Trivia Anyone?

I love trivia. I don't know why, I'm not a gossip hound. I don't watch TMZ, the latest hip, trendy gossip show rivaling Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood. But I do love learning snippets of information about people, places or things.

By the way, do you know what TMZ stands for? Take a guess.

Here's a bit of trivia about oldies but goodies, that I find fascinating:

Humphrey Bogart's lisp was a result of an injury received during World War II. While his ship was being shelled, a splinter lodged in his upper lip rendering it paralyzed.

Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman were once voted Least Likely to Succeed in their Playhouse Acting School.

Doris Day longed to be a professional dancer, but when she broke her leg at the age of 15, she decided to give singing a try.

Lucille Ball was kicked out of drama school for being too shy!

Shirley Temple was originally slated to play the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but Judy Garland got the part when Temple's studio (20th Century Fox) asked for too much money from MGM.

1400 actresses were interviewed to play the role of Scarlett O'Hara.

Walt Disney was given one normal Oscar statue and 7 miniature statues for his film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

Quotes:

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." - Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." - Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard." - Daphne Du Maurier

"It has been my observation that people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be." -Abraham Lincoln

"All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife." - Daniel Boone

Random Historical Facts:

Benjamin Franklin was the first head of the United States Post Office.

Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed on his wedding night in A.D. 453.

John Hanson - not George Washington - was the first president of the U.S.

When the Congress met in 1781, the U.S. was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which were adopted in 1777 and ratified by the states in 1781. At that meeting, Congress elected John Hanson its "President of the U.S. in Congress assembled." George Washington became the first president of the U.S. under the U.S. Constitution in 1789.

Katharine Lee Bates wrote the words to the classic American anthem
"America The Beautiful" after her trip to the summit of Pikes Peak in 1893.

St. Nicholas was bishop of the Turkish town of Myra in the early fourth century. It was the Dutch who first made him into a Christmas gift-giver, and Dutch settlers brought him to America where his name eventually became the familiar Santa Claus.

By the end of the U.S. Civil War, 33 percent of all U.S. paper currency in circulation was counterfeit. This was a devastating situation for a nation struggling to recover economically from such a destructive war. On July 5, 1865, the Secret Service was created as a part of the Department of the Treasury to help suppress counterfeit currency

So, do you love trivia? What's the most interesting bit of trivia you've heard?

How many of you know what TMZ stands for?