Fast Facts
Arizona Daily Wildcat
September 8, 2005
Things you've always never wanted to know
The Monopoly game was invented by Charles Darrow in 1933. He sold the rights to George Parker in 1935. Parker invented more than 100 games, including Pit, Rook, Flinch, Risk and Clue.
One hour before Alexander Graham Bell registered his patent for the telephone in 1876, Elisha Gray patented his design. After years of litigation, the patent went to Bell.
A green diamond is the rarest of all diamonds.
The European Union was founded in 1957 as the European Economic Community. It then became the European Community and in 1993 the EU.
The Earth is not round; it is slightly pear-shaped. The North Pole radius is 44 millimeters longer than the South Pole radius.
The largest movie theater in the world, Radio City Music Hall in New York City, opened in 1932. It seats almost 6,000 people.
The first film animation was "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" made in 1906 by American J. Stuart Blacton.
The word "novel" originally derived from the Latin novus, meaning "new."
An 18th-century London literary club was called Kit-Cat Club.
Ian Fleming's James Bond debuted in the novel "Casino Royale" in 1952.
When Auguste Rodin exhibited his first important work, The Bronze Age, in 1878, it was so realistic that people thought he sacrificed a live model inside the cast.
Rodin died of frostbite in 1917 when the French government refused him financial aid for a flat - yet kept his statues warmly housed in museums.
Vincent van Gogh, the world's most valued painter, sold only one painting in his entire life - to his brother, who owned an art gallery. The painting is titled "Red Vineyard at Arles."
The shortest stage play is Samuel Beckett's "Breath" - 35 seconds of screams and heavy breathing.