bowling machine.

February

During filming of Groundhog Day, Bill Murray was bitten by the groundhog and had to have anti-rabies injections.
Roddy McDowall used to drive home with his Planet of the Apes make-up still on, shocking other drivers on the freeway.
The stems of Japanese knotweed are edible and taste like rhubarb.
Jerry Springer was born in Highgate Tube station. His mother was sheltering in the station from an air raid at the time.
Geordi La Forge’s visor was improvised on the first day of filming using an automotive air filter and a hair band.
Red cabbage juice can be used as a homemade pH indicator, turning red in acid and green/yellow in alkaline solutions.
Actor Lee Marvin claims that he learned to act while in the military, by pretending not to be afraid during combat.
Disney Cruise Line ships use the first seven notes of When You Wish upon a Star as their signal horns.
Johnny Cash was the first American to learn of the death of Joseph Stalin. He was in the Air Force at the time, intercepting and deciphering messages in Morse code from radio transmissions from Soviet Union aircraft.
Pretty in Pink was filmed at same Los Angeles high school where Grease (1978) was made.

March

The oldest four performing Osmond Brothers auditioned to play some of the children in The Sound of Music.
Simpsons creator Matt Groening was a fan of Beavis and Butt-head. He claimed he liked the show because it took “the heat off Bart Simpson being responsible for the downfall of western civilization.”
Alexander Graham Bell refused to have a telephone in his house because he considered it a distraction from his work.
There’s more gold in a ton of mobile phones than there is in a ton of Gold mine ore.
Farmers put earmuffs on calves during the winter to protect them from the harsh cold and prevent frostbite.
It’s been said that all the gold ever mined would fit into 3 Olympic sized swimming pools. All the platinum ever mined would fill just one of those pools to ankle depth.
Ovid wrote a poem called the Medicamina Faciei, which was about women's beauty treatments.
There is a name for the colour you see when you first close your eyes or turn lights off. It’s called eigengrau.
Sailors of old had a superstition that storms were the result of someone shutting a cat up indoors on shore. They also believed that the ship’s cat could start storms through magic stored in its tail.
In 1991, Donald Trump won a Worst Supporting Actor Razzie for playing himself in Ghosts Can't Do It.

April

Alec Guinness is an anagram of "genuine class".
The name of the character Sam Gamgee in Lord of the Rings was taken from a brand of surgical dressing.
The sound of the introduction to Roxanne by the Police is Sting accidentally sitting on an upright piano keyboard, having thought the lid was closed. The sound of his bum hitting the keys and his laughter was mixed into the intro.
Since 2013, fares on Samoa Air are determined by how much the passenger and their luggage weigh. The fatter you are, the more expensive it is to fly.
A common superstition from Romania is that if you play with knives, your guardian angel will run away.
In cricket, A score of 111 is sometimes called a Nelson, after Admiral Nelson, who allegedly had "One Eye, One Arm and One Leg" at the end of his life. This is in fact untrue as Nelson never lost a leg.
Roy Orbison’s natural hair colour was platinum blond.
Daniel Defoe worked as a spy in Scotland, sounding out what the people there thought of the union with England and report back to King William.
Guglielmo Marconi was a direct descendant of John Jameson, the founder of whiskey distillers Jameson & Sons.
The Wright Brothers missed out on the Physics Nobel Prize in 1909 because of public worries about the safety of flying machines.

May

Jerome K Jerome’s book, Three Men in a Boat, was actually inspired by his honeymoon, which he spent on a boat on the Thames with his new wife.
Orson Welles was born on the day that Babe Ruth hit his very first home run.
Because Citizen Kane was apparently about the life of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst, and Hearst took exception to it, Heasrt’s newspapers were banned from mentioning him unless it was in the context of Welles being “a menace to American motherhood, freedom of speech and assembly, and the pursuit of happiness.”
A man was once arrested underwater off the shores of Guernsey. He was illegally gathering controlled seafood, ormers, underwater and was apprehended by a policeman in scuba gear.
Richard Feynman amused himself at the secret laboratory at Los Alamos by investigating the combination locks used by the other physicists. He found that they left the lock combinations on the factory settings, wrote the combinations down, or used easily guessable combinations like dates.
The young man who appears on the cover of Quadrophenia didn’t show up for one shooting session because he was appearing in court, charged with stealing a bus.
Douglas Fairbanks Sr fluffed his first line on stage. He should have said "Stand back, my lord, and let the coffin pass," but it came out as "and let the passon cough."
Circus owner P.T. Barnum took 21 elephants over Brooklyn Bridge in May 1884, to demonstrate to the public that it was safe.
During the second world war, patriots in Norway would wear paper clips in their lapels as a symbol of resistance to the German occupiers when badges or pins were banned.
Al Jolson failed a screen test to play himself in Jolson Sings Again.

June

Lacrosse is based on a Native American game called “baggataway”. In 1763, Ojibwas used the game to capture a fort. They invited the British soldiers at Fort Michilimackinac (now Mackinaw City, Michigan) to watch a game. As the soldiers were distracted by the game, the players worked their way closer and closer to the fort’s entrance, burst in and massacred the troops.
When Arthur Askey first appeared on TV in the 1930s, the resolution was so low that he had to wear heavy make up so viewers could recognise him.
The model for John Everett Millais’s Ophelia, Elizabeth Siddal, had to lie in a bath of water with candles burning underneath to keep the water warm.
The little boy in the Pears soap advert, William Milbourne James, grew up to become an admiral in the Royal Navy, but was known by the nickname “Bubbles” all his life.
As history progresses, Edmund Blackadder’s position in society decreases. He starts off as a prince in the first series, is a lord in the second, a royal attendant in Blackadder the Third, and finally an army Captain in Blackadder Goes Forth.
There’s a theory that tapas was used as a tool by the Spanish Inquisition. As many of the dishes contain pork or shellfish, they could tell who was Jewish because they’d refuse to eat it.
In the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier The list of things Captain America has written, that he wants to check out in modern times, varies according to which country the film is shown in. The US list includes includes I Love Lucy, Steve Jobs, and disco, in France it includes the 1998 World Cup, The Fifth Element, and Daft Punk, and in the UK The Beatles, 1966 world cup final, Sean Connery, and Nirvana the band.
Alan Turing never fixed his bicycle chain, but rather learned to predict when it was going to fall off so he could stop riding and put it back on.
The term Big Bang Theory was actually coined by Sir Fred Hoyle as a derision because he didn’t believe in it.
The astronauts who went to the moon left 12 cameras up there. They only brought back the film. The cameras were jettisoned to make room for moon rock.

July

Whittier High School, the actual school in California which played the role of Hill Valley High School in Back to the Future was the school Richard Nixon attended.
William Shakespeare used to smoke nutmeg.
Oscar Hammerstein II is the only person called Oscar ever to win an Oscar.
Scientists at Leeds University have been looking at ways to make sustainable and non-toxic hair dyes from the blackcurrant skins thrown away by the Ribena factory.
Tattoo ink in ancient Rome contained pine bark, tarnished brass, vinegar, vitriol, leek juice, insect eggs and urine.
In the 18^th century US sailors would have proof of their citizenship tattooed on themselves in order to avoid being press-ganged into the British Navy.
The Mayans performed ritual enemas.
Alexandre Dumas was a chronic insomniac, and went to the doctor about it. The doctor prescribed an apple, to be eaten every day at 7:00 AM under the Arch of Triumph in Paris.
The various locations around the world which appear in the film Help! were chosen mainly because The Beatles had never been to them and wanted an excuse to visit.
According to the Daily Express, the M6 toll road was built on two-and-a-half million copies of pulped Mills & Boon novels.

August

In her first film appearance, Betty Boop had the body of a woman and the head of a French poodle.
The venue for the Woodstock festival was a working dairy farm, so there were cows wandering around and mingling with the audience.
One of the models of the submarine in Fantastic Voyage was left by an open window and was stolen by a crow.
Medical schools, at least as late as the 1980s, showed clips from Fantastic Voyage to illustrate various concepts in human anatomy, physiology, and immunology.
HP Lovecraft’s demonic night gaunts may have been inspired by his aunts wearing mourning dress after the death of his grandmother when he was five.
Shakespeare’s original Globe theatre was destroyed by fire in 1613. A contemporary report said the only casualty was a man whose breeches caught fire, but bystanders quickly dealt with the situation by throwing a bottle of ale over him.
Legend has it that Shakespeare himself was among a bunch of actors who, armed with daggers and cudgels, stole the materials from their theatre which had been destroyed by the landlord at dead of night, in order to build the Globe in Southwark.
Nitroglycerin, an ingredient used to make dynamite, is a waste product of soap production.
Dorothy Gale’s slippers are silver in the book Wizard of Oz was based on. They were red in the movie in order to show off the Technicolor technology.
The dog playing Toto in Wizard of Oz was paid more than twice the weekly salary than the humans playing the Munchkins got paid.

September

Francis Darwin, son of Charles, hypothesised that teasels were actually carnivorous plants, trapping insects in the cup like arrangement of leaves in order to digest them.
In early drafts of the game, Sonic the Hedgehog was a rabbit.
When he wasn’t composing or playing music, Dvořák was a bit of a train nerd. When he was travelling to Prague and Vienna, he would meticulously record the details of all his train journeys, and would ask his students to tell him all about any train journeys they’d been on.
The Hopi and other Pueblo tribes believed roadrunners were sacred and capable of warding off evil spirits. The birds have X shaped footprints, which was believed to be confusing to evil spirits because it’s hard to tell from the footprints which way the bird was going.
Thing, the disembodied hand in the Addams Family had a name: Thing T. Thing. The T stands for "Thing".
It was once suggested that Britain’s involvement in the second world war was down to the curse of Tutankhamun’s tomb. This was because two playable trumpets found there were used in a concert broadcast on the BBC World Service in April 1939.
In Cork, Ireland, there is a church clock tower known as the "Four-Faced Liar." This is because each of the clocks often display a different time. This is because of the strong winds in the city affecting the hands on the clocks differently.
Barnes Wallis first tried out the idea for his bouncing bomb by bouncing marbles across a water tub in his back garden.
Meatloaf claimed that he once picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be Charles Manson.
Almost every episode of Cheers has someone peeling a lemon.

October

In 1984, Bloomingdale’s sold bags of ice chips from a 100,000 year old glacier in Greenland. “Glazonice” would set you back $7 a bag. The ice was marketed as the oldest and purest you could find anywhere on Earth.
The lead vocal of Queen’s We are the Champions includes a C5 both belted and in falsetto.
Earle Dickson, the man who invented sticking plasters, came up with the idea of making a bandage that his wife could apply herself when she cut herself while cooking.
Not only did Ramsay MacDonald lose his seat in Parliament as a result of opposing Britain’s involvement in the first world war, but his golf club threw him out as well.
King John of England was married twice and both his wives were called Isabella.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge served in the Royal Dragoons under the name Silas Tomkyn Comberbache.
Legendary soccer player Pelé only played for three teams: the Brazil national team, Santos FC, and New York Cosmos.
A civil war in Nigeria was halted by both sides in 1967 so that an exhibition football match featuring Pelé could go ahead.
At the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V’s archers created a storm of arrows so thick it’s said to have blocked out the light of the sun.
The mission patch for Apollo 13 included a black cat.

November

Early cash registers were considered luxury items and were designed by Tiffany and Co.
People with red hair are more likely to be left-handed. They are also more attractive to bees, and nobody knows why.
According to Theophilus Presbyter, the recipe for turning copper into gold was the ashes of a basilisk mixed with the blood of a red haired man.
If 313 people are chosen at random, then the probability that at least five of them will share the same birthday is greater than 50%.
If you place a piece of your fingernail in Coco Cola, after 4 days it will dissolve.
There’s a street in Prague which is so narrow they’ve installed traffic lights to avoid embarrassing encounters with other pedestrians going the other way.
The official inauguration of Charles Bridge in Prague took place on 9 July 1357, at 5:31am, a time specifically chosen by King Charles IV because it was a palindrome (1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1) which represented cosmic harmony.
According to ancient Chinese texts, people who look after silkworms are banned from eating or even touching chicory.
Rope is weakened by as much as 60% when you tie a knot in it. The knot becomes the rope’s weakest point.
In California, San José laws limit the number of animals owners can have, which is five licensed animals total with no more than three dogs.

December

Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus was so fat that a semi-circle had to be cut out of his dining-table to accommodate him.
Dick Van Dyke’s first stage appearance was as an infant, playing Baby Jesus in a church nativity play. He cried all the way through it.
Dick Van Dyke’s star on the Hollywood walk of fame showed his name wrong when unveiled. It appeared as Vandyke. He laughed and drew a slash between the two parts of his name with a pen.
The fire scene in Gone with the Wind was created by the studio burning down old lots they had no further use for and wanted to get rid of.
Flowerpot men Bill and Ben’s hats were made from cupcake holders.
Felix Mendelssohn, who wrote the tune to Hark the Herald Angels Sing, thought his melody was suitable for any national or “merry” subject – but never for a hymn or sacred song.
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was almost called Reginald, but the name was rejected for sounding too British.
A Doctor Who Christmas special featured a live-action Rudolph who Santa could park like a car and turn his nose off.
Bernard Cribbins had a strict rule that whenever he finished filming a film or TV show, he would take himself off on a fishing holiday.
Cosmetics entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden’s real name was Florence Nightingale Graham.

I write fiction, too! My characters include some British superheroes and a psychic detective. You never know, your new favourite could be here! You won't know unless you look...