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From her rise to prominence by way of a quarter-century run as the host of an eponymous talk show, Oprah Winfrey has undertaken an extraordinary career journey that made her, among other things, the first woman to own and produce her own talk show, a 2013 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and one of the few celebrities famous enough to be known solely on a first-name basis. Here are six more facts about the wildly successful screen personality, entrepreneur, and philanthropist appropriately known as the “Queen of All Media.”

Her Real First Name Is “Orpah”

According to her birth certificate, we’ve been saying the media queen’s first name incorrectly all this time. Born in January 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi, the future TV host was named “Orpah,” after a woman in the Bible’s Book of Ruth. However, the unusual name immediately caused confusion among family, who adopted a slightly different version of the moniker for their newest member. As she later explained during one early audition tape, “No one knew how to spell in my home, and that’s why it ended up being Oprah.” Her birth certificate still reads “Orpah,” but to everyone who knows her — which now includes millions of fans around the world — she’ll always be “Oprah.”

Oprah Initially Wanted No Part of Daytime Talk Television

A few years after beginning her TV career as a news anchor at age 19, Oprah was dismayed to learn that executives at Baltimore’s WJZ-TV wanted her to co-host a daytime talk show. (She reportedly worried that she “wouldn’t be taken seriously as a journalist.”) According to Kitty Kelley’s Oprah: A Biography, the newscaster begged her bosses to reconsider and left their meeting “with tears in her eyes” when she realized she had no other option. But something clicked while she conducted interviews during the August 1978 debut of People Are Talking, and Oprah realized that “this is what [she] was meant to do.”

A Date With Roger Ebert Sent Her Career in a New Direction

Fans are well aware of Oprah’s long-term relationship with Stedman Graham, but lesser known is her brief but consequential dating history with famed movie critic Roger Ebert. During one dinner together in the mid-1980s, Oprah revealed her uncertainty on how to handle offers to take her show into national syndication. Ebert, by then already a TV veteran as co-host of At the Movies, did some quick calculations that showed the staggering amount of money she stood to earn from a syndication deal. The financial tip wasn’t enough to save their fledgling romance, but it did point Oprah in the right direction and pave the way for the syndicated launch of The Oprah Winfrey Show in September 1986.

She Made Her Film Debut With an Assist from Quincy Jones

Her early television success notwithstanding, Oprah remained hopeful of realizing her dream to become an actress. She finally got the opportunity she’d been waiting for in the mid-1980s, when music producer Quincy Jones, who was trying to pull together a big-screen adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Color Purple, was captivated by the then-still-relatively-unknown TV host and recommended her to his casting agent. Despite her lack of professional acting experience, Oprah wound up with the part of Sofia, a choice that was validated when she earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 1985 film. She went on to found her own production company, Harpo Productions, through which she continued to satisfy her acting ambitions, with roles in movies including Beloved (1998) and Selma (2014). She also earned acclaim for her performance in The Butler (2013), and starred alongside Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling in 2018’s flashy film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

Oprah Acted on an Employee’s Tip To Launch Her Book Club

Among the most popular recurring segments of her show, Oprah’s Book Club grew from a love of reading shared with an intern named Alice McGee. After several years of bonding over the books they were enjoying, McGee, who had risen to become a senior producer, suggested to Oprah that they open up the literary discussion to audience members. Although her team was hesitant to support the idea at first, they determined that it could work if audiences were given enough time to read a book. So on September 17, 1996, Oprah’s Book Club hit the airwaves with her recommendation of Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Deep End of the Ocean.

In the 15 years that followed, Oprah recommended some 70 books, from Toni Morrison’s Paradise and Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory to John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The segment encountered a few bumps along the way — most famously when the September 2005 selection A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey, was revealed to have been partially fabricated, despite being marketed as nonfiction — but its success and influence were undeniable. Authors whose books were chosen often saw massive increases in sales, a boost that became known as the “Oprah Effect.” The original Book Club ended with her show in 2011, but recent years have seen newer iterations in O, The Oprah Magazine and on Apple TV+.

Oprah Despises Chewing Gum

Oprah has famously shared a list of her favorite things almost every year since the 1990s, first on her eponymous talk show, and then in O, The Oprah Magazine and, more recently, on her Oprah Daily website. One thing you’ll probably never see on the list? Chewing gum. As she shared during a 2018 appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, she “intensely” dislikes the stuff. Her aversion stemmed from a grandmother who left gum all around the house. “She would put it on the bedpost,” Oprah recalled. “She would put it in the cabinet. She would put it everywhere around. And so as a child, I would bump into it, and it would, like, rub up against me.” The media queen has since attempted to eradicate any traces of gum from her life, with limited success: “It’s barred at my offices, nobody is allowed, but when I go out into the world, I can’t bar it,” she told Colbert. “It’s a thing. It creeps me out.”

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The Mary Tyler Moore Show is one of the most influential and groundbreaking sitcoms in the history of television. The series follows Mary Richards, played by Mary Tyler Moore, as a 30-something working as an associate producer on a local news series and navigating single life in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Its portrayal of an unmarried working woman finding satisfaction outside of home and family — and openly enjoying sex and dating — was unheard of in the early 1970s, but it’s not just the show’s forward-thinking writing that made it a classic. Its heartfelt relationships, witty writing, and relatable conflicts made the sitcom a hit with audiences and critics alike and cemented Moore (already an established TV star when the show debuted) as an enduring cultural icon. It went on to win 29 Emmy awards during its seven-season run on CBS. Here are eight things you might not know about the sitcom.

Lou Grant Was Ed Asner’s First Comedic Role — And He Almost Blew It

The late Ed Asner is remembered now as a strong, versatile actor, but at the time, some CBS executives questioned whether he’d be up for a prominent role in a comedy series, according to Jennifer Keisin Armstrong’s 2013 book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted. Although he was casting director Ethel Winant’s first choice, the producers had kicked around some other choices before signing on, like The Odd Couple’s Jack Klugman, fellow cast member Gavin McLeod, and Second City alum Shelley Berman, who later had a small role as one of Mary’s dates.

Winant pointed to Asner’s role as a journalist in the political drama Slattery’s People as evidence that he had the right vibe. With everybody on board, they brought Asner in for an audition — and he completely biffed it, hitting the famous line, “You’ve got spunk… I hate spunk,” with a dramatic fervor that turned everybody off, according to Armstrong.

The decision had already been made not to cast him when Asner, rather than getting in his car and leaving, turned around and walked right back into the studio. “You just sat there on your asses and let me bomb like that?” he said. “I was terrible. And you know it was terrible and you were too polite to tell me. Don’t be so f******g polite. Tell me what you want in this character.”

They worked through the character for half an hour, then did a second try at the reading. He’d won everyone over except for Moore, but according to Asner, producers boldly told her, “That’s your Lou Grant,” and she was sold.

Mary Was Originally Supposed To Be a Divorcée Working for a Gossip Columnist

When the show was in development in the late 1960s, producers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns had pitched Mary as a recent divorcée, writes Armstrong. Moore, who had gone through a divorce herself, was on board. The original vision differed in another major way, too: Mary was supposed to be the assistant to a snappy gossip columnist in Los Angeles.

They were less attached to the Los Angeles idea, so that was quickly scrapped for a news show in Minneapolis. As for the divorcée bit, Brooks and Burns considered throwing in the towel but didn’t like the optics of quitting, so they went back to the drawing board and came up with a concept they felt played to Mary’s strength: She was setting off to the big city on her own after a big breakup rather than a doomed marriage.

Producers Loved the Fashion Possibilities of Minneapolis

While re-evaluating the show’s premise and setting, Brooks and Burns landed on Minneapolis for a few reasons, according to Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: It stood out against the New York- and Los Angeles- dominated media environment, they loved the dynamic of the city being huge for Mary and tiny for New Yorker Rhoda, and the bad weather could provide plot points and unique visuals.

Another thing Minneapolis could provide: coats, and lots of them. The costume department certainly took full advantage, because Mary’s coats went on to become iconic.

Betty White Was Supposed to Be in Only One Episode

One of the series’ most beloved roles didn’t come around until season four, and it was only supposed to be temporary. Betty White played Sue Ann Nivens, an outwardly sweet host of a show called “The Happy Homemaker,” with an aggressive, sex-crazed side. In her first episode, she wantonly tries to seduce Phyllis Lindstrom’s (Cloris Leachman) husband, leading to escalating tension as Phyllis and Sue Ann film a cooking segment about a chocolate soufflé.

White was a longtime friend of Moore — and a big fan of the show — before being offered the role, and the episode was such a hit that she was brought on as a regular. The morning after that first episode, according to Armstrong, Moore came to White’s doorstep with a real-life soufflé.

It’s Likely the First American Sitcom to Feature Birth Control Pills

On The Dick Van Dyke Show, which Moore starred in from 1961-1966, the actress and her on-screen husband, Dick Van Dyke, slept in separate beds and couldn’t say the word “pregnant.” However, just a few years later on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, not only did Mary have sex out of wedlock, she openly took birth control pills.

In a 1972 episode — the same year that a supreme court decision made birth control available to unmarried women in all states — Mary is having dinner with her father when her mother shouts, “Don’t forget to take your pill!” Mary and her father both yelled, “I won’t,” and the embarrassed look on Mary’s face shows that she doesn’t just take a pill, but The Pill.

Its realistic portrayal of the sex lives of women in the 1970s walked a fine line for the audiences of the time, with a lot of it hiding in quips like that one. But the series was still open about what it was doing. “I’m hardly innocent,” Mary says in one episode. “I’ve been around. Well, maybe not around, but I’ve been nearby.”

Valerie Harper Almost Didn’t Get the Role of Rhoda Because She Was Too Pretty

Rhoda Morgenstern, Mary’s Bronx-born sidekick, was the last major role to be cast in the series, with more than 50 actresses reading opposite Moore for the part. Valerie Harper nailed her audition as Rhoda and even brought her own cloth for washing Mary’s apartment window in her first scene. But the producers weren’t sure she matched their vision.

“She was something we never expected the part to be… which is someone as attractive as she was,” Burns said in Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted. “But you’ve got to go with the talent.” Director Jay Sandrich felt strongly Harper was right for the role and suggested she not wear any makeup for her callback.

Producers immediately changed their minds when they brought Moore in to read a scene with Harper. Rhoda’s character switched gears a little bit — rather than being unattractive, which is subjective anyway, Rhoda just felt like she was unattractive.

“Rhoda felt inferior to Mary, Rhoda wished she was Mary,” Harper later recalled. “All I could do was, not being as pretty, as thin, as accomplished, was: ‘I’m a New Yorker, and I’m going to straighten this shiksa out.’”

The Real Owner of Mary’s Apartment Building Displayed Political Banners to Keep Producers From Coming Back

The 1892 home that provided the exteriors for Mary’s apartment became so famous that the owners were inundated with visitors and tour buses, and eventually, they’d had enough. When they got word that the crew was coming back to film more exterior shots in 1972, owner Paula Giese displayed a large “Impeach Nixon” banner prominently across the front. (She was a prominent political activist, so it was a two-for-one deal.)

It worked. They didn’t get their new shots, and Mary eventually ended up moving.

The Character Ted Baxter Was Based on News Anchor Jerry Dunphy

Jerry Dunphy was a legendary news anchor in the Los Angeles market, known for his head of white hair, and his signoff: “From the desert to the sea to all of southern California.” His style became so well-known in broadcast journalism that he often played a small role as a newscaster in movies, too. He inspired the egotistical, dim-witted Ted Baxter (Ted Knight), although Dunphy had a better head on his shoulders — and much better ratings. Dunphy also inspired the character Kent Brockman on The Simpsons.

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It’s sometimes said that soccer is the world’s game, but if there’s any activity that offers something close to universal appeal, it’s probably chess, with a reported 600 million-plus regular adult participants. Given the minimal space and physical exertion needed, it’s easy to see why, although chess can definitely count as a mental workout. While most of us would fail at executing an acrobatic scissor kick, it’s somewhat easier (at least physically) to learn to strategically move chess pieces to opportune spots while slowly reducing an opponent to a quivering mess. Read on to learn five fun facts about the ultimate battle board game, but be sure to keep a watchful eye on your king.

Chess Evolved From the Indian Board Game Chaturanga

Although the exact rules of the sixth-century Indian board game chaturanga are lost to time, enough is known to label it a clear forerunner to chess. Like its more recent relative, chaturanga was a simulated war game that involved moving pieces of differing attacking capabilities, with the end goal of capturing the opponent’s king-like piece. Chaturanga was eventually adapted into shatranj (or chatrang) by Persian players, and this was the version of the game that spread across Europe. With the introduction of a few key changes, including the transformation of a somewhat punchless king’s minister into the mighty queen, the modern form of chess was born in the 15th century.

Benjamin Franklin Helped Popularize Chess in the U.S.

A man of immense intellectual capacity, Benjamin Franklin was unsurprisingly drawn to the challenges that arose from the chessboard. He wrote of playing as far back as 1733, and later was often seen competing in public venues during his time as minister to France in the 1770s and ’80s. His treatise “The Morals of Chess,” which surfaced in 1779, is considered the first published work on the subject by an American author. Although he was perhaps admired more for his enthusiasm than pure talent, Franklin’s endorsement of the game boosted its popularity in his home country, and eventually led to his induction into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame in 1999.

Many Chess Champions Have Come From Russia

After Austria’s Wilhelm Steinitz won the first official World Chess Championship in 1886, the top ranks of international chess became increasingly dominated by Russian-born competitors. Along with delivering the game’s first female champion in Vera Menchik, the talent pool from this area of the world produced a series of men’s champions of almost exclusively Soviet/Russian nationality during the second half of the 20th century. The one player to break through the Eastern Bloc was American Bobby Fischer, who defeated Boris Spassky for the championship in 1972, although he was later stripped of the title in 1975 for refusing to follow federation rules.

There Are More Possible Chess Moves Than Atoms in the Observable Universe

This is the sort of tidbit that pops up on internet searches without much of an explanation, but it’s valid if you follow the logic proposed by mathematician Claude Shannon, sometimes called the “father of information theory.” According to his 1950 paper “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess,” there are approximately 1,000 unique possibilities for each coupled pair of white-then-black moves, which adds up to 10 to the power of 120 possible moves — aka the “Shannon Number” — for a game lasting 40 turns. As there are an estimated 10 to the power of 80 atoms in the observable universe, that would be checkmate for the Shannon Number in this comparison of incomprehensibly enormous figures.

The 1997 Deep Blue-Kasparov Match Marked a Turning Point for Computer Chess

While Shannon and fellow geniuses like Alan Turing were fixated on chess-playing computers as far back as the 1950s, the landmark moment in this field arrived in May 1997, when the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match. Although the humbled champ suspected that human intervention was involved because of an unusual sacrifice offered by his opponent — later explained as a bug in the software — the rapid development of computing power soon obliterated any hope of humans retaining the edge over machines. Writing of his experience playing computers in 2010, Kasparov casually mentioned that anyone could buy a “home PC program that will crush most grandmasters.” In fact, it’s now been at least 15 years since a human beat a computer in a chess tournament.

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Readers love a rags-to-riches story — which could be why “Cinderella” has such a cultural hold on us, even centuries after the tale was first recounted. Most versions of the famous fairy tale follow the same pattern: A destitute girl yearning for a better life makes a magical friend and gets a boost into better circumstances thanks to a shoe. But not every detail of the fictional servant-turned-queen’s background is predictable — here are six fascinating facts you might not know about the “Cinderella” folktale and movie.

The First Cinderella Story May Have Come From Ancient Greece

The ball-gown-bedazzled Cinderella we know today is far from her origins, which may have been in ancient Greece. Some researchers point to the tale of Rhodopis, a story recorded by Greek geographer Strabo around the first century BCE, as a possible beginning. In that account, Rhodopis is a courtesan whose shoe is stolen by an eagle and dropped into the lap of an Egyptian pharaoh. Seeing the shoe as an omen from the gods, the royal sends soldiers throughout the kingdom to track down the shoeless woman, who eventually becomes his wife. However, not everyone agrees that the tale of Rhodopis is truly the first “Cinderella” story. Some historians say that Strabo’s brief description of the tale is only similar to today’s version in that it hinges on a shoe; the centuries-old version lacks a fairy godmother, cruel stepmother, and other key components we now think of as standard.

There Are More Than 700 Versions of the Story

Whether or not Rhodopis was the first Cinderella, she certainly wasn’t the last. Fairy tales with similar shoe-based plots have cropped up worldwide — some librarians count more than 500 versions found in Europe alone, while global counts are as high as 700.

Culture has played a heavy role in each story’s details. One Italian rendition renames the princess “Zucchettina” because she was born inside of a squash. In the Danish tale, Cinderella (there called “Askepot”) wears rain boots, a detail particularly fine-tuned to Denmark’s rainy climate. However, in the version that has had the most recent popularity, first penned by French author Charles Perrault in 1697, “Cendrillon” is eventually found by her prince thanks to a glass slipper — the first edition of the story to include such a delicate shoe.

The Famed Glass Slipper May Have Been a Political Statement

Perrault’s choice to cast Cinderella’s sparkling shoes from glass may have been less about fashion and more about politics, according to some academic researchers. Historian Genevieve Warwick at the University of Edinburgh believes that the detail was actually meant in part to poke fun at Louis XIV, king of France from 1642 to 1715. During his reign, Louis XIV (who was responsible for developing Versailles into a lavish palace) was known for donning extravagant clothing, particularly shoes. Perrault, who worked as a secretary overseeing construction at Versailles — known for its Hall of Mirrors — and the Louvre (especially glasswork), may have added the glass slipper detail as a bit of satire, mocking the increasingly ostentatious and impractical French fashions of the time; after all, it would be incredibly difficult to actually dance in shoes made of glass.

Yet there may have also been a layer of economic nationalism: Perrault was in charge of setting up a royal glassworks for France, which meant the nation no longer needed to be dependent on the glassmakers of Venice. Warwick thinks Cinderella’s transformation may have been read by contemporary readers as a metaphor for France’s self-determinism, and newfound ability to make the king’s beloved luxury products for itself.

Walt Disney Sketched His First Cinderella Nearly 30 Years Before The Feature Film

Disney’s feature-length adaptation of “Cinderella” premiered in 1950, though the illustrator actually began tinkering with the story some three decades before. At Laugh-O-Gram, Disney’s first studio in Kansas City, the artist tested out his animation skills through an interest in fairy tales. In 1922, the young animator produced a silent, seven-minute version of “Cinderella” in which her only friend was a cat who helped with housework, and her fairy godmother sent her off to the ball in flapper attire and a car instead of a pumpkin. That same year, Disney also put out cartoon shorts of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Beauty and the Beast” (which the company would successfully return to in 1991).

“Cinderella” Saved Walt Disney From Bankruptcy

Cinderella was Walt Disney’s sixth full-length animated film (following Snow White and Bambi, among others), but it was the project that finally solidified his studio’s success. Disney and a team of animators spent six years developing Cinderella before its 1950 premiere, and the production wasn’t just a major investment of time — it was a huge financial gamble. World War II had slowed the studio’s projects and Disney had racked up nearly $4 million in debts to keep the business running; Cinderella cost around $2 million to produce and would likely have shuttered Disney’s business if it flopped. Luckily, the film grossed more than $4 million at the box office and gained three Oscar nominations for its soundtrack, which helped usher in a new era for Disney’s studio.

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Adaptation Was Their Only TV Musical

Broadway superstars Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote 11 musicals during their partnership, though the duo created only one specifically for television viewers: Cinderella. The 90-minute production featured actress Julie Andrews in the leading role, to glowing reviews. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s sole TV musical debuted on March 31, 1957, and drew more than 100 million viewers — more than 60% of American households tuned in. Like the everlasting story, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s version has been remade for TV and stage time and again in the decades since it aired.

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Some have days of the week named after them and others are Marvel superheroes, but many Norse gods haven’t been thought about much outside of academic circles since the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson wrote about them in the 13th century. That’s a shame, since the pantheon of Norse mythology extends far beyond the likes of Thor and Odin — and includes such deities as the crone who brought the god of thunder to one knee in a wrestling match. (Snorri wrote the Prose Edda, which, alongside the Poetic Edda, whose author is unknown, remains the foundational text for modern understanding of Norse mythology.) Here are five lesser-known mythological figures Snorri wrote about, and why they’re worth knowing — or perhaps even making a movie or comic book — about.

Elli

Few mythical figures, whether gods or otherwise, can claim to have held their own against Thor. Even fewer can say they beat him, but the giantess Elli is one of those who can rightfully make the boast.

Admittedly, there’s some trickery involved in the story. The giantess, considered the personification of Old Age, is said to beat Thor in a wrestling match while the god of thunder visits the giant king Utgard-Loki in his castle. As part of a series of tests of strength, Thor agrees to wrestle Utgard-Loki’s nurse — a challenge he accepts without realizing his opponent’s true identity. Thor struggles throughout the contest until Elli forces him to one knee, at which point Utgard-Loki declares the match over, and commends Thor for faring as well against old age as he did.
The tale is recounted in the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda, and sadly marks Elli’s only mention in the text.

Lofn

Norse mythology tends to evoke images of strength, battle, and violence. One exception is Lofn, a kind of matchmaker who specializes in forbidden love affairs. She’s described by Snorri as “so gracious and good to call on that she gets permission from Alfodr [Odin] or Frigg for the intercourse of people, men and women, although otherwise it would be banned or forbidden.” Also known as “The Comforter,” the goddess of love and gentleness has a special fondness for small and/or helpless beings. “Lof,” meaning “praise,” is derived from her name.

Víðarr

Sometimes known as the Silent God, Víðarr (also anglicized as Vidar and Vithar) is the son of Odin and the jötunn (a being akin to a giantess) Gríðr — making him Thor’s half-brother. He’s often associated with vengeance, and with good reason: Odin’s ultimate fate is to be killed by the wolf Fenrir during Ragnarök, the “Twilight of the Gods” that’s essentially Norse mythology’s end of the world; Víðarr’s destiny, meanwhile, is to avenge his father by slaying Fenrir. Víðarr is also one of the few gods who survives Ragnarök (at least in some accounts), though little is written about him beyond his actions during these cataclysmic events other than to mention his status as the second-strongest god after Thor.

Víðarr is mentioned in both the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, with the latter describing his most important deed thusly:

“Then comes Sigfather’s | mighty son,

Vithar, to fight | with the foaming wolf;

In the giant’s son | does he thrust his sword

Full to the heart: | his father is avenged.”

Angrboða

With a name that’s been translated as “she who brings sorrow” and “grief-bringer,” Angrboða has a lot to live up to. For better and (mostly) for worse, she does. A giantess (jötunn) and one of the trickster god Loki’s lovers, she ultimately gives birth to three monsters: Fenrir, the wolf fated to kill Odin during Ragnarök; Hel, who rules over the dead; and Jörmungandr, the serpent who encircles the entire world and is Thor’s archnemesis. The mother of monsters is indirectly responsible for some of Norse mythology’s most catastrophic events, though there’s no indication that Angrboða herself is evil — after birthing that terrible trio, she’s mostly known to reside in Jötunheim (the land of the giants) on her lonesome without any contact with either Loki or the monstrous spawn they had together. Some people’s children, as they say.

Hoenir

Hoenir — whose name is spelled several different ways (Hönir is also common) — works alongside Odin and Loki to create the first humans, Ask and Embla, by imbuing two pieces of driftwood with “essential gifts” whose exact properties remain a matter of debate centuries later. Here’s how the moment is described in Völuspá (Prophecy of the Seeress), the first poem in the Poetic Edda:

“They had no breath,

they had no soul,

they had neither hair nor voice,

nor a good appearance.

Odin gave them breath,

Hoenir gave them a soul,

Lodur / Loki gave them hair

and a good appearance.”

Here’s where it gets confusing. Hoenir’s gift imbues the humans with óðr, an untranslatable Old Norse word that can encompass everything from understanding to poetic inspiration to frenzy on the battlefield. But since óðr is the root of Odin’s name and another Norse tale suggests that humans derive their óðr from Odin himself, some consider this mention of Hoenir to be an extension of Odin himself. Hoenir remains important not despite this ambiguity but because of it — much of Norse mythology is murky and ambiguous, with few figures embodying those qualities quite like he does.

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Louis Armstrong changed the face of jazz in the 20th century, with enduring hits such as “West End Blues,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “What a Wonderful World.” Born in 1901, the influential trumpeter and vocalist started playing gigs as a child in New Orleans, and long after his death in 1971, remains a giant of the genre.

Satchmo (as he was lovingly nicknamed) had a long and rich career, but was he always a singer? Which enduring hit went unnoticed for decades? And how did he revolutionize the trumpet? Take a journey through the “wonderful world” of Louis Armstrong with these seven amazing facts about his life.

Louis Armstrong’s Childhood Nickname Was “Dippermouth”

Long before “Satchmo” came along, Armstrong was known in his childhood home in the Storyville district of New Orleans as “Dippermouth,” or “Dipper” for short. He supposedly got the moniker from his wide smile as a child, although the nickname later came to be associated with his embouchure (the way a player puts their mouth around an instrument).

Armstrong’s mentor, King Oliver — a fixture in the Storyville jazz scene during Armstrong’s youth — recorded a song in 1923 called “Dippermouth Blues,” which he co-wrote with Armstrong. Dipper himself would later go on to record his own version in 1936.

Armstrong Honed His Skills in a “Waif’s Home”

After firing off six blanks at a New Year’s Eve party in New Orleans in 1912, 11-year-old Armstrong was arrested and sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for Boys, a facility that was part juvenile detention facility, part orphanage, and part reform school. It was his second stay at the home — according to recently uncovered records, Armstrong did a brief stint there when he was only nine, after he and five of his friends were arrested for being “dangerous and suspicious characters,” a charge used often at the time to detain people without cause.

By the time of his second stay, the Waif’s Home had hired a music teacher and started a band program. Under the tutelage of instructor Peter Davis, Armstrong learned the bugle and the coronet, and spent some time as the bandleader. Early on, he showed a skill for harmonizing and improvising that seemed beyond his years. It was far from his first exposure to the instruments, but it was the first time he received proper training. Armstrong started playing gigs after his release from the home in 1914.

Armstrong Didn’t Start Out as a Trumpet Player

While he is remembered today for his distinctive voice and rich trumpet solos, the trumpet wasn’t Armstrong’s original instrument of choice — even years into his career. Satchmo rose to prominence in his mid-teens playing the cornet, which is similar to a trumpet but smaller and with a few subtle differences.

For example, a trumpet is a cylindrical brass instrument, meaning the tube stays the same diameter throughout, but a cornet’s tube tapers off on its way to the mouthpiece, giving it a mellower tone. From the 1800s to the mid-1900s, the cornet was a standard part of a brass or jazz ensemble, as well as a popular solo instrument. While trumpets were also played, they weren’t typically solo instruments.

Armstrong, however, has been credited with reinventing the trumpet in the public consciousness. In the mid-1920s, as Armstrong tells it, the bandleader of an orchestra he played with said he “looked funny… with that stubby cornet.” The band’s other brass player played the trumpet, and Armstrong thought the sound of two trumpets sounded better. He started playing the trumpet as he would the cornet, with extensive improvisation and crowd-pleasing solos. He wasn’t the only jazz musician doing this, but as he rose to national prominence, his inventive style helped change public opinion about what a trumpet could sound like.

He Used to Play in a Silent Movie Orchestra

In the mid-1920s, Armstrong played with Erskine Tate’s Vendome Orchestra — the same band that inspired him to pick up a trumpet. The Big Band ensemble was one of the early players on Chicago’s jazz scene and performed at the Vendome Theatre in Chicago, providing accompaniment and intermission entertainment for silent films. Armstrong not only played jazz solos, but also performed operatic arias.

Lip Injuries Were a Common Ailment for Armstrong

There was one bad habit Armstrong picked up at the Waif’s Home: a poor embouchure that proved unsafe for his face. Bad form is especially dangerous with brass instruments, including cornets and trumpets, because shifting one’s embouchure is fundamental to playing a melody, requiring near-constant lip and tongue movement.

According to Armstrong, the damage started early in his career. “In my teens, playing in that honky tonk all night long, I split my lip wide open,” Armstrong recalled in a 1966 Life interview. “Split my lip so bad in Memphis, there’s meat still missing. Happened many times. Awful. Blood run all down my shirt.”

While some of his peers sought professional help and even plastic surgery, Satchmo treated his lips using home remedies. He had a special salve he’d apply to his lips, and when callouses built up, he’d shave them down himself with a razor and take some time away from performing. One particularly nasty split in 1935 took him offstage for a year. While embouchure overuse syndrome can be common among brass players, it’s perhaps associated with Armstrong more than any other musician. Some doctors even use the term Satchmo syndrome for a tear in the lip muscle.

Armstrong Insisted on Adding Singing to His Act

Armstrong is almost as well known today for his distinctive, gravelly singing voice as he is for his trumpet skill. While he formed a vocal quartet with other kids in his neighborhood and sang in a choir at the Waif’s Home, Satchmo built his early career on the cornet and later the trumpet, not singing.

In 1924, he joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, then a big name in the New York City music scene, for an engagement at the Roseland Ballroom. Armstrong asked repeatedly to sing, yet recalled that Henderson wasn’t interested. But according to jazz drummer Kaiser Marshall, Satchmo found a way to sneak it in anyway: Roseland would host a Thursday revue of amateur performers (similar to an open mic), and one night Armstrong went on stage and performed “Everybody Loves My Baby,” both on cornet and vocals. Marshall recalled that “the crowd surely went for it … from then on they used to cry for Louis every Thursday night.”

“What A Wonderful World” Took 20 Years to Reach the U.S. Charts

Armstrong’s most popular song, “What a Wonderful World,” topped the British music charts upon its 1967 release, staying at No. 1 for 13 weeks. The inspiring tune was a hit elsewhere in Europe and South Africa, too, but because the president of Armstrong’s record company, Larry Newton, disliked the song, the record was never actually promoted in the United States. According to the song’s co-writer and producer Bob Thiele, it didn’t even crack 1,000 copies in the U.S. after its initial release.

But in 1987, 16 years after Armstrong’s death, “What a Wonderful World” was featured in the film Good Morning Vietnam. Only then did the song reach the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 33. The original album was re-released and certified gold.

Armstrong was drawn to the song because it reminded him of Corona, Queens, where he and his last wife Lucille settled down permanently in 1942. “Lucille and I, ever since we’re married, we’ve been right there in that block,” Armstrong said in 1968, according to the Louis Armstrong House. “And everybody keeps their little homes up like we do and it’s just like one big family. I saw three generations come up on that block. And they’re all with their children, grandchildren, they come back to see Uncle Satchmo and Aunt Lucille. That’s why I can say, ‘I hear babies cry/I watch them grow /they’ll learn much more/than I’ll never know.’ … So when they hand me this ‘Wonderful World,’ I didn’t look no further, that was it.” Since then, the song has become a timeless classic, featured in many other films and shows and covered by artists such as Rod Stewart and Stevie Wonder.

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On October 16, 1923, Walt Disney formally agreed to send a new series of short films to a New York distributor, thereby launching the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. Needless to say, a few things besides the company name have changed since then, as Disney has gone from a bare-bones operation to the creator of groundbreaking talking funnies, the stewards of iconic characters and franchises, and, finally, the overlords of a sweeping enterprise with interests all over the globe. With 100 years of movie magic in the rearview mirror, here’s a look at six facts about all things Disney.

Animator Ub Iwerks Was Integral to Disney’s Early Success

Disney’s history is filled with the hard work of unsung geniuses, but none was as integral to the company’s foundational success as Ub Iwerks. Indispensable to Walt Disney since their days together at Kansas City’s Laugh-O-Gram Studio, Iwerks joined his friend in Hollywood in the 1920s to produce a groundbreaking live-action/animated series of short films called the Alice Comedies. Iwerks remained loyal to Disney after a distributor stole their creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and hired away the studio’s animators. He’s credited with sketching the very first Mickey Mouse, and single-handedly animated the landmark 1928 Mickey cartoon Plane Crazy, with an output that reached 700 drawings in a single day. Although personal and creative differences prompted Iwerks to branch out on his own in 1930, he returned to the fold 10 years later as a special effects expert, and went on to bolster the studio’s animation capabilities with his innovations in optical printing and xerography.

Disney Has Created More Than 800 Films

More than 800 feature films have been made under the Disney banner since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs hit theaters in 1937. The studio’s first full-length, live-action feature was Treasure Island, in 1950. Its first R-rated flick was Down and Out in Beverly Hills, developed under the then-recently inaugurated Touchstone Pictures subsidiary in 1986. Disney’s highest-grossing entry was (unsurprisingly) a Marvel movie, 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, while its highest-grossing animated feature also arrived that year with Frozen 2.

Disney Essentially Served as a Media Branch of the U.S. Military During World War II

After the attack on Pearl Harbor led to the requisitioning of Disney’s Southern California studio as an anti-aircraft base in late 1941, the company turned its focus to supporting the war effort. Several films produced during this time were used to train Army and Navy personnel; others, like Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943), were propaganda fare that portrayed stereotyped and inept versions of enemy leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Additionally, the studio designed more than 1,200 insignia for various military units and helped raise funds by permitting its characters to appear on war bonds. All told, Disney was devoting more than 90% of its output to war-related material by 1943, enabling the studio to weather lean financial times and survive to deliver the next wave of classics, which included Cinderella (1950) and Peter Pan (1953).

Disneyland’s Disastrous Grand Opening Was Dubbed “Black Sunday” by Employees

Although Walt Disney’s long-gestating dream of a theme park was realized with the televised grand opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in July 1955, the disaster that unfolded was better suited for a nightmare. Most attractions remained unopened despite the rushed construction, and the sweltering heat transformed the fresh asphalt of Main Street, USA, into a sticky mess. Meanwhile, overcrowding from thousands of counterfeit tickets contributed to a 7-mile backup on the Santa Ana Freeway, and resulted in the park’s restaurants running out of food. But Disney remained unbowed by what was internally dubbed “Black Sunday,” and apparently so did the paying public: Disneyland surpassed 1 million in attendance just seven weeks later, and the company eventually doubled down on the theme park experience with the unveiling of Florida’s Walt Disney World in October 1971.

Disney Kick-Started the Careers of Numerous Celebrities

The House of Mouse has nurtured an impressive roster of young talents since Annette Funicello emerged as an original Mouseketeer in 1955. A teenaged Kurt Russell became a Disney film regular in the 1960s, before subsequent incarnations of The Mickey Mouse Club fueled the rises of mega pop stars Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera, along with A-list actor Ryan Gosling. Miley Cyrus and Olivia Rodrigo both starred on their own Disney shows before becoming chart-topping singers, while fellow Disney alums Zac Efron, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, and Zendaya achieved fame as musicians, actors, or both. And then there’s Steve Martin, who didn’t appear in a Disney feature until 1991’s Father of the Bride, but nevertheless learned to perform in public as a Disneyland employee from ages 10 to 18.

Disney Is a Very, Very Big Business

It’s been a long time since Disney was merely a studio of ink-stained animators and noisy voice actors, but even its visionary founder would likely be staggered by its multifaceted presence across numerous businesses today. Along with resorts in Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, the Mouse Kingdom oversees a line of cruise ships, Hollywood Records, the Adventures by Disney travel company, and the Steamboat Ventures venture capitalist firm. Among its media subsidiaries, Disney owns 20th Century Studios, ABC, National Geographic, LucasFilm, and the massive cash cow that is Marvel Studios. Altogether, the century-old conglomerate was valued at just under $150 billion as of September 2023.