Facts Archive - Page 70 of 76 - Interesting Facts

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Before founding the animation studio that bears his name, Walt Disney was a commercial artist in Kansas City, Missouri. It was there, around 1919, that he began making hand-drawn cel animations of his own, which were screened in a local theater and dubbed “Laugh-O-Grams.” The studio he acquired following his cartoons’ success had the same moniker, but it was a short-lived venture — Laugh-O-Gram’s seven-minute fairy tales and other works were popular with audiences, but financial troubles forced Disney to declare bankruptcy in 1923.

Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen.

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Intriguing though it may be to think otherwise, “Disney on Ice” is just a show. Not unlike Elvis still being alive and Paul McCartney being replaced by a look-alike, this odd urban legend has persisted for decades despite being based on nothing more than tabloid rumors.

Disney, his brother Roy, and cartoonist Ub Iwerks moved to Hollywood the same year and founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, which quickly changed its name to Walt Disney Studios at Roy’s behest. Had it not been for Laugh-O-Gram, however, it’s likely that Disney’s most famous creation would never have been born. The inspiration for Mickey Mouse came from a brown mouse who frequented his Kansas City studio trash basket — a “timid little guy” Disney was so fond of that before leaving for Hollywood, he “carefully carried him to a backyard, making sure it was a nice neighborhood,” at which point “the tame little fellow scampered to freedom.”

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Academy Awards won by Walt Disney, the most of any individual

26

Box-office gross of “Frozen II,” Disney’s highest-grossing animated film

$1.45 billion

Disney Parks around the world

12

Feature films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios

63

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Mickey Mouse’s original name was ______.

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Mickey Mouse’s original name was Mortimer Mouse.

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Walt Disney was the original voice of Mickey Mouse.

For the first 20 years of his existence, Mickey Mouse was voiced by none other than Walt Disney himself. The world was introduced to Mickey in 1928’s animated short Steamboat Willie, though Disney produced two prior shorts featuring Mickey that same year, Plane Crazy and Gallopin’ Gaucho, which weren’t picked up by distributors. Steamboat was the first of these to feature sound, though Mickey didn’t utter his first actual words (“Hot dogs!”) until the following year’s The Karnival Kid. The last regular short Disney lent his vocal talents to was 1947’s Fun and Fancy Free, though 2013’s Get a Horse! patched together previous recordings to once again feature him as the voice of his most famous creation.

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Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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Gravity is an essential force on Earth: It keeps the planet in orbit at a safe and comfortable distance from the sun, and even holds our atmosphere in place. It does have a downside, however: It weighs down the human body, making us a tiny bit shorter by the end of the day. From the moment we climb out of bed in the morning, gravitational forces push down on us, applying downward pressure on our joints, compressing our spines, and causing our organs to settle. All that strain adds up, enough to shrink a body by 1 centimeter. Gravity is at work whether we’re sitting or standing, but at bedtime, our bodies get a slight reprieve as lying down redirects the force. Sleeping horizontally gives our spines and joints time to decompress and gain back the height lost during the day, making us once again slightly taller by morning.

Children have more vertebrae than adults.

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At birth, humans tend to have 33 vertebrae — the individual bones that make up the spinal column. By adulthood, many of those bones have completed the normal process of fusing together, leaving the average adult with just 24 vertebrae.

Even though this ebb and flow is a normal process our bodies endure, over time humans tend to shrink in stature. The human body constantly breaks down and replenishes its bones to keep them healthy, though by age 35, that process tends to slow, with bones breaking down faster than they rebuild. The aging process also causes the cushions between our bones to retain less water and deteriorate, which makes the bones settle together. These processes slowly chip away a few millimeters of height at a time, which can eventually add up — on average, men tend to lose an inch of height between 30 and 70 years old, while women can lose up to 2 inches.

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Estimated number of genes that impact a person’s height

12,000+

Average number of inches children grow per year after age 2

2.5

Height (in feet) of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest man ever

8’11”

Approximate height (in feet) of Afshin Ghaderzadeh, world’s shortest living man

2’1”

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On average, the world’s tallest people are from ______.

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On average, the world’s tallest people are from the Netherlands.

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Astronauts get taller in space.

Most people reach their maximum height by early adulthood — unless they’re astronauts. That’s because scientists who rocket into space for extended periods tend to grow about 3% taller during their time off Earth. In astronaut Scott Kelly’s case, a 340-day trip aboard the International Space Station gave him the souvenir of around 2 additional inches of height. NASA research on astronaut bodies shows that while in space, the spine’s vertebrae decompress and relax, giving space explorers the benefit of added height. However, that increase in statute is temporary; once back on Earth, the planet’s gravitational forces are back in play, causing those extra inches to disappear.

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Aside from long blond hair, horned helmets are probably the most famous Viking accessory — but that would have been a surprise to the real Scandinavian warriors who plundered Europe between the 9th and 11th centuries. The Viking horned helmet convention dates only to the 19th century: In 1876, costume designer Carl Emil Doepler introduced it in Richard Wagner’s famous opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Ring of the Nibelung," often called the Ring Cycle). At the time, Germans were fascinated with the story of the Vikings, so Doepler plopped the ancient headdress of the Germans — the horned helmet — on Wagner’s Viking protagonists. The opera proved so popular that by 1900 the horned helmet was inextricably entwined with Vikings themselves, appearing in art, ads, and literature.

Bluetooth technology is named after a Viking king.

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Bluetooth is named after Viking king Harald Gormsson, known for a dead (“blue”) tooth. But why? “[He] was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link,” Intel’s Jim Kardach has said.

Yet during the Viking era, Norse warriors never actually wore horned helmets — and especially not during battle, where they’d probably have gotten in the way. Some artifacts, such as a tapestry discovered with the famous Oseberg ship burial in 1904, do depict horned figures, but these “horned” occurrences only happened — if they happened at all — during rituals. To date, archaeologists have uncovered only two preserved Viking helmets: Both are made of iron, both have guards around the eyes and nose, and both are entirely without horns.

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Year the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings introduced their logo, featuring the historically inaccurate horned helmet

1961

Year Vikings arrived in Newfoundland, the earliest evidence of Europeans in North America (outside Greenland)

1021 CE

Length (in feet) of the Roskilde 6 ship, the longest Viking ship ever discovered

118

Percent by which helmets lower risk of brain injury, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons

33

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Most of our knowledge of Norse mythology comes from two 13th-century Icelandic works known as the ______.

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Most of our knowledge of Norse mythology comes from two 13th-century Icelandic works known as the Eddas.

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In English, four days of the week are named after Norse gods.

The names of the days of the week are a mixture of Roman and Norse influences. In 321 CE, Emperor Constantine established the seven-day week. While Romance languages, such as French, Spanish, and Italian, retained the original Latin-based names, the Germanic-based English language chose another pantheon. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday derive from the Romans, but Tuesday is named after the god Tyr, the Norse god of war. Wednesday comes from Odin, who’s also known as “Woden.” Thursday is the most obvious one — Thor’s day — while Friday comes from the goddess Frigg, or Freya.

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Inspiration can come from the unlikeliest of places. While living in Jamaica in the early 1950s, author Ian Fleming was in search of a name for the secret agent main character in his new book, Casino Royale. “I wanted to find a name which wouldn’t have any romantic overtones,” Fleming later said. “I wanted a really flat, quiet name.”

The film “Thunderball” is named after Ian Fleming’s estate in Jamaica.

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The 1995 film “GoldenEye” is named for Fleming’s estate in Jamaica, where he wrote his Bond novels. The name may be a reference to a WWII operation he oversaw as a British naval intelligence officer.

Fleming was an avid bird-watcher, and one of his favorite books was Birds of the West Indies, written by American ornithologist James Bond. “I thought, ‘Well, James Bond, that’s a pretty quiet name,’” Fleming continued, “so I simply stole it and used it.” For years, Bond (who actually went by Jim) had no idea that his name adorned a series of spy novels, but as the popularity of the books grew — and particularly after the premiere of the first 007 film, Dr. No, in 1962, turned Bond into a bonafide pop culture phenomenon — the ornithologist learned about his moniker’s double life. Fleming eventually apologized to Bond, offering his own name for “a particularly horrible species of bird” if Bond ever discovered one. The two met on February 5, 1964, when Jim Bond and his wife showed up at Fleming’s house while on a trip to Jamaica, and left as friends. Fleming even gave Bond a signed copy of the then-unreleased novel You Only Live Twice, inscribed “to the real James Bond.”

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The number of bird species Jim Bond collected across 100+ Caribbean islands

294

The price, sold at auction, of Jim Bond’s signed copy of “You Only Live Twice”

$84,000

The number of canonical James Bond films, including the release of “No Time To Die” in fall 2021

25

The year Bond published “Birds of the West Indies” (the book appears in the 007 film “Die Another Day”)

1936

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Ornithologist Jim Bond’s great-grandfather designed ______.

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Ornithologist Jim Bond’s great-grandfather designed the Brooklyn Bridge.

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The inspiration behind James Bond’s code name, 007, remains a mystery.

A 16th-century occultist. A Rudyard Kipling short story. A British bus line. The international dialing code for Russia. A hotel room number. All of these things have been suggested as the inspiration behind Bond’s numerical nickname, 007. In the universe of the novels, the double-0 prefix denotes Bond’s “license to kill,” and the most compelling evidence for its real-world origin also comes from the spy world. In one of his last interviews, Fleming said that he borrowed the “00” because “in the Admiralty, all top-secret signals had the double-0 prefix” at the beginning of WWII. Sounds good, but what about the “7”? Some have posited that it came from part of a code used to encrypt the famous 1917 “Zimmerman Telegram,” in which German foreign secretary Arthur Zimmermann made secret overtures to Mexico calling for an alliance against the U.S. (British decryption of the telegram was considered a major triumph and part of the reason the initially neutral U.S. finally entered the war.) Others think that “7” is just a lucky number. Whatever the case, it makes sense that an international man of mystery has an equally mysterious code name.

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Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.

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In 1954, Sir Hugh Beaver, the managing director of Guinness, thought up a way to reduce pub disputes so bartenders could focus on pouring his company’s signature beers. He suspected that every bar could benefit from a book filled with verified facts and stats about subjects that might arise mid-conversation over a drink. Two events in particular prompted his decision: Earlier in the decade, he and fellow guests at a hunt in Ireland memorably argued about Europe’s fastest game bird, which they had no means of identifying. Then, on May 6, 1954, English athlete Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in less than four minutes, causing public interest in records-related news to surge. Norris McWhirter had served as the stadium announcer during Bannister’s historic run, and Beaver hired both him and his identical twin, Ross McWhirter — another sports journalist — to assemble The Guinness Book of World Records. At the time, the pair had already begun working at a London-based agency that supplied facts to newspapers and advertisers.

The U.S. is the second-largest market for Guinness beer.

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That claim belongs to Nigeria. The dark brew has been sold there since 1827, although in glass bottles rather than cans. The country that drinks the most Guinness is the U.K., while Ireland comes in third, and the U.S. is fourth.

The McWhirter twins spent about three months working feverishly on their 198-page compendium. Released in the U.K. on August 27, 1955, the book featured about 4,000 records, ranging from the world’s tallest man to the smallest pub. Eight pages of black-and-white photographs broke up the text, along with a few ink drawings. Although initially meant to be given out for free at bars to promote Guinness, the book became so popular, the company started selling it, soon to great success. To date, more than 150 million books from the series — eventually renamed Guinness World Records — have been purchased, educating readers in 40-plus languages. But the brand is no longer beverage-based: Diageo, the alcohol conglomerate that now owns Guinness, sold Guinness World Records in 2001, and it’s now owned by a Canadian conglomerate called the Jim Pattison Group.

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Minimum Guinness World Records that NYC’s Ashrita Furman — the most prolific record-breaker — has set

600

Length, in years, of the lease Guinness’ founder signed to rent the company’s headquarters in 1759

9,000

Number of active records currently stored in the Guinness World Records database

62,252

Estimated pints of Guinness lost every year to drinkers’ mustaches, according to a 2000 study

162,719

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From 1976 to 1995, New York City's iconic ______ Building was home to a Guinness World Records museum.

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From 1976 to 1995, New York City's iconic Empire State Building was home to a Guinness World Records museum.

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Guinness prompted the Irish government to adjust the trademark of its coat of arms.

All Guinness bottles and cans share the same harp-shaped logo, a nod to a national treasure — a famed 14th-century harp — preserved inside the library of Trinity College Dublin. The harp has been incorporated into Guinness labels since 1862, and the beverage titan trademarked the design 14 years later, although the design has been updated over the years. A harp (a reference to the same instrument at Trinity College) has also been Ireland’s emblem since the Irish Free State was established in 1922, starring in its seal of state, coat of arms, and coins. In the early 1980s, Ireland’s office of the attorney general suggested attempting to trademark the harp under international intellectual property jurisdictions with the instrument facing in both directions, but the government had concerns that the move would elicit a lawsuit from Guinness, which is associated with a harp that has a left-sided straight edge. So since 1984, the official, nine-string Irish harp is always pictured with its straight edge to the right.

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Honey is often credited as a multiuse wonder, known to soothe sore throats, heal burns, and add a little sweetness to drinks and desserts. But if a bottle in the back of your pantry has been collecting dust, you might be wondering if it’s safe to eat. Don’t worry: As long as it’s stored properly, honey will never expire. Honey has an endless shelf life, as proven by the archaeologists who unsealed King Tut’s tomb in 1923 and found containers of honey within it. After performing a not-so-scientific taste test, researchers reported the 3,000-year-old honey still tasted sweet.

All bees make honey.

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Earth is home to more than 20,000 species of bees, the vast majority of which do not produce honey. Less than 4% of all bees — around 800 species — are known to turn nectar into honey; in the U.S. that job is most commonly undertaken by Apis mellifera, aka the European honey bee.

Honey’s preservative properties have a lot to do with how little water it contains. Some 80% of honey is made up of sugar, with only 18% being water. Having so little moisture makes it difficult for bacteria and microorganisms to survive. Honey is also so thick, little oxygen can penetrate — another barrier to bacteria’s growth. Plus, the substance is extremely acidic, thanks to a special enzyme in bee stomachs called glucose oxidase. When mixed with nectar to make honey, the enzyme produces gluconic acid and hydrogen peroxide, byproducts that lower the sweetener’s pH level and kill off bacteria.

Despite these built-in natural preservatives, it is possible for honey to spoil if it’s improperly stored. In a sealed container, honey is safe from humidity, but when left open it can absorb moisture that makes it possible for bacteria to survive. In most cases, honey can be safely stored for years on end, though the USDA suggests consuming it within 12 months for the best flavor.

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Average annual honey harvest (in pounds) from one commercial U.S. bee colony, 2010-2020

57

Types of honey found in the U.S.

300+

Estimated pounds of honey consumed per person in the U.S. in 2020

1.51

Number of worker bees needed to gather 1 pound of honey

556

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Ancient conqueror ______ was reportedly embalmed with honey.

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Ancient conqueror Alexander the Great was reportedly embalmed with honey.

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Nearly 500 containers of ancient butter have been found in Ireland.

Finding food offerings inside burial chambers and tombs isn’t unusual in the archaeological world — and can be a useful tool for researchers to understand how people of the past ate. But not all ancient foods are found as grave goods. Take, for example, a barrel of 3,000-year-old butter found in an Irish bog. In 2009, workers in a peat deposit unearthed a wooden barrel in eastern Ireland; the barrel was revealed to be around 3,000 years old, with the butter inside perfectly preserved. While it was an unusual find, the 77-pound bucket of dairy isn’t the first — or possibly last — to be unearthed; nearly 500 similar containers have been found in Ireland. Historians have dubbed the preserved spreads “bog butter,” and believe they were likely packed and sunk into cool bogs to preserve or protect against theft at a time when butter was so valuable that it could be used to pay taxes.

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Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.

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Like a lot of strange happenings, it was first noticed in the 1960s: a small seismic pulse, large enough to register on seismological instruments but small enough to go otherwise unnoticed, occurring every 26 seconds. Jack Oliver, a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, documented the “microseism” and sussed out that it was emanating from somewhere “in the southern or equatorial Atlantic Ocean.” Not until 2005 was it determined that the pulse’s true origin was in the Gulf of Guinea, just off Africa’s western coast, but to this day, scientists still don’t know something just as important — why it’s happening in the first place.

The Richter scale has no upper limit.

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Not that anyone is in a rush to confirm this theory, but the Richter scale — which measures the size of earthquakes — doesn’t max out at 10, 20, or any other number. Thankfully, most earthquakes are so small as to not even register.

There are theories, of course, ranging from volcanic activity to waves, but still no consensus. There does happen to be a volcano on the island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea near the pulse’s origin point, not to mention another microseism linked to the volcano Mount Aso in Japan, which has made that particular explanation more popular in recent years. Though there’s no way of knowing when (or even if) we’ll learn the why of this phenomenon, one thing’s for sure: better a microseism than a macroseism.

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Detectable earthquakes every year

500,000

Highest magnitude ever recorded on the Richter scale

9.5

Tectonic plates (seven major, eight minor)

15

Year pro wrestler Earthquake made his WWF debut

1989

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Tori Amos’ 1992 debut solo album was titled “______.”

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Tori Amos’ 1992 debut solo album was titled “Little Earthquakes.”

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California isn’t the most earthquake-prone state.

That would be Alaska, which isn’t just the most earthquake-prone state in the country — it’s one of the most seismically active areas in the world, with 11% of all earthquakes occurring there. That’s because Alaska is part of the Ring of Fire, a nearly 25,000-mile-long area along the Pacific Ocean, characterized by volcanic and seismic activity. The second-largest earthquake ever recorded (a staggering 9.2 on the Richter scale) took place in the Prince William Sound region there on March 27, 1964, lasting about 4.5 minutes and causing a tsunami that was felt as far away as California. Beyond that, three of the eight largest recorded earthquakes in the world have also been in Alaska, as were seven of the 10 largest in America. It has experienced an average of one magnitude 7 to 8 earthquake every year since 1900 and one “great” earthquake (magnitude 8 or higher) every 13 years.

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Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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Marie Antoinette’s most famous line has echoed for more than 200 years, reportedly adding fuel to the fire of France’s revolution. The only problem is the French queen’s supposed declaration is a myth — historians don’t think Marie Antoinette ever said, “Let them eat cake,” after being told her subjects had no bread. Researchers point to two main plot holes in the quote’s supposed backstory, the first being its phrasing in English. In fact, the French queen is supposed to have said, “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche,” or “Let them eat brioche,” a reference to a decadent bread made with eggs and butter.

Marie Antoinette helped popularize potatoes in France.

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Eighteenth-century botanists adapted potatoes to Europe’s climate, though many Europeans believed they were unsafe to eat — until Marie Antoinette got involved. The queen wore a spray of potato flowers in her hair in 1785, leading spuds to become a fashionable food for high society.

The second problem is that the outline of the tale predates Marie Antoinette’s reign. At least one similar story cropped up around the 16th century in Germany, wherein a noblewoman suggested the poorest citizens in her kingdom eat sweetened bread. However, the first person to print the line about brioche was likely Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher who mentioned the story around 1767 in his book Confessions, attributing the comment to a “great princess.” Rousseau’s text was published when Marie Antoinette was still a child in Austria, though it’s possible the story inspired French revolutionaries decades later, and was repeated with the addition of Marie Antoinette’s name as propaganda against the French monarchy. Yet there is no historical evidence (aka printed materials) that proves the queen ever uttered the phrase.

While Marie Antoinette was known for her excessive spending, some historians say the centuries-long smear to her reputation has long overshadowed her philanthropic side. As queen, she established a home for unwed mothers, personally adopted and cared for orphans, and even sold the royal flatware in 1787 to cover the cost of grain for impoverished families — all activities befitting a benevolent ruler who just so happened to love shopping.

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Guests at Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s wedding in 1770

5,000+

Years Marie Antoinette was queen of France, from 1774 to 1793

19

Reported number of gowns Marie Antoinette bought annually

300

Percentage of a worker’s wages spent on bread at the start of the French Revolution

88

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The Ohio town of ______ was named for Marie Antoinette in 1788.

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The Ohio town of Marietta was named for Marie Antoinette in 1788.

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Baking powder wasn’t invented until 1856.

Today, baking a cake can be as quick as whipping together a store-bought mix with eggs and oil, but until the mid-19th century it was an arduous task for home cooks. That’s because baking powder — the leavening agent that gives baked goods their light and fluffy texture — wasn’t invented until 1856. Before then, baking pastries and breads required advanced planning, since achieving an airy texture meant using yeast — which wasn’t commercially available until 1822. Bakers had to create their own yeast, by fermenting fruit, vegetables, or grains. Even with a successful infusion of yeast, batter had to rise between 12 and 24 hours; in some cases bakers tried other strategies, like whipping eggs thoroughly to add air bubbles, using caustic pearlash (which could add a bitter flavor), or by 1846 using the newly invented baking soda mixed with an acidic liquid like sour milk. In 1856, chemist and Harvard professor Eben Norton Horsford patented the first baking powder containing monocalcium phosphate, an acidic compound extracted from boiled animal bones. Horsford’s unique product blended the ingredient with baking soda in a shelf-stable, easy-to-use compound that would become popular among chefs and turn the baking powder business into a multimillion-dollar industry by 1900.

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Along with such phrases as “too much of a good thing” and “the clothes make the man,” we can also thank Shakespeare for the name Jessica. The Bard first used it in his play The Merchant of Venice (likely written around 1596), as the name of the moneylender Shylock’s defiant daughter. Some scholars think Shakespeare may have been inspired by the Hebrew name Iskah from the Bible, which was spelled “Jeska” in some English translations of the Old Testament. The name means both “to see” and “to possess foresight.”

Shakespeare likely died on his birthday.

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Shakespeare was baptized on April 26, 1564, leading scholars to believe he was probably born on the 23rd (baptisms usually occurred within three days after a birth). He died exactly 52 years later, on April 23, 1616 — at which time his legacy was still only in its infancy.

Though it took several hundred years, Jessica eventually became an extremely popular first name. It consistently ranked among the 10 most popular baby names for girls born in the U.S. between 1976 and 2000, reached the top spot 1985–1990, and reclaimed it 1993–1995. Its popularity has waned over the last decade, however, and in 2020 it ranked No. 399. If you’re a Jessica fan, fret not: A successful Merchant of Venice adaptation may be all it takes for the name to reclaim its former glory.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Approximate number of words Shakespeare contributed to English

1,700

Languages Shakespeare was familiar with

7

Sonnets written by Shakespeare

154

Movies and TV shows crediting Shakespeare as a writer on IMDb (at press time)

1,616

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Actress ______ shares a name with Shakespeare’s wife.

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Actress Anne Hathaway shares a name with Shakespeare’s wife.

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Some still doubt that Shakespeare wrote his own work.

Though there’s little evidence to support the theory, the humble circumstances of Shakespeare’s life and his lack of a university education have led some scholars to suggest that he was not the true author of his sophisticated, extraordinarily influential body of work. Dozens of other authors have been put forward as the man behind the pen, with Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, among the most notable names suggested by “anti-Stratfordians.” Others believe that a group of writers collaborated under the name of Shakespeare. The vast majority of scholars reject the theory, but it’s likely that Shakespeare himself would understand why it persists — there’s nothing like a little scandal and intrigue to pique a reader’s interest.

Michael Nordine

Staff Writer

Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.

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Original photo by Chris Harris/ Alamy Stock Photo

Can you picture an Olympic hopeful waking up at the crack of dawn to spend hours hunched over a drafting table, perfecting their blueprints? Thanks to International Olympic Committee co-founder Pierre de Coubertin, the concept became a reality when the IOC began awarding medals in the categories of sports-related architecture, music, literature, painting, and sculpture at the 1912 Stockholm Games.

The first gold medal in architecture went to the Swiss team of Eugène-Edouard Monod and Alphonse Laverriére for their "Building Plan of a Modern Stadium." By 1928, the architecture competition had been divided into the subcategories of town planning and design, with the Netherlands' Jan Wils winning gold in the latter for his still-standing Olympic Stadium Amsterdam. However, the subjective process of selecting artistic champions ultimately produced some questionable results. Sometimes, finicky judges refused to award gold (or silver, or bronze) medals when the quality of submissions failed to meet their lofty standards. Other times, such as during the 1936 Berlin Games, the host country’s creative teams tallied a suspiciously disproportionate share of winning hardware.

Roman Emperor Nero was an Olympic champion.

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Nero reportedly bribed officials into letting him compete in the 67 CE Olympics (the Games were traditionally restricted to Greeks). He won several arts competitions, and was also named winner of the chariot race despite falling and failing to finish.

Artistic competitions remained part of the Olympics following a hiatus for World War II, with Austria's Adolf Hoch and Finland's Yrjö Lindegren claiming architecture gold in 1948. However, the writing was on the wall for these Jim Thorpes of the compass and T-square, as new IOC President Avery Brundage (who started in 1952) strongly discouraged the proliferation of professionals in the amateur realm. The creative arts were permanently relegated to the sideshow of Olympic exhibitions in 1952, and the hard-earned efforts of champion builders, singers, and writers from the first half of the 20th century were banished to obscurity when their medals were stricken from the Olympic record books.

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Numbers Don't Lie

Numbers Don't Lie

Number of fine arts Olympic medals awarded from 1912 to 1952

151

Number of people to win both athletics and arts Olympic medals (Walter Winans and Alfred Hajos)

2

Cost (in billions of U.S. dollars) to build Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium for the 2020 Games

1.43

Number of licensed architects in the U.S. by the end of 2020

121,997

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Greece's Panathenaic Stadium, site of the first modern Olympics in 1896, was built entirely from ______.

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Greece's Panathenaic Stadium, site of the first modern Olympics in 1896, was built entirely from marble.

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The 1900 Olympics represented the high-water mark for bizarre Olympic events.

While obscure sports have come and gone from the Olympics over the years, the 1900 Paris Games stick out for the sheer number of off-the-wall competitions. This can at least partly be explained by the fact that the Olympics coincided with the spectacle of the 1900 Paris Exposition, resulting in events that ranged from weird (horse long jumping) to cruel (live pigeon shooting) to pointless (underwater swimming). Yet these Olympics were also memorable for some of the more inspired moments of innovation, which included multinational teams competing in tennis, polo, football, rowing, and tug-of-war. The 1900 Games also marked the first year that women were allowed to compete, an accomplishment barely dimmed by the meager presence of the lone fan who showed up to watch the ladies square off in croquet.

Tim Ott

Writer

Tim Ott has written for sites including Biography.com, History.com, and MLB.com, and is known to delude himself into thinking he can craft a marketable screenplay.

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