The designer of the smiley, commercial artist Harvey Ball, never trademarked it and received just $45 for his work.
His son said, “He was not a money-driven guy. He used to say, ‘Hey, I can only eat one steak at a time, drive one car at a time.'”
(Thanks, Drake.)
The blinking light atop the Capitol Records tower spells out the word HOLLYWOOD in Morse code.
It’s done so ever since the building opened in 1956.
The leaders of Russia have been alternately bald and hairy since 1881.
And monarchs’ profiles on British coins have faced alternately left and right since 1653.
(The exception is Edward VIII, who stares obstinately at the back of George V’s head.)
From English antiquary John Aubrey’s 1696 Miscellanies: “Anno 1670, not far from Cyrencester, was an Apparition; Being demanded, whether a good Spirit or a bad? Returned no answer, but departed with a curious Perfume and a most melodious Twang.”
In the 2004 film Shark Tale, the shark Lenny coughs up several items onto a table. Among them is a Louisiana license plate, number 007 0 981. The same plate is retrieved from sharks in both Jaws and Deep Blue Sea.
When Orville Wright died, Neil Armstrong was already 17 years old.
Joseph Grinnell’s Game Birds of California (1918) notes that the avocet is known as the lawyer bird because of “its long bill and its oft-repeated vociferations.”
The smallest U.S. state, Rhode Island, has a larger population than the largest U.S. state, Alaska.
The medieval Latin riddle In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (“We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire”) is a palindrome. The answer is “moths.”
