Archives: Useless Facts

What year did MTV launch?

Robyn Rihanna Fenty, widely considered one of the most prominent singers of this century, is also a songwriter, businesswoman, and actress.

Her album, Good Girl Gone Bad, with its chart-topping single “Umbrella,” confirmed her position as a music industry icon and earned Rihanna her first Grammy Award.  So far, she has earned 9 Grammy Awards, 13 American Music Awards (including Icon Award), 12 Billboard Music Awards, 5 World Music Awards, 6 Guinness World Records, the NAACP’s President’s Award, and even an Academy Award nomination. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2018.

Rihanna is also an entrepreneur, founding a cosmetics brand (Fenty Beauty) and a luxury brand fashion house part of the LVMH empire – the first black woman to do so.  She is also known for her involvement in humanitarian causes, and was appointed an ambassador of education, tourism, and investment by the Government of Barbados in 2018 and declared a National Hero of Barbados in 2021.

Which singer’s real name is Robyn Fenty?

Sally Kristen Ride, joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman and, at the age of 32, the youngest American astronaut to fly in space.

Many of the spectators at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida who gathered to witness the launch of the STS-7 space shuttle launch on the morning of June 18, 1983, wore T-shirts inscribed with the Mustang Sally lyrics “Ride Sally Ride” knowing the mission STS-7 was about to make US history.

At 32 years old, Ride was not only the youngest astronaut on board, she was also the first American woman in space.  She was the third woman to fly in space, after cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982.

Who was the first American woman to fly into space?

(Note: An earlier post had an incorrect photo of Anna Paquin, who made her acting debut portraying Flora McGrath in the film The Piano, for which she did win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 11, making her the second-youngest winner in Oscar history.)

Tatum O’Neal is the youngest Oscar winner of all time. She won Best Supporting Actress at the 1974 Academy Awards ceremony at the age of 10.

At the 95th Academy Awards (on March 12, 2023), although he didn’t take home the Oscar, John Williams, at age 90, became the oldest Oscar nominee in any category, receiving his 53rd Oscar nomination for Best Original Score for his work on The Fabelmans.

Who is the youngest Oscar winner of all time?

The “Theme from Mission: Impossible” was written and composed by the Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin who first recorded the music in 1967, although the show first aired in 1966 on CBS. His original working title for the theme music was “Burning Fuse” – the visual image associated with the series.

The inside scoop:

Schifrin started from the Morse code for M and I (i.e., two dashes and two dots).  If a dot in Morse code is one beat and a dash is one and a half beats, it gives a bar of five beats – matching the underlying rhythm of the music. Schifrin estimated that it took him only three minutes to write the music!

Who wrote the “Theme from Mission: Impossible” which was the theme music for the Mission: Impossible television series that aired from 1966 through 1973 and what’s the inside scoop on its significance?

No one is really certain how the superstition surrounding Friday the 13th arose. There are historians who believe the superstition arose because Jesus was crucified on a Friday, and there were 13 guests at the Last Supper the night before his crucifixion, Judas reportedly the 13th to arrive. Then there are those who note it was a Friday the 13th in 1307 when the King of France gave the orders to arrest hundreds of Knights Templar in France, many of whom were later executed. The first recorded mention is in a biography of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, who died on a Friday the 13th.

As if the fear of the day isn’t enough, the ‘scientific’ term for the fear of Friday the 13th is friggatriskaidekaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobia. Try saying either of those 5 times quicly! (Friday is named after Frigg, the Norse goddess of wisdom, triskaideka is 13 in Greek, and phobia means fear. In Greek paraskeví is Friday and another way of saying 13 in Greek is dekatria.

But today, some folks are celebrating Friday and the number 13. Taylor Swift considers 13 her lucky number and years ago sometimes would perform with 13 written on her hand. In her own words to MTV in 2009, “I was born on the 13th. I turned 13 on Friday the 13th. My first album went gold in 13 weeks. My first No. 1 one song had a 13-second intro,” “Every time I’ve won an award I’ve been seated in either the 13th seat, the 13th row, the 13th section or row M, which is the 13th letter. Basically, whenever a 13 comes up in my life, it’s a good thing.”

Indeed, Finland has celebrated one Friday the 13th each year since 1995 as National Accident Day, intended to raise awareness about safety.