Vincent Van Gogh was able to sell only one painting (The Red Vineyard) during his lifetime.
LITERATURE TRIVIA
Samuel Beckett wrote a play called Breath, which lasts 30 seconds, has no actors and no dialogue.
Cult author William S. Burroughs' nicknames included "El Hombre Invisible," "Godfather of Punk" and "Bill Lee."
According to his brother, Leicester, Ernest Hemingway consumed about 17 scotch and sodas a day during his stint in Key West.
Hunter S. Thompson once remarked that "Crack is ruining the drug culture."
The only dog in a Shakespeare play is Crab in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Virginia Woolf called James Joyce's Ulysses, "The Work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples."
From 1788 to 1820, King Lear was forbidden from being performed in England due to the insanity of King George III.
Jack Kerouac was watching "The Galloping Gourmet" right before he suffered a fatal hemorrhage brought on by a mixture of Johnny Walker Red and Dexedrine pills.
According to legend, Charles Baudelaire walked a pet lobster on a leash through the boulevards of Paris.
Charles Lamb was in the audience to witness his first play, which was hissed off the stage, and he actually joined in the hissing so that he wouldn't be recognized.
Emily Dickinson was such a recluse that she only spoke to visitors from another room.
November 5, 1664, Samuel Pepys writes in his famous Diary that he has been to Macbeth, a "pretty good play."
Ben Jonson, on hearing that Shakespeare never blotted out a single line: "Would he had blotted out a thousand."
Dr. Seuss coined the word "nerd" in his 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo.
Norman Mailer on J.D. Salinger: "The greatest mind ever to stay in prep school."
When Edgar Allan Poe submitted the manuscript of "The Raven" to Graham's Magazine, the editors rejected the poem but took up a collection of $15 to give him because he looked so down and out.
Thomas De Quincey became an opium addict around the year 1813, taking 8,000 to 12,000 drops daily and losing his teeth in the process.
Crime fiction author James Ellroy's mother was strangled to death in 1958 by a killer who has never been identified to this day.
Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx once referred to Charles Bukowski's novel Ham on Rye as "an education in rebellion."
Harry Crews dedicated his warped novel, Scar Lover, to actor Sean Penn.
Gore Vidal on Ernest Hemingway: What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not have seen the joke?"
Oscar Wilde on Henry James: "Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty."
The Terror of the Monster was a rejected title for Peter Benchley's Jaws.
"Moron" was the name of a character in Moliere's La Princesse d'Elide.
Ernest Hemingway claimed to have rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 39 times.
Herman Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
MOVIE TRIVIA
The word "fuck" is spoken approximately 206 times in the remake of Scarface starring Al Pacino.
Al Czervik's boat in Caddyshack was called "Seafood."
Dennis Hopper wanted to run the credits for Easy Rider upside down.
The motto of Faber College in Animal House is "Knowledge is Good."
Mickey Rooney's real name is Joe Yule Jr.
Charles Bronson was the only actor to appear in both The Magnificent Seven and The Dirty Dozen.
Deborah Winger did the voice of E.T.
Donald Gene Turnupseed was driving the Ford sedan that collided with James Dean's Porsche, killing him instantly.
Thornton Mellon performs the Triple Lindy, an "impossible" dive, in Back to School.
The racehorse whose head is left in Jack Woltz's bed in The Godfather—Khartoum.
Rocky Balboa named his pet goldfish Moby Dick.
Icarus was the name of the spaceship in Planet of the Apes.
Peter Bonerz, the actor who portrayed Jerry Robinson on "The Bob Newhart Show," directed Police Academy 6: City Under Siege.
Lester Burnham takes a job at the fast-food restaurant, Mr. Smiley's, in American Beauty.
Former porn star Marilyn Chambers was the "Ivory Snow Girl" before appearing in Beyond the Green Door.
Released in 1971, Carnal Knowledge was banned by the state of Georgia as obscene.
Legendary tough guy Edward G. Robinson's real name was Emmanuel Goldenburg.
Leo Gorcey, of the Bowery Boys, penned an autobiography called Dead End Yells, Wedding Bells, Cockle Shells & Dizzy Spells.
Raymond Burr narrated the 1954 monster movie Godzilla.
Although Richard Nixon said he enjoyed Love Story, he found the excessive profanity "appalling."
John Wayne was born Marion Michael Morrison.
Stephen King once admitted that the scariest movie sequence he can remember is the scene in Night of the Living Dead when Barbara is chased back to her car by the "lurching zombie with white hair and dazed eyes."
Gene Wilder was born Jerome Silberman.
The word "Mafia" does not appear in the 1972 Oscar-winning film, The Godfather.
The landmark film, My Breakfast with Blassie, which stars Andy Kaufman and Classy Freddie Blassie, took place at a Sambos in Los Angeles.
Cary Grant, Groucho Marx and Marilyn Monroe all took LSD.
MUSIC TRIVIA
Dead German Tourist, Fetus de Milo, Grassy Knolled Gunmen, The Fat Chick from Wilson Phillips, Her Majesty's Secret Cervix, Diarrhea Juice & the Pepto Kids, Jehovah's Wetness and Mario Puzo's Colostomy Bag are all the names of actual rock bands.
Elvis Presley never once gave an encore.
Mick Jagger attended the London School of Economics for two years.
Richard Nixon confessed to Sammy Davis Jr. that "Mr. Bojangles" brought tears to his eyes.
Musician, actor and performance poet Henry Rollins once worked in a Haagan Daz ice-cream shop.
John Cage's composition, "As Slow As Possible," takes 639 years to play.
Andy Warhol designed the famous working-zipper album cover for the Rolling Stones' 1971 album Sticky Fingers.
Jethro Tull was named after the 18th-century English inventor of the seed drill.
Syd Barrett came up with the band name Pink Floyd after after coming across the names of blues singers Pink Anderson and Floyd Council in the liner notes of a Blind Boy Fuller album.
As a choirboy at Westminster Abbey, Keith Richards once performed for Queen Elizabeth II.
English occultist Aleister Crowley appears on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover.
Former punk rocker and performance poet Henry Rollins once worked in a Haagan Daz ice-cream shop.
TELEVISION TRIVIA
During a 20-city tour to promote his autobiography, Mr. T insisted on eating every meal at McDonald's.
Richard Pryor appeared on an episode of "The Partridge Family."
Howard Stern once called Roseanne "a fat blob" and Tom Arnold "the Ricky Ricardo of the '90s."
Eddie Munster's werewolf doll was named Woof-Woof.
On "Sanford and Son," Pat Morita played "Ah Chew."
Ted Knight was the narrator on "Superfriends" ("Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice . . .").
Grandpa Munster (Al Lewis) earned a Ph.D in psychology from Columbia University.
Starsky and Hutch drove a 1974 Ford Torino.
Mork and Mindy had a "baby" named Mearth, portrayed by Jonathan Winters.
Harvey Korman provided the voice for "The Great Gazoo" on "The Flintstones."
George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television": shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.
U.S. HISTORY TRIVIA
FDR was referring to Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua when he said, "He may be a son of a bitch but he's our son of a bitch."
At his heaviest, President James Madison weighed 98 pounds.
Richard Nixon was nicknamed "Gloomy Gus" when he attended Duke University Law School.
Zachary Taylor never voted in a presidential election.
The United States has been run for 23 years and 324 days by presidents who were never elected to the office.
Eugene V. Debs ran his presidential campaign from prison in 1920.
John Tyler was the only President to serve as a member of the Congress of the Confederate States.
The Philadelphia house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence was demolished and replaced by a hamburger stand.
Gerald Ford modeled winter sportswear for Look magazine in 1939.
The last words of anarchist Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley, were: "I am not sorry."
Marijuana was legal in the United States until 1937.
Herbert Hoover turned over 40 years of government paychecks to charity.
Supply Clapp Thwing was a member of the Class of 1837, Harvard College.
