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 Displaying Irony Anecdotes: 1192 Found

Turnaround Reply
Many novelists, seduced by the lure of Hollywood, have come to regret the decisi...

Blind Luck
One day during rush hour, George Shearing (who had been blind since birth) found...

G-Spot
One day Robert Schimmel's wife told him about a hot book about finding a woman's...

Tickled Pinkerton
Dashiell Hammett's eight years working as a Pinkerton detective (between 1915 an...

Quick Tillis
"James (Quick) Tillis, the young heavyweight [the first man to last ten rounds w...

Yoshida
One day in the late 1930s, the Japanese ambassador to England (and future prime ...

Wha!?
For the Millennium issue of Rolling Stone, the magazine's editors asked J...

William Brodie: The Drop
William Brodie, a respected figure in Edinburgh, lived a double life as a highly...

Cavalleria Rusticana
One day an organ-grinder, stationed outside Pietro Mascagni's apartment, began p...

Holy Irony
Seconds after the kickoff in a memorable soccer match between Corinthians and Ri...

Eternal Flame
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was once invited to attend a solemn ceremony...

Sorry Kipling
In 1889, the editor of the San Francisco Examiner, having published one a...

Paul McCartney: Vegetables
One morning in Los Angeles, "Beatles Breakfast Show" DJ Chris Carter asked liste...

Punctured Ego?
While cruising in his brand new $200,000 Mercedes-Benz armoured car in August 20...

Whewell
Such was William Whewell's remarkable breadth of knowledge that he was able to d...

Honor System
In a bid to promote Raoul Walsh's 1917 prison drama ...

Reds
One day during the production of Reds, the story of Marxist journalist Jo...

World Gone Crazy
"You know the world is going crazy," Chris Rock declared in 2003, "when the best...

Shopping Spree
"I was walking down Madison Avenue," Tony Randall once recalled, "and I saw a ve...

Lord Somebody
"As he was driving back to his mansion, Pickfair, Douglas Fairbanks saw an Engli...

Sarcoma?
Evelyn Waugh was no fan of Winston Churchill's obnoxious journalist son, Randolp...

Sophie's Choice
One day during the production of Sophie's Choice, Meryl Streep was requir...

Book of Heroic Failures
In 1979, Stephen Pile, founder of the "Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain,"...

Jeremy Sumpter's Growth Spurt
When Jeremy Sumpter grew eight inches during the production of P. J. Hogan's ...

Pancho Villa, Inc.
"In 1914, a Hollywood motion picture company signed a contract with Mexican revo...

Matchbox! Yeah!
In 1996, Matchbox 20 played a concert with Christian acoustic rockers Jars of Cl...

Michael Vick: Two Weapons
Like many football players, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was not not...

No Mick Jagger
Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones once slept with a pair of groupies. "He's g...

Alan Hinkes: Chapati Blooper
"After great expense and preparation, British climber Alan Hinkes attempted to s...

Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike ...
Charlie Chaplin once entered a Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike Contest in Monte Carlo...

Putin's Bus
During the CIS Summit in 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin used a luxury Ge...

Barbarians
"I once talked to an old cannibal," the famed anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowsk...

Nuttall
"Thomas Nuttall was a pioneer botanist whose main field of study was the flora o...

Cyberonic?
"Cyberspace addiction theorist" Kimberly Young - whose typology of cyber addicti...

Prince Chegodieff
During the production of Rasputin and the Empress MGM, seeking to avoid a...

Colt Murder
In 1841, Samuel Colt - the inventor of the six-shooter and founder of the firear...

Brief Reminder
While reading the newspaper one day, Rudyard Kipling came across a curious annou...

Coxey's Army
In 1893, Jacob Sechler Coxey, mayor of Massillon, Ohio, and some 20,000 men and ...

Olympic Scandal
At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Dora Ratjen competed in the women's high jump. I...

Serendippable!
One day in 1853, an annoying guest at a resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, co...

Mike Tyson: Man of the Cloth?
Prior to his bout with heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis, Mike Tyson held a memorab...

Phool
"Joseph Parker stepped into the pulpit of the City Temple in London for his Thur...

An Alan Smithee Film
Until the ruse became on open secret, the Director's Guild of America (DGA) ofte...

No-Hitter
Kurtwood Smith (best known for his role on "That '70s Show") once gave an interv...

Hard Disk
One day in May 1999 Ronald Thiemann, the dean of Harvard's Divinity School, call...

Roosevelt's Inauguration
One day in 1937, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was amused to receive a curious invit...

British Rail
In July 1978, Sir Peter Parker set off for a meeting with Cumbria County Council...

Sweet Georgia
In 1732, the English general and philanthropist James Edward Oglethorpe secured ...

George Hamilton: Rolling On
In 1957, George Hamilton arrived in Hollywood with about $90 in his pocket. In o...

50-50 Proposition
While lecturing on probability at Warwick University one day in October 1972, Je...

Bye Bye Birdie
Shortly after Charles Nelson Reilly struck it rich with his role in ...

Selective Amnesia?
In 1937, International chess master George Koltanowksi set a world record for bl...

Arabs and Jews
One day in 1948, Warren Austin, America's Ambassador to the United Nations, urge...

Avian Irony
David Frost's most difficult interview? "Perhaps it was the time I interviewed w...

Sic Semper Tyranis!
On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth famously interrupted a perormance of "My ...

Amy C
"Amy Carter brought an assignment home one Friday night while her father [Jimmy ...

Bitter Harvest
Barbara Bush once accompanied her husband, President George Bush, on a state vis...

The Eagles: Like Hell
Shortly after the Eagles split up in 1981, Glenn Frey was asked when the band mi...

Billion Dollar Question
In order to circumvent laws barring businesses from owning property out of state...

Bone Head?
In the run-up to the Gulf War in March 2003, the Pentagon announced that it woul...

Jet Magazine
On November 1st, 1951, Jet magazine was founded by John H. Johnson to cel...

AC/DC
Thomas Edison not only invented the light bulb and the phonograph; he also gave ...

Distinguished British Journ...
One day in May 1986, the distinguished British journalist Henry Porter revealed ...

Petty Cash
Commodore Gordon Bennett, the son of New York Herald founder James Gordon...

Bent on Traveling (long)
In August 1975, Michael Murphy left his home in Stevenage bent on traveling arou...

Hard Work
Clarence Darrow was once interviewed for a magazine article on prominent men and...

Mad Ladie
Because her prophecies were deemed a danger during the troubled religious climat...

Wallflowers
Fiercely independent, Jakob Dylan determined early on to make his own name rathe...

Dionne Warwick: Psychic Friend
Over the course of her long career, Dionne Warwick pursued a number of business ...

Pinhead
"Common sense has led more than one person astray. Sir Francis Galton thought th...

Explorers in London
Three legendary explorers were once invited to dine at the Geographical Club in ...

Catherine Zeta-Jones: Thank...
Shortly after her marriage to Michael Douglas (in November 2000), Catherine Zeta...

Petard? (long)
Thomas Midgley's inquiring mind was a mixed blessing at best. According to biogr...

Wayward Bus
One day several thousand copies of John Steinbeck's latest novel were destroyed ...

Thomas Edison: Cabbage Rolls
To his great consternation, Thomas Edison often found visitors in his office hel...

Mum's the Word
One morning while attending Timbertops School in Australia, Prince Charles atten...

Phone Booth
Phone Booth is a taut Hitchcockian thriller which takes place in one loca...

Tom Cruise: How Now?
"You're too intense and you're not pretty enough for television," Tom Cruise was...

Bobby Leech: Daredevil
Despite breaking "nearly every bone" in his body, in 1911 Bobby Leech survived a...

Bare Necessity?
Many visitors to Picasso's home in the south of France were astonished to find t...

Two Moons
In 1610, Galileo used an anagram to announce his discovery of what he believed t...

Future Champion?
When black fighters first began to dominate the heavyweight boxing circuit, many...

Prodigal Grandson
Queen Victoria once received a letter from a prodigal grandson requesting an adv...

Metaxas
While visiting a Greek air force base, General Metaxas was invited to test a new...

City Of Fear
In Januray 2002, Jacques van Gompel, the mayor of Charleoi, Belgium, hosted a de...

Mario Cuomo: Most Decisive
Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo was once asked by a reporter about his inte...

Paderewski
The pianist Merit Rosenthal once went to hear the famed Paderewski play in Londo...

Lunatic
After the great German naturalist and explorer Friedrich Humboldt expressed his ...

Generosity
Robert F. Kennedy "had the arrogance of people born rich and brought up spoiled....

Crumby Astronaut
After returning from the first-ever multi-manned space flight (with fellow astro...

Eiffel Tower
During William Morris's last visit to Paris, he spent a great deal of time eatin...

Winter Guests
Fortunately the debut screening of The Winter Guest was not cursed with t...

Ironic?
"An old man turned ninety-eight, he won the lottery and died the next day. It's ...

Miss Deeds?
With Winona Ryder facing charges of shoplifting and vandalism, many observers fo...

Blood and Dust
Robert Fitzgerald, who often worried that his translations of such ancient class...

Chidchob on Drugs
During a meeting in August 2002, a veteran member of the Thai government's budge...

Jon Stewart: K Word
"Alka Seltzer is funny. You say 'Alka Seltzer' and you get a laugh... Words with...

Village Hypocrite
One day while campaigning for the U.S. Senate (in February 2000), Hillary "It Ta...

Only Yogi Berra...
One day in 1956, Yogi Berra was informed that a Jew named Robert Briscoe had bee...

Louis Untermeyer: Speaker's...
Louis Untermeyer once returned his speaker's fee to a small group in obvious nee...

Production Code
One day Will Hays, the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributor...

Tricky Proposition
In March 2003, with an Anglo-America invasion of Iraq on the horizon, Dan Rather...

Oscar Glory
As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan awarded the best picture ...

Sandra Bullock: Miss Haps
In March 2001, Sandra Bullock attended the London premiere of Donald Petrie's ...

Omelette
"Many years ago," Calvin Trillin once recalled, "when a friend in England began ...

Fat Man
In 1975, George Plimpton, a longtime pyrotechnics enthusiast, unveiled a 720 pou...

Alfred Packer Memorial
In 1977, Agriculture Secretary Robert Bergland unveiled the Alfred Packer Memori...

Lawford & Son
One day in the 1960s, the NYPD received a call that Peter Lawford's son was stan...

Insomnia
One day while Ronald Knox was suffering from a serious bout of insomnia, he was ...

Coffee Means Sex?
Maxfield Parrish, who specialized in painting nudes, was naturally accustomed to...

Mona Lisa
One day in 1911, an Italian house painter named Vincenzo Peruggia, angered by in...

British Marine
While serving in the British merchant marine during World War I, Herbert Marshal...

Perfectly Coenical
The Coen brothers, famed for their black humor (exemplified by such films noir a...

All in the Family
Jerry Springer, the king of daytime talk show sleaze, once hosted an episode ent...

Tigers Trade
Bob James was once traded from the Montreal Expos to the Detroit Tigers for a pl...

We Love You CONA!
While hosting “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” one evening, Conan was amused to l...

Diva's Playground
In a bid to improve her image as a self-centered diva one year, Diana Ross held ...

Thanks a Million!
Because he was unable, for legal reasons, to take his Spanish royalties out of S...

Taxi Driver
Scheduled to address the nation one day, Winston Churchill, running unusually la...

Pope's Fiat
"The Pope's new Fiat, which can withstand direct machine gun fire, was designed ...

Triers
As the Allies advanced into Germany at the end of World War II, General Patton r...

Absent-minded Professor
While attending a dinner party with professor Irwin Edman one evening, the publi...

Pauli Effect in Action
It was a standing joke among Wolfgang Pauli's colleagues that the famed theoreti...

Hancock & Barnard
"It is 1958. It is also Soho, and the area's resident wit and prime soak Mr Jeff...

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Body...
Arnold Schwarzenegger biographer George Butler once recalled a conversation he h...

New and Improved
At the Comdex Spring 1998 Convention, Bill Gates unveiled a "new and improved" W...

Name-Dropper
"Norman St. John-Stevas, the British arts minister, broke off during a speech to...

"Baby Doc" Hypocrisy
Like many tyrants, Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier insisted tha...

Fox News Crawl
In October 2003, "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening was threatened with a defamati...

Ludacris!
In 2002, foul-mouthed rapper Ludacris was peeved to learn that conservative pund...

Marilyn Manson: Corrupting ...
During the production of Party Monster, Marilyn Manson asked former child...

Pat Robertson & Hurricane G...
In 1985, with Hurricane Gloria headed toward the east coast, televangelist Pat R...

David Bolt: Authors' Handbook
"The literary agent David Bolt was interviewed on radio about his just-published...

Kiefer Sutherland: Good Sam...
One day in October 2002, Kiefer Sutherland stopped his car at the side of the st...

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Man ...
In October 2002, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned the Ferrari Spider which he had ...

Keith Richards: German Tour
During a concert one evening, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards slipped on...

Arnold Bennett: Proof
In 1931, the English writer and theater critic Arnold Bennett died in Paris. The...

Willie Barcena: Homeboy Tito
"My homeboy Tito was always trying to get me to join a gang," Willie Barcena onc...

Chuck Barris: Popsicle Twins
"The limits [imposed by censors on 'The Gong Show'] were ridiculous," Chuck Barr...

Harrison Ford: Harrison's Scar
The famous scar on Harrison Ford's chin was the product of a car accident. It ha...

Goussein Khamdoulaev: EU Ti...
While performing in Folkestone, England in 2004, Moscow State Circus star Gousse...

Franz Ferdinand: Contraband
In August, 2004, Alex Kapranos and his Franz Ferdinand bandmates were stopped on...

Edolphus Towns: Gun Report
In November 2003, a discussion of New York State Representative Edolphus Towns's...

Joyce Hopkirk: Piss-Up
"Joyce Hopkirk's career as woman's editor of the Daily Mirror is fondly r...

Robert Atkins: Atkins Diet
In 2004, militant vegans obtained the death certificate of Robert Atkins, the do...

Country Bumpkin
Arnold Bennett once received a letter from a woman begging him to help her becom...

Mutual Admiration Society?
When fellow artists Amedeo Modigliani and Maurice Utrillo first met, each paid t...

Crime Fighter
Robert Barbers fame as a crime fighter led to numerous medals and other honors, ...

Al Locked Up? (long)
Milton Berle's romance with Joyce Mathews (soon to be his first wife) heated up ...

Wayans Family
Damon Wayans' father (the patriarch of the famed Wayans family) once worked as a...

Groucho Marxist?
The noted humorist Robert Benchley once applied for a bank loan - and was horrif...

Elephant Man?
In the battle of the Wilderness during the Civil War, General John Sedgwick led ...

Griffonage
New York Tribune founder Horace Greeley, famed for his illegible handwrit...

Richard Harries: Kassam!
In 2001, Richard Harries (the Bishop of Oxford) visited Oxford United's new Kass...

Conspiracy Theory
Lawrence Wright once wrote a piece on Dallas for The New Yorker: "Dallas ...

Amtrak Sunset (long)
While researching an article on the so-called "land-cruise business" in 2002, Jo...

Russian Censor
"When I was a foreign correspondent in Russia," Harry Greenwall once recalled, "...

Beach Buggy
While visiting Queensland one day in March 2002, Jenson Button decided to take a...

Deadly Falls
In July 1911, famed stuntman Bobby Leach went over Niagara Falls in a specially ...

Dickie Redux
Late in the 1987 season, the Chicago Cubs traded Dickie Noles to the Detroit Tig...

Alfred Packer Grill
In 1977, the United States Department of Agriculture dedicated its Washington ca...

Sick Building Syndrome
In the early 1970s, Vice President Spiro Agnew brokered a deal to headquarter a ...

Phone Master
At the turn of the millennium, legendary hacker Calvin Cantrell earned $9,000 se...

Bobbies on the Beat
"After making an impassioned plea for more bobbies on the beat, Martin Thomas, S...

Norris Chuckles?
Having opened several martial arts schools in Torrance, California, Chuck Norris...

Robert Flaherty: Celluloid ...
As an explorer for Sir William Mackenzie's Canadian railroad, [legendary documen...

Ernest Hemingway: Hemingway...
In 1992, Ernest Hemingway's sons (John, Patrick and Gregory) formed Hemingway Lt...

Pardon?
One day Frederick the Great conducted a tour of inspection of a prison in Berlin...

Pray for Rain
In June 2001, after weeks of drought, Louisiana governor Mike Foster asked his c...

Forrestal's Conspiracy Theory
In 1949, Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, frustrated with bureaucratic resi...

Steve Spurrier: Good Answer
Legendary Washington Redskins coach Steve Spurrier was a member of the hapless 1...

Hearing Aid
"Grandfather bought a brand-new hearing aid," Frank Muir once reported. "'It's s...

Flattery
Famed violinist Jascha Heifetz once told his enthusiastic new secretary that he ...

Astonishing Ending?
After a long bout with multiple sclerosis, Sydney Omarr, the world's most widely...

17.5% Moron?
In 2002, Sir Nicholas Montagu appeared on a BBC-TV quiz show ("University Challe...

Cape Fear
Very early in her acting career, Reese Witherspoon auditioned for a role in Mart...

MAN-9000
One day Chad Varah, having decided to create a telephone counselling service (Th...

Comic Opera
Hillary Rodham Clinton once ridiculed U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William R...

You Say.. Tomatoes!?
David Frost once interviewed Baldur von Schirach, the former head of the Hitler ...

Reverse Psychology
"As physics professor at Adelaide University in Australia, Sir Kerr Grant used t...

Limp
Lloyd George's relationship with Lord Curzon was often frought with disaffection...

Jack Palance: Hired Gun
In 1953, Jack Palance won an Oscar nomination for his role as hired gun-slinger ...

Nicolas Poussin: Serendipity
One day in his studio Nicolas Poussin, infuriated by his inability to produce a ...

Central Misperception
Leon Trotsky, who spent much of his time during World War I playing chess in Vie...

Bucking Bronko
Even among foolball players, Bronko Nagurski was noted for his incredible streng...

Pyrrhic Victory
A formidable and courageous general, Pyrrus was enlisted by the Greek cities of ...

Rochefort
The socialist journalist Rochefort's tumultuous life was marked by a series of d...

Isaac Bashevis Singer: Free...
Isaac Bashevis Singer was once asked whether he believed in free will or predest...

Dear Google
Though hardly strangers to spam (junk email), Google co-founders Sergey Brin and...

Parkyakarkus
In 1958, the legendary radio comedian Harry Parke ("Parkyakarkus") attended a ro...

Eye Eye Eye!
At a formal function one evening, the actress Susan Hampshire, boasting a remark...

Crash
One day in August 2002, Goran Ivanisevic was dimayed to learn that a friend (Joz...

Government at Work
Despite the corrupt nature of America's campaign finance system (whereby busines...

Kleenex Issue
Stan Brakhage was once engaged by the Scott Paper Company to produce a commercia...

Second Opinion?
One day, the great Chinese philosopher Shih Teng was consulted by the relatives ...

Michael Dell Commencement A...
In 2003, Dell founder Michael Dell delivered the commencement address at the Uni...

Tennyson: Good Lord
Elspeth Thompson, one of Tennyson's younger admirers, often accompanied the poet...

Bush Blooper Blooper
In October, 2000, future president George W. Bush participated in a "Saturday Ni...

Junkilecture?
As a recent graduate of University of Southern California (USC), Frank Gehry gai...

Great Dane
Judge Robert Lymbery once rejected an order that a 168-pound Great Dane be destr...

Ulysses S. Grant: Bogus Stogie
In the 1860s, future president Ulysses S. Grant, an inveterate practical joker, ...

Sunset?
On his eightieth-birthday, Somerset Maugham spoke at a dinner held in his honor ...

A Man, A Plan...
In 1903, in need of a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Teddy Roose...

Famous Last Worms?
P. J. Tierney, developer of the modern diner, died in 1917. The cause of death? ...

Melancholy
One day Dr. John Abernethy was visited by a patient complaining of melancholy. "...

Circle of Trust?
Robert Evans was always a loyal friend. A certain movie executive (who asked not...

Barren Shore (long)
"One day there came in to London Opinion an excellent story signed by one...

Frank Knox: Caught Napping?
"No matter what happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping," U.S. ...

Pearls of Wisdom?
Shortly after the release of Pearl Harbor, Josh Hartnett appeared as a gu...

Harrison Ford: Presumed Inn...
Not surprisingly, Harrison Ford (whose multi-picture blockbuster roles included ...

Efficiency Expert
Peter Falk once landed a job in Hartford working as an efficiency expert for the...

Most Distinguished
Patrick Stewart, a classically-trained actor famed for his performances with the...

Game Book
"One of the gentleman's most treasured possessons is his game book, in which he ...

Diego Rivera & the Rockefel...
In 1933, the Mexican artist Diego Rivera was commissioned to paint a fresco for ...

Wylie Agent?
Though publisher Roger Strauss's frugality was legendary, he earned the loyalty ...

Bishop Wrong?
"A bishop [in the late 19th Century] pronounced from his pulpit and in the perio...

Hot Composer
At the tender age of 15, Oliver Knussen was commissioned by Benjamin Britten to ...

Russell Crowe: 40 Odd Foot ...
A hapless journalist once asked Russell Crowe what was happening with his band "...

Russell Crowe: Gladiator
During the production of Gladiator, Russell Crowe was required to appear ...

Just Do It?
"The value system of black youth is very distorted," Spike Lee declared one day ...

Top Secret Leaflet
"John Gunther, the American writer and war correspondent, told me that he had as...

Absent-Minded Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin was notoriously absent-minded. His publisher, Belaiev, often ...

Bodyguard
In the mid-1930s, with anti-Nazi sentiments on the rise and an important German ...

Grimm Prospects?
One day Chicago Cubs manager Charlie Grimm got a call from one of the team's sco...

Delictoble Irony?
Richelieu's wife, born deformed and married at twelve to a man three years her s...

Off Target?
While traveling to a meeting with Colonel House (Harold Wilson's adviser) one da...

James Baker: Enron Prize
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker was pleased, in 2001, to have his pub...

The Big One
As teammates on the Minneapolis Lakers, Rod Hundley and Bob Leonard were famed f...

Albert Einstein: Stroke of ...
Though Albert Einstein became a passionate Zionist (partly in response to German...

Symbolic Gesture?
One day in January 2002, as part of the Vatican's Peace Day celebrations, Pope J...

Manufacturing Mistakes
"If you think supply-chain management is a boring topic, listen to one of Hau Le...

Somerset Mum
"I once found myself in Petrograd and I was excessively bored," Somerset Maugham...

Bush Blooper #8655
On April 15, 2000, George W. Bush appeared on "Meet the Press." "Laura and I rea...

Kiepura
Opera star Jan Kiepura was not noted for his modesty. "The papers say you're con...

Lincoln Bedroom
One night in 1952, Adlai Stevenson, having been persuaded by Harry Truman to cam...

Lead Zeppelin?
One day the Who's late drummer Keith Moon told Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and the ...

Backfire?
"Lupe Velez wanted to be remembered; that was her one wish. Since she was not be...

Richman
"To impress a girl," Joey Adams once recalled, "Harry Richman would tip the wait...

Buddy Holly & Waylon Jennin...
One day in early 1959, Buddy Holly playfully told Waylon Jennings (then playing ...

Peter Principle
In 1969, after being rejected by no fewer than twenty publishers, professor Laur...

Lincoln's Grant
Notwithstanding his remarkable success (including the capture of Fort Donelson a...

Ironic Injury
Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik once fell off the roof of his apartment buil...

Jerome Irving Rodale
One day in 1971, Jerome Irving Rodale - the founding father of the organic food ...

Staying Married and Loving It
In 1997, Patricia Allen and Sandra Harmon published their ...

Big News?
When the notoriously absentminded G. K. Chesterton became engaged, such was his ...

Student Exchange
One day during his exile (by Germany), Romanian king Carol II described a progra...

Oscar Party
"It was after midnight and [famed director Billy Wilder] just announced that the...

Hearst
One day William Randolph Hearst, famed for his enviable art collection, sent his...

Durango Kid
"Ann Doran played in a number of B Westems at Columbia. She enjoyed the congenia...

Classy Response
Barbara Cartland was once interviewed for the BBC radio program "Today". The int...

Indian Irony
In February 2002, Dr C. Rangarajan, the governor of the large Indian state of An...

Guest of Honor
At the age of 26, Josef Penninger completed a remarkable thesis on T cells in th...

Dorothy Parker: Guest Book
Though William Randolph Hearst frequently invited prominent Hollywood personalit...

Humanitarian Doctor
Though famed for his humanitarian work in field hospitals during the Spanish Civ...

Death to all Kings
"Kings seem to have been tattooed throughout history. Henry IV, Peter the Great,...

Champagne
One day James McNeill Whistler, famous for his spendthrift ways, was visited by ...

Susan Lucci of Crosswords
Famed crossword puzzler Ellen Ripstein was among the competitors in final round ...

Fonda Marijuana?
One day in the late 1960s, Jane Fonda sat down for an interview in her apartment...

Turning Point?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once remarked that the turning point in a writer's career...

Tannen's Toupee
Despite a successful stage career, Julius Tannen had great difficulty finding wo...

Particular Uncertainty
Despite Werner Heisenberg's Nobel Prize for its formulation, Albert Einstein nev...

Quote, Misquote
In 1990, Philadelphia 76ers star Charles Barkley was quoted as saying that teamm...

eagles.jerk
In 1988, The Eagles filed a lawsuit against the Natinoal Foundation to Protect A...

Art Going Public
In May 2003, after years of studying a Van Gogh self-portrait owned by Oslo's Na...

Otto Kahn & The Met
Under the enlightened leadership of famed financier Otto Kahn, the Metropolitan ...

Seagram's Spokesman
Bruce Willis once served as a spokesman for Seagram's Liquor & Spirits - and soo...

Lightbulb Moment
"Edison employed in his office a graduate named Upton of Princeton University wh...

Rowan Atkinson: Real Mr. Bean
One day Rowan Atkinson, famed for his portrayal of the hapless Mr. Bean, visited...

Magic Moment? (long)
"Almost thirty years ago now [in the early 1970s], two young actors were in thei...

The Terminator
O. J. Simpson was among the actors considered for the title role in James Camero...

Astrological Bull
In 1934, Picturegoer magazine published an astrological article entitled ...

Early Morning?
One day on the set of Michael Curtiz's This is the Army (a 1943 musical c...

Sordello
Though ostensibly the story of an unknown heir to a dukedom in thirteenth-centur...

Lunar Embassy
In July 2003, Dennis Hope, the founder of the Lunar Embassy which sells property...

Learned Professor
Max Planck was made a full professor at the University of Berlin at an unusually...

Einstein's Attire
Albert Einstein's wife often suggested that he dress more professionally when he...

Golf Lessons
W. C. Fields once hired a doctor to help him stop drinking. Though Fields freque...

Bad Influence
While exiting a theater one day, Edward G. Robinson was approached by an elderly...

Queen Elizabeth's Coronation
The date of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation (June 2, 1953) was selected after ex...

Francis Ferdinand's Death
Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was remarkably vain. Prior to attending fo...

Father's Day Gift
As part of a Father's Day gift in June 2001, Sharon Stone and her husband, ...

Heroic Failure
To mark the tenth anniversary of The Book of Heroic Failures, Stephen Pil...

Bonnie Hunt: Storyteller
One day early in her career, Bonnie Hunt attended an audition for a coveted dram...

Muammar Qaddafi: United Nat...
In January 2003, Libya was elected to chair the United Nations Human Rights Comm...

Nuclear Question
"I was at the first New Mexico test [of the atomic bomb] on 16 July," Edward Tel...

Dramatic Workshop
As a teenager, Robert De Niro decided to apply for admission to the illustrious ...

War, What is it Good for?
One evening during the war in Iraq (in March 2003), Bruce Springsteen played a m...

On With The Show?
"Knowing how superstitious theatre people are, Mr Lawrence Wright announced that...

Christian Bale & American P...
Christian Bale was once asked whether he had had trouble meeting women after his...

Coop: Concert Poster
In 1994, L.A. artist "Coop" was commissioned to produce a concert poster for a c...

Busta Rhymes: Rhymes with B...
Some time after Busta Rhymes's endorsement of Miller Lite beer, TheSmokingGun.co...

Mark Wahlberg: Pride and Glory
While preparing for his role in Pride and Glory (in 2002), Mark Wahlberg ...

C-Murder
"Yesterday in Louisiana," Conan O'Brien announced in September 2003, "the rapper...

Darren Robinson: Human Lunc...
Darren "the Human Beat Box" Robinson (the fattest of the Fat Boys) once ordered ...

Ozzy Osbourne & Carson Daly
"Total Request Live" host Carson Daly once had the pleasure of meeting Ozzy Osbo...

Darrell Issa: Fraudster
In 1972, future Republican California congressman Darrell Issa and his brother B...

Jim Rose: Spoon Trick
"Circus leader Jim Rose makes a living eating light bulbs and balancing chainsaw...

Crusade Against Lateness
"At high noon last October 1st," the New Yorker reported in 2004, "the ci...

Lynne Truss: Zero Tolerance
In 2004, Gotham Press published a book about punctuation by former London ...

George W. Bush & John Ashcr...
In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed John Ashcroft to serve as U.S. Attor...

Howard Stern & Beth Ostrosk...
"For our first trip together we went to Hawaii," supermodel Beth Ostrosky once r...

Ahmed Abdel Razzaq: World's...
"The world's dumbest terrorist? Courtesy of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller, we ...

Johnny Unitas: First Fidelity
In 1981, former Baltimore Colts star Johnny Unitas did a series of radio spots t...

The Rock: That's Entertainment
"We had a very philosophical conversation the other day," the Rock once recalled...

Howard Hughes: Memo Writer
Intense germophobia was far from Howard Hughes's only eccentricity. His daily ro...

Dave Navarro: Bachelor Party
After his marriage to Carmen Electra, Dave Navarro was asked why the couple had ...

Denis Leary: Street Dealer
"The best pitch I ever heard about cocaine," Denis Leary once recalled, "was bac...

Harold Holt Memorial
While trekking around Australia one year, travel writer Bill Bryson passed throu...

Mourning After
One evening, Tallulah Bankhead was escorted - drunk and disorderly - from one of...

Lucky Break
Before leaving Hawaii after a shoot one day, Kim Smith collected several lava ro...

Lawless Irony
In October 1996, "Xena" star Lucy Lawless visited New York to appear on "The Ton...

Mutual Admiration Society?
When fellow artists Amedeo Modigliani and Maurice Utrillo first met, each paid t...

Couplet
Antoine de Rivarol was once asked his opinion of a couplet produced by a certain...

The Ring of Hypocrisy?
In the wee hours of a certain morning in the year 2000, some 3,000 Arizona resid...

Steve Sullivan: Errant Puck
During a game against the Colorado Avalanche one night (in Colorado), Chicago Bl...

Smoky Irony (long)
Mark Twain was thought by many knowledgeable observers to smoke the worst cigars...

Robert Mugabe: Zimbabwe Herald
In May 2002, a journalist on assignment for The Economist spent some time...

Partridge's Almanac
On his way to a distant town one day, John Partridge, a charlatan famed for his ...

Stravinsky / Schonberg
Artur Schnabel: "You may find this hard to believe, but Igor Stravinsky has actu...

Close Quarters
One day while touring with a theater company, a number of Molly Picon's fellow p...

Crappy Physics? (long)
After a bout of heavy partying one night, physicist João Magueijo awoke with a h...

Kalashnikov
Some 55 years after his invention of the AK-47 assault rifle (in 1947), Mikhail ...

Nut Meal
In 1895, St. Louis doctor John Harvey Kellogg filed a patent for a "process of p...

Eudora Welty: Honest Agent
Eudora Welty once credited her agent, Diarmuid Russell, with kick-starting her c...

Healing Machines?
"After losing both his parents and three siblings to cancer at relatively young ...

Adolf Hitler: Aryan Olympics
Adolf Hitler staged the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin as a showcase for the sup...

Dick Cheney: Good Advice?
In 2002, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) launched an investigation ...

Abel Tasman: Terra Australi...
In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sailed south from the East Indies in sea...

Nutrition for Health?
Noted nutritionist Alice Chase, who wrote Nutrition for Health and other ...

Naomi Campbell & Tyson's Pa...
Leggy supermodel Naomi Campbell once declared that her very favorite sports star...

When in Rome?
During the July Revolution in 1830, Alexandre Dumas joined a mob in the process ...

X-treme Stupidity
In June 1999, BASE jumper Frank Gambalie III parachuted off the famed El Capitan...

Delicious Irony?
Champion swimmer Eleanor Holm won the gold medal in the 100m backstroke event at...

Too Many Weirdos
In 2000, tattooing was finally legalized in Massachusetts. Because there were no...

Rush Limbaugh: Rush in Rehab
"If people are violating the law by doing drugs," rabid Republican radio host Ru...

Lovely Advice
General Mark Wayne Clark was once asked what he considered the best advice he ha...

Dennis Wilson: Tuned-In Dude
In the late 1960s, the Beach Boys recorded a song called "Never Learn Not To Lov...

Air of Discontent?
One unfortunate day, in the midst of a low bow before Queen Elizabeth, Edward de...

Minor Hiccup
Following his death, Empedocles became the subject of much ridicule. Many detrac...

Thinner Author?
In 1984, bookstores began selling a new novel by Richard Bachman entitled ...

Faithful Servant
Thus reads Maurice James Butler's epitaph: ...

Long Shot
Elfego Baca, one of the world's longest golf holes (a rocky three-mile stretch o...

Ben Stiller Show
After a year on the cast of "Saturday Night Live," Ben Stiller wrote, produced a...

Broken Nose
"I once slammed the door behind me, not knowing that my wife, Gladys Cooper, was...

Serendipity
Alexander Fleming's famous discovery of penicillin at St Mary's Hospital in 1928...

Bureaucracy
"Novelist and essayist George A. Birmingham was in his nonliterary life a clergy...

Ballerina
One evening after World War II, the legendary ballerina Margot Fonteyn attended ...

Bob Feller: Four-Letter Words
Shortly after the publication of his autobiography, Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Fel...

Henry Ford: 4719?
One day, a man visiting the Ford factory in Dearborn, Michigan happened to encou...

Fundamental Indifference?
One wintry night Harry Fosdick was awakened by a young student at his door. Fosd...

Toni Braxton & Beyonce
In September 2002, Toni Braxton sent an advance copy of "Me and My Boyfriend" to...

Maria Callas: Humble Pie
When Maria Callas signed a contract to perform at the 1958 Festival of Two World...

Justin Kerrigan: Human Traffic
British director Justin Kerrigan was once evicted from Buckingham Palace during ...

Filodex?
While writing The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson visited the office...

Buckey O'Neill
The lawyer, miner, cowboy, sheriff, and congressman Buckey O'Neill was one of Te...

Concert for Peace
In October 1981, the pacifist composer Luciano Berio gave a special open-air con...

Dinner with Hurley
In October 2003, comedian Denis Leary took part in a charity auction at New York...

Alec Guinness: Mudlark
The high point of Jean Negulesco's The Mudlark (1950), was a rousing parl...

Yasir Arafat: Pointedly Foo...
In 1977, David Frost landed a interview with PLO leader Yasir Arafat. "There's a...

Bitter Irony
Having been driven from the American stage by the jealousy of his fellow actors,...

Fellow Poets
The Russian poet and novelist Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov first won attention fo...

Nose For Talent
After her successful role as the lovesick, ugly-duckling teenager (who blossoms ...

Degrees of Separation (long)
"Back when Americans were still debating whether there was just cause for a preë...

Pleasures of Hope
Thomas Campbell once told a friend that he had grown tired of his association wi...

Fit to Print
On Sunday May 11th, 2003, the New York Times (the world's leading newspap...

Element 94
"How element 94 [plutonium] eventually got the name plutonium is an interesting ...

Goose Egg
Emile Zola's success as a writer may have come as a shock to his teachers at the...

Foo Fighters: Jailhouse Rock
On tour in Australia in 2000, Dave Grohl and the other Foo Fighters rented moped...

House of Commoners
Upon hearing the little-known author James Harris' maiden speech before Parliame...

Welcome to Russia
"While Arthur Ransome, now a favourite children's author, but then a corresponde...

Nuthin’ a’tall
The following snippet of conversation is recorded on a plaque marking Abraham Li...

Pacifist
During the 1960s, Robert Lowell, having embraced pacifism, refused to serve his ...

Lees on Life
Because he alone was supporting his parents, Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Billy L...

Winchester's Fines
For 27 years, the world record for an overdue book was held by a certain M. Dodd...

Planted Notion?
When the New York Rangers traded Lorne "Gump" Worsley to the Montreal Canadiens ...

Book Burning
"On the night of September 20, 1996, author Bertil Torekul gave a lecture to an ...

Runaway Manager
While passing through customs on their way back into America one day, Dave Pirne...

True Grits?
Prior to moving into the White House, Jimmy Carter's wife asked whether the chef...

Chelsea Hardaway: Bullfighter
In June 2003, management consultant Chelsea Hardaway and her colleagues at Deloi...

Harold Ross: Semblance of O...
Harold Ross, the legendary founder and long-time editor of The New Yorker...

NYPD Blues?
Despite her love of acting, Lourdes Benedicto was expected to pursue a more trad...

Independent Candidate
In 2000, an independent candidate from Cobb County ran for election to Georgia's...

Sidney Edward Dickinson: Ar...
The U.S. National Academy of Design once held an art competition and awarded sec...

Mafioso Monkey
One day during the production of Marked Woman (1937), producer Hal B. Wal...

David Beckham: Hairy Logic
In the summer of 2001, Manchester United midfielder David Beckham abandoned his ...

Behind The 8-Ball?
Aerosmith's Steven Tyler was once asked to share his views on health. "Even in t...

Abracadabra
A woman, under the mistaken impression that Isaac Newton was an astrologer, once...

Smart Brick
In 2003, professor Chang Liu and his team of structural engineers at the Univers...

Reagan & Asner
Ronald Reagan, who had been a well-known actor before embarking upon a political...

David McLean: Hack Actor
In 1995, David McLean died of lung cancer, prompting many people to ask: "Who wa...

Kill or be Killed
Before his lightweight title fight against Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini on November 1...

Woman & Shovel
After his ship was lost on rocks off the Scilly Islands in 1707, Sir Cloudesley ...

John Phillips: Ego Pop
In 1967, John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) helped with the organization...

Sargent's Order
Having been commissioned to paint Teddy Roosevelt's portrait, John Singer Sargen...

Carpal Tunnel Treasurer
Over a single two-day period in 1863, Lucius E. Chittenden, the first Register o...

Flat Tire
"Driving somewhere along the Massachusetts North Shore in the early 1900s, Bisho...

Soviet Technology
BBC host John Simpson once had a memorable run-in with Soviet officials at Shere...

High Resistance
In 1827, Georg Simon Ohm discovered that the flow of electric current through a ...

Poetic insight
One day a journalist arrived at Robert Frost's home for an interview. "Do you ha...

Mary Kay
While working with Stanley Home Products early in her sales career, Mary Kay won...

Real Women
"Betsy Johnson was applauded for designing clothes for 'real women, cellulite an...

National Hero
At the turn of the millennium, politicians in the Caribbean nation of St Vincent...

Expert Witness
Alexander Borodin was once called upon to testify (as an expert witness) in a ca...

Too Many Cooks?
By her own admission, the recipes which appeared in Tamar Myers' culinary myster...

Black Tuesday
On October 20th, 1929, the noted Yale University economist Irving Fisher declare...

Harvard Type
Donal Logue once auditioned for a role on the hit television series "Melrose Pla...

5:1
At one point during the Normandy invasion on D-Day in 1944, the ratio of enliste...

Hard Times?
While driving to the office one day, Lord Thomson's son (and co-chairman) Kennet...

Secret Life of Salvador Dali
One day Salvador Dali entered a New York bookstore and asked for a copy of his b...

Tempting Fate?
Will Rogers was born in Oologah, Indian Territory (part of what is now Oklahoma)...

Lambert Hillyer
One day during a rehearsal on the set of The Shock (1923), director Lambe...

Acoustic Kitty
In 1966, the CIA hatched a plan to discover Russia's Cold War secrets by install...

Airheads?
Among the passengers on Swiss International Airlines Flight #8 in May 2002 was J...

Half a Mann?
Thomas Mann was once introduced to an American scribe of some distinction who hi...

Cosmo Woman
"This year's runner-up in the Cosmopolitan New Journalist of the Year com...

Doctor's Beef
One day in late September 2001, Robert Tools, the proud recipient of the world's...

Bill Clinton: Shagging the ...
In 1998, days after it was revealed that President Bill Clinton had explored var...

Fink?
"In the 1940s, Fink - a Jerusalem bar and long-time meeting-ground for politicia...

Blood Bank
Because he was black, the noted surgeon Richard Charles Drew was not allowed to ...

Grand National (long)
"Few jockeys have been more regularly parted from their horse than the Duc of Al...

Sweet Schadenfreude
At one point or another during the production of Tobe Hooper's classic 1974 horr...

Kith and Ken?
With the appearance of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, inevitable comparisons ...

Happy Circumstance?
Ironically, his jittery nerves may have helped Philip Seymour Hoffman land his p...

Jennifer Connelly: The Grea...
Early on, Jennifer Connelly - who met one boyfriend (the photographer David Duga...

Boogie Nights
One day on the set of Boogie Nights, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson...

Rasta Phil
Mark Wahlberg once recalled that the first 'celebrity' he had ever met was Rasta...

Happy Family?
One day on the set of National Velvet (1943), Elizabeth Taylor, then just...

Heckler Heckled
Stand-up comedian Barry Crimmins was once heckled by an angry audience member. "...

Simple Arithmetic
Incredibly, the great number theorist Ernst Kummer was so inept at simple arithm...

Wozzeck
The composer David Raksin was once told by a director that he did not want "any ...

The Whisperers
In 1966, Bryan Forbes directed Dame Edith Evans (then 78 years old) and Eric Por...

Marcus Loew: Fuzzy Thinking
When Joseph Kennedy was named chairman of Pathe (a Hollywood studio) in 1926, ma...

Doppelgangmember?
The sculptor Lorado Taft left the Art Institute of Chicago one windy day and fou...

Making of John Garfield
At the Group Theater in New York, the man who later found fame as John Garfield ...

Canny Coaching?
One of Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers once attested to his legendary coach's...

The Fugitive
While working as a private detective, Dashiell Hammett - enlisted to aid in the ...

Height of Arrogance
Wes Anderson once asked fellow director Peter Bogdanovich to sign an old photo. ...

Bill Murray: School of Hard...
"My father was a very difficult laugh," Bill Murray once recalled. "Adults found...

Bette Midler: Cancelled
In 2001 Bette Midler struck a $1 million deal to write a book with her manager a...

General Custer: Famous Last...
During the Civil War, George Armstrong Custer was famed for his good luck. Thoug...

Word of Advice?
One day shortly before leaving office, Teddy Roosevelt, in the process of planni...

Simon Le Snob
Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon was often accused of being a snob. "I'm not a snob," ...

Chinese Cinematographer
When James Wong Howe opened his cafe in Hollywood, the local press sent a photog...

Grapes of Wrath
Russian censors permitted John Ford's classic 1940 film ...

Speeding Harpo
One day Harpo Marx was stopped for speeding on his way to a matinee Marx Brother...

The Cocoanuts
When director Joseph Santley saw Morrie Ryskind's script for the classic Marx Br...

Gaugh Whitlam: Public Decla...
"I do not mind the Liberals, still less do I mind the Country Party, calling me ...

Furniture Hunter?
In December 2002, Paul Hogan, famed for his role as the fearless crocodile hunte...

American Steelworker?
In 1990, sculptor Luis Jiminez was severly criticized when his latest work, a tw...

Hairy Situation?
Disney is famous for its strict enforcement of employee dress codes and grooming...

Xerxes
While retreating from Greece on a Phoenician ship one day, Xerxes was caught in ...

Pakistani Intelligence
One day in February 2003, Javed Ghumman, the director general of Pakistan's Inte...

Keith Richards: Da Vinci's ...
While rummaging around in his library one day, Keith Richards fell and broke two...

Luciano Balks
"I was an umpire, but beneath my chest protector beat the heart of a fan," Ron L...

Semmelweis
While working at Vienna's general hospital, Ignaz Semmelweis, having discovered ...

Dim Bulb?
In 1802, Immanuel Kant discharged the man (named Lampe) who had faithfully serve...

The Just
Under the Athenian system of ostracism, each citizen could vote to have a man ba...

Necessity
In 1906, Sherwood Anderson abandoned his job and family to devote himself to a l...

Raisin Cake?
"Toots once argued his dear friend Leo Durocher into a delicate trap that looked...

Hurry
Stravinsky was once urged by a publisher to hurry to complete his latest composi...

Garfield's Death (long)
Just two hundred days into his presidency, James Garfield was shot by a lawyer n...

Rich Reply
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was asked by a certain gentleman for a pas...

Pass the Port
The Shakespearean actor Henry Irving once stayed as a guest at the Tennysons' ho...

Leland Hayward
Famed agent Leland Hayward counted among his clients such film stars as Judy Gar...

Cheapass
Oscar Levant was notorious for visiting George S. Kaufman and his wife - and rat...

Doppelganger?
"By the time he was 40, [legendary war photographer] Robert Capa had a bad back ...

Lukewarm Relief
Benjamin Disraeli once served as the guest of honor at a public dinner. The kitc...

Corporate Fraud
In a presidential address to the nation in October 2002, George W. Bush called f...

Barton Fink
While working on Miller's Crossing, the Coen brothers found themselves st...

Without Prejudice
In January 2003, an unlikely candidate won £50,000 on a British TV game show cal...

Little Voice
In January 1999, Michael Caine won a Golden Globe award for best actor in a musi...

Odd Timing
Rather ironically, Tony Randall won a long overdue Emmy for his classic portraya...

Belarus
In August 2002, Belarussian president Alexander Lukashenko ordered the closure o...

Ozzy Osbourne: PSA
By 2003, with "The Osbournes" drawing some six million viewers (compared with MT...

Alison Lohman: Dragonfly
For her role in Tom Shadyac's supernatural thriller Dragonfly (2002), Ali...

Dead Poet's Society (long)
Screenwriters, as Tom Schulman quickly learned, have long been the lowest member...

Pagers
Kiev (Reuters) — A Ukrainian businessman who bought a pager for each member of h...

Hurler?
On May 16th, 1998, New York Yankees hurler David Wells attended a "Saturday Nigh...

Puzzling Question
During a long hospitalization, James Thurber found himself doing a crossword puz...

Autograph Seekers
When Eudora Welty first became ill, her doctor posted a sign on her door turning...

Reagan Autobiography
In 1999, Simon & Schuster published a 726-page autobiography of former president...

Cheney lost
On his first day as Secretary of Defence, Dick Cheney got lost in the Pentagon. ...

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Girl...
During the Cannes Film Festival one year, Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Ma...

Planet Hollywood
As a co-founder of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain (with Bruce Willis, Dem...

Genius Nicholson
One day during the production of Easy Rider, Jack Nicholson dropped acid ...

Jack Nicholson: Significant...
One day in 1994, Jack Nicholson pulled up at a stop light, screamed "You cut me ...

Greatest Violinist
Jascha Heifetz and Mischa Elman were dining together one night when their waiter...

Shilling
Sheridan's financial affairs were in a state of constant turmoil - as were those...

Boogie Off
In 1969, Jerry Garcia and his Grateful Dead bandmates, booked to play with the R...

Modest Jefferson
One morning Thomas Jefferson awoke in a modest Washington rooming house, got dre...

Hopping Mad
One day in the 1970s, Dennis Hopper - whose daily diet then included half a gall...

Barbra Streisand: Vocal Tracks
During a recording session one day Barbra Streisand, famed for her perfectionist...

Maurice Gibb's Rolls-Royce
In the late 1960s, Maurice Gibb, enjoying the fruits of the Bee Gees' success, b...

Black Blooper
Don Rickles once made a memorable guest appearance on the "Tonight Show With Joh...

Touche
Like the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, the Kennedy assassination in...

New Yorker Welcome
The New Yorker's famed founder and editor Harold Ross once welcomed a pro...

Steven Spielberg: Jaws, the...
In 1976, every Best Picture nominee also had its director nominated for a Best D...

Earth in the Balance
The Grateful Dead became involved in environmental issues only very reluctantly....

Cop Killer
In 1992, Ice-T's "Cop Killer" (released on Body Count by his group of the...

Clarity
"Gentlemen," Wilhelm Furtwangler directed his orchestra during a rehearsal one d...

B.I.G. Gourmet?
In 1997, Biggie Smalls (aka The Notorious B.I.G.) cancelled a planned performanc...

Cohnheads
Harry Cohn's brother Jack once suggested that the brothers join forces to produc...

Eric Clapton: After Midnight
In 1987, Eric Clapton's classic tune "After Midnight" ("After midnight, we're go...

Jefferson Lives
John Adams, ever the patriot, died on July 4th, 1826 - the 50th anniversary of t...

Mithradates' Death
Seeking to protect himself against assassination, Mithradates, the great king of...

Paul Westerberg and The Imp...
Paul Westerberg and his bandmates started out as The Impediments. Their first gi...

Socialist Realism
The Russian writer Maksim Gorky (to whom the Soviet Encyclopedia once ref...

Avalanche at Montroc
In 1999, 12 people died in an avalanche at Montroc (near Chamonix) in the French...

Quadrophenia
The Who's rock opera Quadrophenia (released in October 1973) was named af...

Larry David: Rewrite Situation
One day on the "Seinfeld" set Jason Alexander complained to Larry David (the sho...

Study in Irony
The famed French novelist Andre Gide once moved into a new home in Normandy equi...

Al Capone: Par for the Course
Legendary gangster Al Capone was once shot on a golf course (at Olympia Fields i...

Bethany Sloshed
In March 2000, Jay Leno reported that Bethany Tosh, Miss Northeast Arkansas, had...

Boys' Brigade
While staying at a house near Glyndebourne, the legendary Sir Thomas Beecham (fo...

Sedition Act
In 1798, Vermont's Matthew Lyon made history, becoming the first and only U.S. C...

Private Eye
W. C. Fields once enlisted a private eye to spy on a girlfriend who he suspected...

Planck
At the age of seventeen, Max Planck sought out the head of his university physic...

Geri Who?
In April 2003, Geri Halliwell hired a team of bodyguards to protect her from the...

Supreme Injustice
Warren G. Harding rivals Richard M. Nixon as the most corrupt president in Ameri...

Hebrew Tongue
The Jewish author Ilan Stavans was once reminded of a famous anecdote quoted by ...

Young John Maynard Keynes
The great economist John Maynard Keynes once simply aspired to run a railroad. (...

Waterton's Toe
"Charles Waterton, the great Victorian traveler, devoted many years to the study...

Bob Woodward: Celebrity Jeo...
In 2004, Bob Woodward, famed for his award-winning coverage of the Watergate aff...

Shatner on Shatner
William Shatner was once asked how he had prepared for his role (as himself) in ...

Chicago Bull
Chicago Bulls star forward Dennis Rodman was once sued by a former Atlanta Hawks...

Paris Hilton: Spoiled Brat
In 2003, Hilton heiress Paris Hilton was cast to appear in the fish-out-of-water...

Slacker High
"I was the longhaired freak voted most likely to fail at everything," Puddle of ...

Sound of Silence
As a child, Paul Simon smiled so rarely that his parents nicknamed him Cardozo (...

True Patriot?
"[The Jewish Romanian writer Nicu Steinhardt] was appalled by Jewish migration f...

Rwandan Genocide
"In the run-up to the Iraq war... speaking on Al Jazeera television, National Se...

Governor's Mother
Barbara Bush was once asked whether she gave President George W. Bush advice. "I...

Ruthless F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy's public image was that of an intense young man who had driven...

Blackass
Though born and bred in Toronto, the newspaper magnate Conrad Black was hardly a...

Transport Minister
One day in November 2003, reporters equipped with hand-held radars clocked trans...

Lazy Laszlo Biro?
While working as a journalist (with a Hungarian newspaper called ...

Miss UNC
In November 2003, Aja Locklear, the reigning Miss University of North Carolina, ...

Colonialism & Barbarism
"Today, it is also hard to look at [the famous explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley...

CORE Irony
On February 4, 2002, national Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) spokesman Niger...

Make Way for Roland Hancock
At the 1928 US Open at Olympia Fields, Roland Hancock, an unknown 21-year-old pr...

World's Biggest Liar?
In 2003, South Africa's Abrie Kruger was named the "World's Biggest Liar" after ...

Bob Newhart: Young Accountant
After graduating from Loyola University with a degree in accounting (in 1952), B...

Paula Radcliffe: Oatso Simple
At the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens, Paula Radcliffe failed to finish both the...

Kelly Osbourne's Toilets
In March 2003, Kelly Osbourne bought her own house, just five blocks away from t...

Bill Gates: Charity Case
One day in 2003, Microsoft chief Bill Gates met with Tom Brokaw at a humble Sout...

Tom Peters: In Search of Ex...
In 1982, management gurus Tom Peters and Robert Waterman transformed the market ...

Barry Sonnenfeld: Get Shorty
One day during the production of Get Shorty (1995), director Barry Sonnen...

Unconventional Barry Sonnen...
One day during the production of Men in Black (1997), director Barry Sonn...

Thuggish Dictatorship of Ro...
Opponents of the thuggish dictatorship of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe oft...

Ricky Gervais & the BBC
"I remember when we were telling BBC head of comedy Jon Plowman about David Bren...

Safety Demo
"The perils of aviation in the [1930s] are neatly encapsulated in the experience...

Dennis Palumbo: Screenwrite...
Even after working on dozens of projects, many well-paid Hollywood screenwriters...

Joao Baptista Figueiredo: B...
"I intend to open this country up to democracy," Brazilian president General Joa...

Billy Bob Thornton: Sex The...
After discovering that he had cheated on her with a string of groupies (and, rep...

Donald Trump: How to Get Rich
In March 2004, Donald Trump published a book entitled How to Get Rich. Ju...

Shelby Lynne: Best New Artist
I Am Shelby Lynne earned Shelby Lynne a Best New Artist Grammy in 2000. ...

Michael Flatley: Lord of th...
"I'm not an egomaniac like a lot of people say," Michael Flatley once remarked. ...

Orrin Hatch & Capital Punis...
On May 16, 1988, Senator Orrin Hatch reaffirmed his support for the death penalt...

Tamala Jones: Public Service
"My first commercial was for IBM, when I was only 17," Tamala Jones once recalle...

Rulon Gardner: Health Freak
"Between 1 and 8 p.m. one day," GQ's Peter Richmond once recalled, "I wat...

Sari Nusseibeh: Rhetoric of...
"As Palestinian politics grew more radical, Sari Nusseibeh [the Palestine Libera...

John Pitner: Automatic Mist...
In 1997, Washington State Militia leader John Pitner (who famously tried to "pro...

John Cleese: Happy Families
John Cleese once produced a book with Robin Skynner entitled ...

Kathy Buckley: How Retarded
"When I was young," Kathy Buckley once recalled, "I was put in a school for reta...

Shannen Doherty: Doh!
In 1988, Shannen Doherty served as a Youth Ambassador for the American Lung Asso...

Apollo 11: Quarantined
On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 crew members Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michae...

Martha Stewart: Living with...
Living with Martha Stewart was no picnic for her husband, Andy. One Christmas, M...

Marc Bergevin: Smartass
One day in 2003, as the NHL trade deadline approached, veteran Pittsburgh Pengui...

Terry Gilliam & the Nationa...
Monty Python director Terry Gilliam once explained the presence of the cutouts i...

Madonna: Material Girl
"Madonna, the woman who until now never seemed to be able to get enough (of anyt...

Bridget Fonda: Lovable Klutz
Bridget Fonda once recalled her worst sports injury: "I twisted my ankle on a te...

Shelby Lynne: Star Broker
In 2001, Shelby Lynne (working with Glen Ballard, the man behind Alanis Morisset...

Victor Gruen: Frankenstein'...
The Austrian-born architect Victor Gruen - famed for his invention of the modern...

Dean Mildren: Absolutely St...
During a hearing in March 2004, Australian judge Dean Mildren declared that he w...

Makiko Sosumi: Poster Child
In November 2003, Japanese actress Makiko Esumi appeared in a series of ads spon...

Tony Marcano: Headliner
After readers complained that the Sacramento Bee's headlines were often i...

Pablo Escobar: Drug Runner
After Colombian drug kingpin Pablo Escobar escaped from a minimal security priso...

Jay Leno: HDTV
"One day I'm at Mulberry Street Pizza," Jay Leno recalled, "and they have an out...

Chris McDonnell: Bananas
In 2004, British physiotherapist Chris McDonnell conducted extensive research on...

FTSE Fantasy Contest
In March 2001, financial astrologer Christeen Skinner, professional investor Mar...

Mark Douglas: Cycling in Fl...
While out cycling one day in March 2001, WFLA reporter Mark Douglas was hit by a...

Glenn Collins: Climbing Eve...
In October 2000, Glenn Collins climbed Mount Everest without incident to raise m...

Jean Harlow: Death Becomes Her
"The 26-year-old Jean Harlow, 'Hollywood's original platinum blonde,' died of ki...

Paul Andreu: Savoir-Faire
In 2003, a new terminal (2E) was unveiled at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris....

Terry L. Neal: Offshore Sol...
In February 2001, Mastermedia published The Offshore Solution, Terry L. N...

Michael Moore: Roger & Me
Michael Moore first made national headlines in 1989, with the appearance of ...

Local Improvement Project
One year, each member of England's Staffordshire City Council was given £10,000 ...

Fred Durst: Microphone Lawsuit
During a tour in 2002, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst allegedly flew into a rag...

W. C. Fields: Mother of Inv...
Everett Freeman was among the writers who worked with director George Marshall o...

Geena Davis: The Art of Mar...
Geena Davis and director Renny Harlin were married in September 1993. Though spa...

Gloria Steinem: New Bicycle
"A woman without a man," Gloria Steinem once famously remarked, "is like a fish ...

Jerry Seinfeld: Pilot Report
The stellar success of "Seinfeld" came as a surprise to many of the show's produ...

Joe Frazier & Buster Mathis
When Buster Mathis was unable to compete, Joe Frazier took his heavyweight spot ...

Queen Elizabeth: Cafeteria ...
One day in August 2004, diners visiting a cafeteria at Queen Elizabeth's Scottis...

Bono: Crazy Rumors
"My father, who I love very much, is one of these guys who believes what he read...

Alan Keyes: Carpetbagging
In 2000, Alan Keyes scolded Hillary Clinton on Fox News for running for the U.S....

Al Gore: Global Warming?
In January 2004, Al Gore delivered a speech on global warming. "Al," House Major...

Mark Cuban: Media Savvy
Donald Trump was once amused to learn of rival billionaire Mark Cuban's claim th...

Mark Lamarr: Gansta Rap
"I love going to see gansta rap because they're so vicious," Mark Lamarr once re...

Jack Weinberg: Generation Gap
On October 1st, 1964, University of California student Jack Weinberg was arreste...

Yasser Arafat: Talking Peace
"In 1988 Mr Arafat made the move that transformed him from resistance leader to ...

Bill Clinton: Presidential ...
In November 2004, Bill Clinton's 30-acre $165 million dollar Presidential Librar...

Herbert Haupt: Deaf & Dumb
During a Parliamentary debate in November 2004, Austrian MP Herbert Haupt compla...

Steve Irwin: Crikey Blooper
One day in 2004, "Crocodile Hunter" host Steve Irwin broke his collar bone. "The...

Korn: Y'All Want a Sellout?
Korn once made an anticorporate radio song called "Y'All Want a Single" (see lyr...

William Easterly: World Ban...
"William Easterly, a senior World Bank economist, tested the limits of tolerance...

Topher Grace & Laura Linney...
One day while filming P.S. (2004), Topher Grace had a sex scene with Laur...

Merv Griffin: Swimming Pool
"I was on 'The Merv Griffin Show'," Jay Leno once recalled, "and it took eight w...

Johnny Carson, Animal Trainer
Johnny Carson once invited animal trainer Joan Embery to appear as a guest on "T...

Margaret Thatcher: Buy British
"At the height of her 'Buy British' campaign, [Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher]...

Richard Tydeman: Wedding Re...
"I had been conducting a wedding rehearsal in Church with the bride and groom, g...

Kate Moses: Baking with Sylvia
Shortly after publishing Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath, Kate Moses p...

Jane Seymour: American Citizen
In 2005, British-born actress Jane Seymour earned her American citizenship. "The...

Kiefer Sutherland: Roaring ...
While preparing for his role in The Wild (2006), Kiefer Sutherland had to...

Martha Stewart: Camp Cupcak...
During her incarceration at "Camp Cupcake" (after her trial for insider trading)...

Lord Longford: Humility
The late Lord Longford once burst into a London bookshop to scold the staff for ...

Tony Blair: Dial a Cliche
"[British Prime Minister Tony Blair] sometimes seems to have no sense at all of ...

George Clooney: Playing Doctor
While George Clooney, who dropped out of the University of Kentucky, was never d...

Paul Gauguin: Starving Artist
One day, Paul Gauguin composed a letter complaining that his poverty was so seve...

John Barrowman: Too Funny
Gay actor John Barrowman, best known for his role as the bisexual Captain Jack H...

Weseruebungle?
On February 21st, 1940, Adolf Hitler ordered General Mikolaus von Falkenhorst to...

Xenophobia
"At the inquisition that preceded her immolation, Joan of Arc was asked what sat...

Airport Disturbance
The novelist Irwin Shaw once found himself waiting for a flight to Europe in an ...

Cloudy Day
Ring Lardner was once asked about a recent trip he had taken to England. "There'...

Right Sentiment?
Georgia governor Lester Maddox once lobbied against his state's creation of a co...

Soulmates
Drew Barrymore was once asked whether her relationship with Tom Green surprised ...

Save America
A gentleman visiting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas one day was surp...

Dumb Luck?
Paralyzed with stage fright, Colley Cibber badly botched his first dramatic role...

Tail Boner?
On September 22, 1940, Washington Redskins captain Turk Edwards went out for the...

General Relief?
General Grant once endeavored to have a particular officer relieved of his comma...

TV Dinner?
Walter Wetherell was once asked about the inspiration for his 'great American TV...

Keaton & Keaton
Although he had never actually met her, Michael Keaton once telephoned Diane Kea...

Witless Protection?
In the early 1990s, famed mob informer Joseph ("Joe Dogs") Iannuzzi was dropped ...

Henman
Like most professional tennis players, Tim Henman was often plagued by minor inj...

Greatest Irony (long)
In 1920, the legendary art dealer Joseph Duveen and several of his colleagues ha...

Stressing the Point?
Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis was once criticized for taking a ...

Countrymen
The Seven Weeks' War between Prussia and Austria in 1866 was largely engineered ...

Mass Migration
"While Dwight Lyman Moody was attending a convention in Indianapolis on mass eva...

Less Than Zeppo?
While the Marx Brothers were working on Broadway, Zeppo, the straight man (and t...

Jonny on the Spot?
Jon Provost, whose television career began when he was three years old, "basical...

Julianne Moooore (long)
Perhaps understandably, Julianne Moore found filming certain scenes during the p...

Newlywed Game?
On October 23, 1947, Joyce Mathews divorced Milton Berle in Reno, charging "ment...

Nixed Blessings? (long)
Legendary high stakes gambler Johnny Moss once played a round of golf against a ...

Pampered Pup? (long)
Peter Falk was not enthused about working with a dog on the set: "Second season ...

Big Production?
Producer Jerry Weintraub started his career as an agent and concert promoter. In...

Parker's Plight
When George Oppenheimer and Ruth Gordon both produced plays featuring characters...

Samuel Goldwyn & Louis Brom...
Samuel Goldwyn once invited Louis Bromfield to Hollywood to write for the screen...

Skidelsky
James Cagney took great pride in his exceptional memory. While out with his wife...

JFK: Dallas Loves You
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey O...

Bible Girls?
Many eyebrows were raised when raunchy radio celebrity Liz Curtis Higgs became a...

Roscoe Born
"For the last several shows in my first stint on 'One Life To Live,' Mitch was t...

Resolution
One New Year's day, while serving as State Department spokesperson, Bernard Kalb...

Smoke Signals
Erik Estrada once appeared in a television commercial for "Smoke Signals" teleph...

Happy Days
The classic song "Happy Days Are Here Again" was first played by George Olsen at...

The Godfather
Many readers of The Godfather have suspected that Mario Puzo's knowledge ...

Marriage Material?
One day in the late 1970s, Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde "tried" to marry...

Good Year, Bad Life...
Despite his genius for innovation, Charles Goodyear (who, for example, opened Am...

Edward VIII: Two Bit King
On December 11th, 1936, King Edward VIII famously declared his love for Wallis W...

Protectors
"I [Henry David Thoreau] went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our f...

Robert Millikan: Gigantic B...
"In 1930, the American physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Robert Millikan (1868-19...

Rodzinski
While vacationing one day, Artur Rodzinski chanced upon a radio broadcast of an ...

Mexican War
After the Mexican War, General Sherman was enlisted by President Zachary Taylor ...

Maybe Not...
What role was James Dean next scheduled to play when he died in 1955? Boxer Rock...

Saddamn
"David Albright, who worked as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, says ...

Silent Movie
What was the only word spoken in Mel Brooks' classic 1976 film comedy ...

Precious Irony
One day during his tenure as mayor of New York, Ed Koch sought to clarify his po...

It's Tom Waits!
Because his flexible schedule allowed it, Tom Waits often volunteered to take sc...

Marla Maples
One day during her affair with Donald Trump, Marla Maples declared that, because...

To Be or Not to Be?
"Hamlet was to have been played at the Richmond Theatre by an inexperienc...

Come Together
One day in the mid-1960s, legendary LSD pioneer Timothy Leary decided to run for...

Cricket Writer
"In a Lancashire and Yorkshire match in 1919, the year in which I [Sir Neville C...

Parenthood
In 1995, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, famed for his stage-diving gui...

Hair of the Dog
Concerned about Tony Adams's alcohol consumption, his teammates staged an interv...

Giant Comeback (long)
On October 3rd, 1951, the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers played the third ...

Portrait of Alexander Graha...
The artist J.W.L. Forster once visited Alexander Graham Bell at Beinn Bhreagh (B...

Impulsive Pevere & Planet o...
Shortly after the summer release of Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes (in 2...

Debs Daunted?
In 1918, the noted pacifist Eugene Debs made a speech condemning World War I and...

Strangely Normal?
While in college, David Lynch - the twisted director of such dark cultish films ...

Quentin Tarantino: Ham Actor?
As a budding young actor, Quentin Tarantino took acting classes at a school loca...

Marxist Irony
"The key to understanding why Marx is tittering in Highgate Cemetery is the diff...

Fruit of the Womb
An admirer of Sarah Bernhardt's, once complained that the actress always appeare...

Anti-Mason Party
The first American political party to hold a Presidential nominating conventio...

Happiness Sucks
Ben Folds' upbeat nature, he once explained, did not conduce to downbeat songwri...

Jimmy Swaggart: Sicko
"Noted holy man [televangelist] Jimmy Swaggart," Details magazine's Jerry...

Yapper
Former Toronto Globe editor J.A. Macdonald once shared his opinion of Can...

Prussian Ironie?
So infuriated was the French ethnologist Armand de Quatrefages by the damage don...

George Bernard Shaw: $ocialist
Ironically, the remarkable success of George Bernard Shaw's socialist plays thre...

Rail Pass
Although the special rail passes which Henry Watterson and other American journa...

Impressions of a Lucky Day
"Malcolm Sargent was given his first chance of conducting by Sir Henry Wood, who...

Taste of Success
Larry David (who served as the inspiration for the George Costanza character on ...

Good Harvest
Cyrus McCormick went bankrupt after the panic of 1837. He lost his farm and ever...

Death to America? (long)
In 2001, Joe Klein saw Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani speak at Tehran Univ...

Henry Hypocrisy
Many observers were disturbed to find Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde, as House ...

Warm Response?
One day during his chairmanship of the Ford Foundation (in the 1950s), Robert Hu...

Stuart Burger?
"Dr. Stuart M. Berger, an author of the best-selling diet and health books who c...

De Havilland & Sons
"I had difficulty in commumcating my enthusiasm for flying to my children," Sir ...

Brownie Points
During a cricket tour of the West Indies in 1995, Australian cricket coach Bobby...

Leading the Revolution
The publication of Tom Peters's In Search of Excellence (in 1982) kicked ...

The Shipping News
"Shooting began March 4, 2001, on a frozen plain outside Halifax, Nova Scotia. T...

Kevin Bacon & Lawrence Fish...
One night shortly after the release of The Matrix, Kevin Bacon visited a ...

Can't Have Everything? (long)
When William De Mille (Cecil B. De Mille's brother) wrote the screenplay for the...

Gloria Estefan's Party
Following the release of her album Gloria, pop diva Gloria Estefan threw ...

Edmund Grainger: Smoke Signals
During the production of The Fabulous Texan (1947), director Edmund Grain...

Cowardice
One day a young French officer was disciplined by his colonel for showing fear d...

Sardonic Strachey
Lytton Strachey was once asked what he considered the greatest thing in life. Th...

Thai Entrepreneur
In July 2003 Thai "massage parlour" entrepreneur Chuwit Kamolwisit complained th...

Old Geezers
"Not long ago, I was playing golf," Kirk Douglas once recalled, "and I said to m...

Anja & Adam's Poll
During a Norwegian talk show early one morning in July 2003, three TVNorge hosts...

Shoot Britney
While speaking at a conference at Hood College in Maryland in October 2003, Kend...

Made In Japan
"When... [former Vice President John] Garner visited Tokyo en route to the Phili...

Madeline Cain: Eminent Domain
"60 Minutes" co-host Mike Wallace once confronted Lakewood, Ohio Mayor Madeline ...

Comic Relief
While promoting a concert in 1986, Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Crystal and Robin Will...

Niemoller
In the 1930s, Martin Niemoller was a Protestant pastor and head of the anti-Nazi...

Buddhist Bunk?
Hideyoshi once commissioned an enormous statue of Buddha to adorn a shrine in Ky...

Mountain Rescue Dog
A St Bernard named Bruno earned a measure of fame in the village of Valchiusella...

Light Explanation
Sydney Smith's advancement through the ranks of the Anglican church was hampered...

Lusty Entertainment
In 1932, Paramount publicist Arthur Mayer found himself in charge of an ad campa...

Charles Ives
The American composer Charles Ives, whose works anticipated those of later music...

Nick Nolte: Health Regimen
Shortly after kicking a heavy drinking habit in 1990, Nick Nolte appeared in Geo...

William Howard Taft: Presid...
During William Howard Taft's presidency, Harvard President Abbott Lowell was sum...

Golden Boy?
Houston Cougars coach John Jenkins was widely admired by his team's players. "He...

Yes Ma'am
While shooting the softball scene in Runaway Bride, Tommy Hines was requi...

Honorable Mention?
Sherry Stringfield, a graduate of Klein High School in Klein, Texas (just outsid...

Survivor
In September 2000, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Jon Carroll had lunch...

The Plant
In August 2001, Dick Wadhams, a spokesman for tough-on-drugs Colorado Governor B...

F---in' Busted
During a concert in 1975 in Memphis, Tennessee, Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler ...

Ja Rule
In 1999, African American rapper Ja Rule and his band (the Murderers) were order...

Relativity
Scientific American once ran a competition offering several thousand doll...

Peter Menzel: Snack Time
Peter Menzel, while traveling the globe to research insect consumption in variou...

Sleep Psychology
One day on the Discovery Channel's "Daily Planet," Jay Ingram and Natasha Stillw...

Dulli
Fans of the Afghan Whigs may have noticed an unusual quality in "Black Love" - a...

Pope's Last Words
Though lying on his deathbed, Alexander Pope was assured by his doctor one day t...

Escort
When a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society in New York was broken up by thugs (w...

Religious Conversion?
"Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker who pioneered prison reform in the early 19th century, ...

Jim Finks
After a brutal loss one day in 1986, New Orleans Saints general manager Jim Fink...

Coinage
"He [Thomas Hardy] laughed a little and said that once or twice recently he had ...

Artist's Solution
At the notorious "Sensation" exhibition in 1997, Marcus Harvey's controversial p...

Undiscovered?
The B-52s' Fred Schneider was once asked about his favorite restaurants. "Pedro ...

Big Apple
While walking along a New York street one day, Cal McCrystal was confronted by a...

Social Caffe?
During his days as a student at Harvard, the American publisher William Jovanovi...

La Gloire?
In September 1927, Isadora Duncan stepped into a brand-new Bugatti racing car, j...

Pacific Ocean?
In 1520, while trying to find a western route to the Moluccas, Ferdinand Magella...

Environmental Affairs Commi...
In 1993, the actor Ed Begley, Jr. - a vegetarian who lives in a solar-powered ho...

Precautions
"[Bishop Potter] was sailing for Europe on one of the great transatlantic ocean ...

Dandy Observation
The journalist Alistair Cooke once asked Bertrand Russell his opinion of future ...

Tax Code
In December 1985, U.S. Congressman Delbert L. Latta summarized the progress bein...

Abusive Father
Joe Jackson was the paradigmatic abusive father. When he wasn't waking Michael u...

Hypocrite Bennett
In May 2003, William J. Bennett, the Republican party's leading voice on family ...

Chertkov
Among Leo Tolstoy's disciples was a certain wealthy aristocrat named Chertkov. T...

Simon Baker: Piss in my Pocket
During a guest appearance on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" one evening, "Guard...

Cloakroom
"When we were in St Louis they gave a splendid party for me and there were a lot...

Sacks
Buffalo Bills defensive end Chidi Ahanatu, famed for his numerous quarterback sa...

St. Louis Cardinals
One day in 1995, Mark Lamping proudly told his 12-year-old son, Brian, that he h...

American Tyrany
When the Philippines was transferred from Spain (on April 11th, 1899) following ...

High Tech Switch
At the turn of the millennium, Frank Gehry was commissioned by the Massachusetts...

Adled Mind?
One evening, the philosopher Mortimer J. Adler engaged Gertrude Stein in a feroc...

Rogier Philipoom: Hooligans
While touring with a theatre company in March 2001, Dutch actor Rogier Philipoom...

Oscar Irony
Shortly after the completion of Mrs. Miniver, director William Wyler enli...

Loud Suit
"There is a story of Dylan Thomas's friend in the funeral parlour, who looked do...

Moderation Management?
In June 2000, Audrey Kishline, the founder of Moderation Management (MM) - an al...

Cantor Fitzgerald Risk Asse...
In the late 1990s, Thomas Barnett, a Harvard-educated professor of military stra...

Marie Antoinette's Perfume
According to legend, when the French royal family tried to flee France disguised...

Military Intelligence
In 1943, the British Royal Air Force (RAF) bombed a nondescript printing plant i...

Sigur Rós & Radiohead (long)
"Merce Cunningham was one of the creators of America's mid-century modernism, as...

Kappfjell? (long)
Having jumped from several mountains and buildings around the world, BASE jumper...

Robert Downey, Jr: Out of R...
On his first day out of rehab, Robert Downey, Jr dropped by a friend's place and...

Short Temper
In 2000, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein outlawed shorts on men. The sight of men...

Pierre Belon
Despite being warned of the danger to Christians, the French naturalist Pierre B...

DiViDed Loyalties? (long)
"It all started modestly enough, back in September 1999, when 15-year-old Jon Jo...

Loyal Sutton
Over the course of his 23-year major league career, Don Sutton pitched for the L...

Mansa Musa
In 1324, the African emperor Mansa Musa embarked on a pilgrimage to Mecca - with...

Cheer Up, Children
"Cheer up, children," Franz Haydn declared from his deathbed one day. ...

Wyle Fans
Noah Wyle once publicly lamented the fact that most of his fans were teenaged gi...

Lotka Curve
In 2003, the sociologist Charles Murray - famed for his controversial contention...

Sea Lord Leak
"J. L. Garvin, editor of the Observer was repeatedly given secret informa...

Donut Break?
Maya Angelou's early work as a market researcher in the Watts district of Los An...

Tired Student?
At the age of 14, following a domestic dispute with his sister, Kevin Spacey was...

Celine Dion & Murphy's Law
Rene-Charles, Celine's first son, was born in January 2001. The following year, ...

Stand-up Comedian?
According to fellow comedian Bernard Manning, George Roper "looked like a comic....

Wood Burn?
In the 1950s, Jackie Gleason had a fantastic round home of his own design built ...

Not Even Close?
In 1996, Democrat Elliot Close ran for a South Carolina Senate seat against the ...

The Outfield
Though they were a British New Wave outfit, The Outfield were renamed by their m...

Caesar
Julius Caesar was dining with friends one evening when the conversation turned t...

Shoddy Coleridge
While riding with a friend near his home in the Lake District one day, Samuel Ta...

Crossfire
One day during the post-production of Crossfire (1947), Edward Dmytryk's ...

Te Deum
The baton used by seventeenth-century conductors was much longer and heavier tha...

Brahms
One day in his twilight years, Johannes Brahms announced his plan to stop compos...

Bloody Waste
George Washington died in 1799 after losing about two and a half litres of blood...

Red Letters?
Talleyrand once discovered - too late - that in his haste to mail two correspond...

Efficiency Expert?
Henry Ford once enlisted an efficiency expert to examine the operation of his co...

Frankly Odd
With one exception, ZZ Top's members were famed for their long beards. The only ...

Classic Capone
The funeral of famed Chicago gangster Dion "Deany" O'Banion in 1926 was attended...

Tom Daschle: Fiscal Lament
"On January 4th, 2000, Tom Daschle, Senate majority leader and Democrat-in-chief...

Beethoven's Deafness
"Beethoven said, 'This is a beautiful piano. I got it as a gift from London. Loo...

George W. Bush: He or Her
Shortly after George W. Bush clinched the 2000 presidential election, the follow...

Keeping the Dream Alive?
In 2002, actor James Earl Jones was pleased to learn that the people of Lauderhi...

Good Customer!
In 2002, Winona Ryder was found guilty of theft and vandalism following a shopli...

Drink or Think?
Actor Richard Burton, famed for his drinking, indulged himself at every opportun...

Anthrax: Band or Disease?
The terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 were quickly followed by an 'anthra...

Sam Waksal: Amazon Wish List
In 2003, ImClone founder Sam Waksal began serving a seven-year-and-three-month t...

Up in Arms
During a visit to Berlin in November 2002, Michael Jackson stepped onto his four...

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