Interesting & Amazing Facts
Art & Literature
American Gothic
The farming couple shown in "American Gothic" were painted after models. Artist Grant Wood's sister and Dr. McKeevey - his dentist.
Art Gallery
The world's largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. Visitors would have to walk 15 miles to see the 322 galleries which house nearly 3 million works of art.
Bauby, Jean-Dominique
Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist suffering from "locked-in" syndrome, wrote the book "The Driving Bell and the Butterfly" by blinking his left eyelid, the only part of his body that could move.
Cassatt, Mary
The most valuable painting made by a female artist is "In the Box," painted by Mary Cassatt. It was sold for $3.67 million at Christie's in New York City.
Comics
In most comic strips and magazine advertisements, the time on the clock is 10:10.
da Vinci, Leonardo
Leonardo da Vinci never signed or dated his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.
Dictionaries
The first Oxford English Dictionary was published in April 1928, 50 years after it was started. It consisted of 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes. The latest edition fills 22,000 pages, includes 33,000 Shakespeare quotations, and is bound in 20 volumes. All of which is available on a single CD
Donald Duck
Donald Duck comics were once banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants
Dr. Seuss
Author Dr. Seuss wrote the book "Green Eggs and Ham" because the editor made him a bet that he could not write a book which contained less than fifty words.
First Book
The first book published is thought to be the Epic of Gilgamesh, written at about 3000 BC in cuneiform, an alphabet based on symbols.
First Novel
The first novel, called The story of Genji, was written in 1007 by Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu.
Harry Potter
The fourth book in the popular series, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" holds the world record for the largest first-run printing at 4.8 million copies.
Libraries
The Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, stores 18 million books on approximately 850 km (530 miles) of bookshelves. The collections include 119 million items, 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps and 53 million manuscripts.
Longest Work
The world's longest nonfiction work is The Yongle Dadian, a 10,000-volume encyclopedia produced by 5,000 scholars during the Ming Dynasty in China 500 years ago.
Melville, Herman
During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's timeless classic of the sea, 'Moby Dick', only sold 50 copies.
Mona Lisa
The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows, shaved eyebrows were in fashion at the time she was painted.
Nursery Rhymes
The children’s' nursery rhyme 'Ring-a-Round-The-Rosies' actually refers to the Black Death which killed about 30 million people in the fourteenth-century.
Peter Pan
All the proceeds earned from James M. Barrie's book "Peter Pan" were bequeathed to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for the Sick Children in London.
Titanic
Fourteen years before the Titanic sank, novelist Morgan Robertson published a novel called "Futility". The story was about an ocean liner that struck an iceberg on an April night. The name of the ship in his novel - The Titan.
Tom Sawyer
First novel ever written on a typewriter was 'Tom Sawyer.'
Van Goh, Vincent
* During his entire life, Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting, Red Vineyard at Arles.
* The most expensive painting ever sold at auction was "Portrait of Dr. Gachet", created by Vincent Van Gogh. It sold for $85.2 million dollars.
* Vincent Van Gogh's pen and ink drawing, "Garden with Flowers" sold in a Christie's auction for $8.36 million, making it the highest price ever paid for a drawing!
* Vincent Van Gogh didn't actually 'cut off his ear'. He lopped off the lower left ear.
Whistler's Mother
The famous painting of Whistler's Mother was once bought from a pawn shop.
Ernest Vincent Wright
Ernest Vincent Wright wrote the novel "Gadsby" which contains over 50,000 words, none of them with the letter "E".