The first movie ever to put out a motion-picture soundtrack was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
100 Mind-Blowing First Facts
There is a company in Japan that has schools that teach you how to be funny. The first one opened in 1982. About 1,000 students take the course each year.
The first service animals were established in Germany during World War I, but references to service animals date back to the mid-16th Century.
Hanna-Barbera pitched The Flintstones to networks for 8 weeks before it was finally picked up. It became the first-ever animated show to air during primetime.
The Hobbit has been published in two editions. In the first edition, Gollum willingly bet on his ring in the riddle game.
The world’s first motel is in San Luis Obispo, which was built in 1925. When opened, it cost $1.25 for a two-room bungalow with a kitchen and a private adjoining garage.
Scotland was one of the few countries able to hold off being conquered by the Romans in the first century A.D.
Gaming-related accidents increased by 26.5% during the first 5 months of Pokémon Go being released. This included 2 deaths and $25.5 million in damages.
During the entire run of Gilligan’s Island, it was never revealed if “Gilligan” was his first or last name.
When Jorge Garcia first got the part on LOST as Hurley, he lost a total of 30 pounds in weight before filming started.
Rebecca Felton was the first woman to ever serve in the United States Senate – but she only served for one day.
Qantas Airways once powered an interstate flight on cooking oil. This marked Australia’s first commercial flight using sustainably derived biofuel.
The first Primark store opened in Dublin in June 1969 under the name Penney’s.
The first X-rated animated movie was Fritz the Cat. It is still the most successful independent animated feature to date.
Originally, bumper cars were not supposed to hit each other. Drivers were supposed to avoid crashing despite chaotic driving. The first company to patent a bumper car was in 1920 named Dodgem.
The first 4th of July celebration was in 1777.
Justin Bieber’s first tweet was at 8:27 pm on May 11, 2009.
The first-ever documented feature film was made in Australia in 1906.
Though most think it’s Italian, pepperoni is an American invention. The first use of the word dates back to 1919.
When dogs are first born, they are completely blind & cannot hear anything. The first sense that they develop is the sense of touch.
Approximately 1 in every 2,000 babies already has a tooth when they are first born.
The first game to be played in space was Starcraft – Daniel Barry took it with him in 1999 on the Space Shuttle mission STS-96.
During the first live iPhone presentation, Steve Jobs had to frequently switch phones behind his desk. Otherwise, it would run out of RAM and crash.
Thomas Edison invented an electric pen in 1876 that was later adapted to become the first tattoo machine in 1891.
The first Game Boy could run for a staggering 30 hours on only two AA batteries!
Daniel Radcliffe had the same stunt double for the first six Harry Potter movies – until the double was paralyzed from an accident on set during the filming of the 7th movie.
Credit card EMV chip technology has been around since 1986. It was first implemented in France, with Germany following shortly after.
30 of the first 31 popes were murdered. Most of them were martyred, but not all causes of their deaths are known.
Doug Engelbart created the very first computer mouse from wood in 1964.
The first world leader to create a YouTube channel was the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who made his account in 2007.
Tupac was the first U.S. artist to have an album reach Billboard #1 while still in prison. It was his third studio album, titled “Me Against the World“.
When the Titanic sank in 1912, 3 dogs survived. They had all been travelling with their owners in the First Class cabins.
A man, Ben Sliney, grounded 4,000 commercial planes across the United States on 9/11 due to the attacks – it was his first day on the job.
When electricity was first installed in the White House in 1891, President Benjamin Harrison and his wife were afraid of electrocution because of the new concept. They refused to touch light switches, so the staff had to turn the lights on and off for them.
In 1923, a jockey suffered a fatal heart attack, but his horse finished and won the race, making him the first and only jockey to win a race after death.
The first jet aircraft was invented in Nazi Germany. Development started in 1936, but the first takeoff occurred in 1939.
If you were to have your picture taken by the very first camera, you’d need to sit still for 8 hours.
The famous Lacoste crocodile symbol was created in 1933 and was the first designer logo ever.
The first roller coaster was used to transport coal down a hill. After people found that it could reach speeds up to 50 miles per hour, tourists asked to ride on it for a few cents.
The first spacecraft to visit Mars was Mariner 4 in 1965.
It was Nicholas Cage who first advised Johnny Depp to pursue a career in acting during the mid-1980s.
Mickey Mouse was the first-ever cartoon character to talk. In the 1929 episode, The Karnival Kid, Mickey’s first words were “Hot dogs!”
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has such severe dyslexia that he didn’t read his first novel until he was 38.
Coca-Cola was first served in 1886. At that time, only 9 colas were served on an average day, 3,285 a year. Today, 19,400 Coke products are consumed every second.
The first band to ever perform live on all seven continents was Metallica.
Neptune was the first planet to be found through mathematical predictions rather than telescopic location.
When Nike first started, it was called Blue Ribbon Sports. The name was changed in 1971.
The first known recipe for Angel Food Cake was published in 1878.
When Play-Doh was first developed in the 1930s, it wasn’t a toy… it was a way to clean wallpaper.
Disney World is the second-largest purchaser of explosives in the United States, the first being the U.S. Department of Defence.
Fruit flies were the first living creatures to be sent into space in 1947.
The Apple Lisa was the first commercial computer with a graphical user interface (GUI) and a mouse.
Mulan has the highest kill count of any Disney character, including villains, and was the first Disney Princess to be shown killing people on-screen.
Jennifer Lopez was the first actress to have a movie, and an album hit number one in the same week.
King Kong was the first movie to ever have a sequel.
BTS was the first K-pop group to get their own Twitter emojis.
The Green Lantern debuted in 1940, making the Lantern’s first debut only two years after Superman’s.
Coca-Cola was the first drink that was ever consumed in space.
The very first bottle of Dr Pepper was sold in America on January 12, 1885.
“Finger-Lickin’ Good” had a bit of a mishap when translated to Chinese for their first KFC outlets in the country, the famous phrase became “eat your fingers off.”
Legoland Billund opened on June 7, 1968, and attracted over 3,000 visitors on the first day!
In 2000 the first permanent crew inhabited the International Space Station (ISS). Since then, there’s always been a human presence in space.
During World War II, the very first bomb dropped on Berlin by the Allies killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
The first computer virus ever created was called Creeper back in 1971. Shortly after this virus was created, Reaper was created as the world’s first anti-virus.
The fear of long words is called Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. The 36-letter word was first used by the Roman poet Horace in the first century BCE to criticise those writers with an unreasonable penchant for long words. It was American poet Aimee Nezheukumatathil, possibly afraid of their surname, who coined the term how we know it in 2000.
Most maps of the world are wrong. On most maps, the Mercator projection – first developed in 1569 – is still used. This method is wildly inaccurate and makes Alaska appear as large as Brazil and Greenland 14 times larger than it is. For a map to be completely accurate, it would need to be life-size and round, not flat.
NASA genuinely faked part of the Moon landing. While Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the lunar surface were categorically not faked, the astronaut quarantine protocol when the astronauts arrived back on Earth was largely just one big show.
Chainsaws were first invented for childbirth. It was developed in Scotland in the late 18th Century to help aid and speed up the process of symphysiotomy (widening the pubic cartilage) and removal of disease-laden bone during childbirth. It wasn’t until the start of the 20th Century that we started using chainsaws for woodchopping.
The first hand-held mobile phone call was made on April 3rd, 1973, in NYC.
Tim Berners-Lee created the first ever web browser (World Wide Web), in 1990.
In the UK in 2019, renewable energy generated more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time. Also, did you know Norway gets 0% electricity from coal? And Germany has installed 1 kW of renewable capacity per person in the last decade? a) (Climate change is the biggest global issue of our time, but there are some things to feel positive about!)
Scientists say tears tell you the reason for someone crying. If the first drop comes from the right eye, it’s tears of joy. Otherwise, it’s because of pain.
Marie Curie was the first person ever to win TWO Nobel Prizes – one for physics in 1903, and the other for chemistry in 1911 for her work on radioactivity.
The first person processed at Ellis Island was a 15-year-old girl from Ireland.
Penicillin was first called “mould juice.”
The first commercial passenger flight lasted only 23 minutes.
The first animals to travel to outer space were fruit flies.
A sheep was the first animal to be cloned.
Interesting facts aren’t just nice to have in your back pocket, but they can help foster a sense of connection with others, spark curiosity during a boring dinner conversation and even help you break past small talk on a first date. Get ready to show off your trivia prowess with one or more of the below fun facts across categories like food, travel, history, science, music and more. Be sure to bookmark this page for your next trivia night, and share it with your fellow fun fact obsessives. Dr Pepper was founded in Waco, Texas, by a pharmacist, in 1885, making it the oldest big soft drink brand in the country, per Southern Living.
The building One Times Square was built in 1904 as the headquarters for the New York Times. It’s been home to the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop Celebration since 1907, when the first New Year’s Eve ball was made of iron and wood, one hundred 25-watt bulbs and weighed 700 pounds. Today’s ball is 12 feet in diameter and weighs almost six tons with 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles bolted to 672 LED modules attached to the aluminium frame.
According to the New York Times, the Monterey Pop Festival in Monterey, California, was the first rock music festival.
Wonder Bread was created in Indianapolis in 1921 at the Taggart Baking Company. The owner of Taggart went to the first race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which was a hot air balloon race, and the view and “wonder” of the experience inspired the brand’s name and colourful circle design on its packageing.
Nearest Green (“Uncle Nearest”), a formerly enslaved man, taught Jack Daniel as a young boy how to make whiskey, and served as the first master distiller for Jack’s Distillery No. 7 following abolition. While you may have heard of whiskey giant Jack Daniels, there is now a whiskey label called Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey, honouring Uncle Nearest, “the best whiskey maker the world never knew.”
Mark Twain was the first author to use a typewriter to write a manuscript.
Richard Nixon was the first U.S. President to visit all 50 states.
The first Barbie doll was released in 1959.
The book 3 SHADES OF BLUE: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan notes that when Miles Davis moved to New York City at 18, he spent his first few weeks attending classes at Julliard and going to Harlem to see performances at Minton’s Playhouse and the Savoy Ballroom, as well as clubs on 52nd Street.
The first college chartered in the United States was done so in 1782, with 50 guineas (a type of coin) donated by George Washington toward its founding. Washington College is still open today.
Kennedy Space Centre, dubbed Florida’s Space Coast, is the only travel destination with a beach that doubles as a launch pad. Artemis 3 is currently planning a lunar landing mission to put the first woman and person of colour on the moon, with an estimated launch date in 2025.
The YMCA was founded in London in 1844 by George Williams, and its first U.S. outpost opened in Boston in 1851.
The world’s first animated feature film was made in Argentina. Even if you know a lot of Disney trivia, you might assume that the honour of the first animated feature film belongs to Walt Disney’s 1937 movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But 20 years earlier, a full-length animated feature film was made in Argentina. It was a political satire called El Apóstol made up of 58,000 drawings and had a running time of 70 minutes, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
The first person processed at Ellis Island was a 15-year-old girl from Ireland. On January 1, 1892, Annie Moore was the first passenger to disembark at Ellis Island on its opening day. She had travelled to the United States with her two younger brothers aboard the SS Nevada after departing from Queenstown, Ireland (now known as Cobh). Another amazing fact? The busiest day at Ellis Island was April 17, 1907.
The first time the word “period” was used on TV about menstruation was in 1985. It came via a line in a Tampax commercial: “Feeling cleaner is more comfortable. It can change the way you feel about your period.” And the actor who made pop culture history was Courtney Cox of Friends fame.
The first oranges weren’t orange. The original oranges from Southeast Asia were a tangerine-pomelo hybrid, and they were green. Oranges in warmer regions, such as Vietnam and Thailand, still stay green through maturity. Speaking of which, ever wonder which “orange” came first: the colour or the fruit? We found out!
Some octopus species lay 56,000 eggs at a time. On average, a giant Pacific octopus will lay 56,000 eggs at the end of a pregnancy, over about a month, NPR reports. At first, these new babies float through the surrounding water unattached to one another or their mother. But then the mother gathers each egg—which is about the size of a grain of rice—and weaves them into braids, allowing her to keep an eye on everyone at the same time.
Most Disney characters wear gloves to keep animation simple. Walt Disney might have been the first to put gloves on his characters, as seen in 1929’s The Opry House, starring Mickey Mouse. In addition to being easier to animate, there’s another reason for the gloves: “We didn’t want him to have mouse hands because he was supposed to be more human,” Disney told his biographer in 1957.
Movie trailers originally played after the movie. They “trailed” the feature film—hence, the name. The first trailer appeared in 1912 and was for a Broadway show, not a movie.
An espresso maker was sent into space in 2015. Coffee lovers will appreciate this interesting space fact: Samantha Cristoforetti was the first astronaut to get a warm and cosy piece of home sent to her while in orbit. The Italian Space Agency worked with Italian coffee manufacturer Lavazza to get the coffee capsules into space.
The word “aquarium” means “watering place for cattle” in Latin. Of course, today’s aquariums aren’t for cows. The first aquarium that looks like what you’d imagine was created in 1921 and opened in 1924 in England.
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ron Wayne started Apple Inc. on April Fools’ Day. The three technology innovators signed the documents to form the Apple Computer Company on April 1, 1976. However, the company was not fully incorporated until January 3, 1977. Thirty years later, the company was renamed Apple Inc. and is no joke. In 2018, Apple became the country’s first trillion-dollar company. Of course, computers have come a long way over the years—here’s what computers looked like the decade you were born.