Here are 50 facts from FunFact's “Culture & media” topic, all checked. Each one cites its source (guinnessworldrecords.com, tintin.com, loc.gov…) and the date it was checked. This topic is part of FunFact Premium.
The French magazine Charlie Hebdo owes its name to an American comic-strip character.
When “Hara-Kiri Hebdo” was banned in 1970 after its front page on de Gaulle’s death, the team launched “Charlie Hebdo” a week later.
The name comes from “Charlie Mensuel,” a magazine by the same team, itself named after Charlie Brown, hero of Peanuts. The front page that caused the ban: “Tragic Ball at Colombey, One Dead” (Colombey being de Gaulle’s village).
Hergé drew Tintin's travels without having visited most of the countries, relying on books and photos.
For “Tintin in Tibet,” he did his research without ever going there.
Hergé dreamed up Tintin's adventures in America, China and Tibet without having been there: he relied on books, illustrated magazines, photographs and the accounts of people close to him.
Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper began deteriorating in his lifetime: he painted dry on a damp wall.
He tested a dry technique, which did not hold up like classic fresco.
To experiment with a new dry painting technique, Leonardo used unstable materials on a refectory wall exposed to moisture: the paint was already starting to peel during his own lifetime.
Stephenie Meyer wrote the first Twilight book in a few months after a dream.
The worldwide success of this fantasy romance began as a vision in the night.
The author said the book’s central idea came to her clearly in a detailed dream about a young woman and a vampire who sparkled in the sun. She hurried to write it down.
France's César film awards are named after the French sculptor who designed the statuette.
The sculptor César designed the trophy in 1975 at the request of Georges Cravenne; the first ceremony took place on April 3, 1976.
The name also sounds close to “Oscars,” the American model, and recalls Marcel Pagnol's film “César.” The first 1976 trophy, a film reel around a silhouette, was poorly received; César then made, in 1977, the bronze “compression” that became the official statuette.
France's Minitel ran for thirty years: it shut down on June 30, 2012.
Launched in the early 1980s, this terminal let people browse a directory, shop, and make bookings on a screen, long before the internet.
The electronic directory replaced the big paper books, and the terminal was handed out free to subscribers. The Minitel had its “messageries roses” (“pink messaging,” erotic chat services), but it also saw the rise of remote shopping in France.
Queen gave its very last concert with Freddie Mercury in 1986.
The British band’s triumphant tour ended in a grand open-air finale.
Freddie Mercury’s last live show with Queen took place at Knebworth Park in front of more than 120,000 enthusiastic fans, marking the end of a golden era of rock.
The digital pinball game Space Cadet came built into Windows.
Generations of office workers spent hours on this virtual pinball table.
Included in the Windows 95 Plus! pack and later in Windows XP, this 3D space-themed pinball game introduced many users to desktop digital entertainment.
To escape Edison's film patents, independent studios moved to California
In 1908, a patent trust tied to Edison controlled American cinema; California was far from its New Jersey stronghold.
The distance made patents hard to enforce. The sunshine and the variety of landscapes also mattered. The migration alone doesn't explain the trust's decline, which had many causes.
The @ symbol was chosen for email by an engineer in 1971.
Ray Tomlinson sent the first email between two machines and chose “@” to separate the user's name from the machine's name.
Hardly anyone used this symbol: it was just sitting free on the keyboard. Tomlinson said he chose it because it could not be confused with a name. Electronic mail was born.
To launch its superhero films, Marvel put up the rights to ten of its characters as collateral.
Marvel borrowed $525 million from Merrill Lynch to produce up to ten films, including “Iron Man” (2008).
The company had gone bankrupt in 1996 (Chapter 11 proceedings). The gamble paid off: “Iron Man” earned $585.8 million worldwide and launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, whose films are now mega-hits.
The famous song Happy Birthday to You was long protected by costly copyright.
Singing this familiar tune at birthdays long caused legal headaches for producers.
Composed in the late 19th century, the melody belonged for decades to a large company, forcing films and TV series to pay hefty fees to perform it on screen.
Belgian cartoonist Morris replaced Lucky Luke's cigarette with a blade of grass in 1983.
In the album “Fingers” (1983), the cowboy no longer smokes, a gesture honored with an award from the WHO.
Morris, whose real name was Maurice de Bevere, wanted to make his hero a better role model. Lucky Luke first appeared in 1946 in Almanach de Spirou, the Belgian comics magazine.
The band’s iconic guitarist led a fascinating double life as an academic.
Before filling stadiums around the world with his guitar solos, Brian May was pursuing rigorous doctoral studies in astronomy, which he finished decades later.
Johannes Vermeer's famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring does not reveal who its model was.
One of the most fascinating portraits in Dutch painting keeps its share of mystery.
Historians still don't know whether the young woman with the piercing gaze was one of the painter's daughters, a servant or a purely idealized artistic invention.
The first console with interchangeable cartridges to win over the general public came out in 1977.
The Atari Video Computer System console revolutionized home entertainment.
Before this console, home machines offered only a single game built into memory. Letting players insert different cartridges paved the way for the modern gaming industry.
“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” was born in Britain in 1998 and has been exported to more than 100 countries.
In France, where it is called “Qui veut gagner des millions ?”, Jean-Pierre Foucault hosted the version on the French network TF1 starting in 2000, with a big check up for grabs.
The game's format, with its A, B, C, D answers and its lifelines, has been exported everywhere. The film “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) is built around the Indian version. The British version was born at ITV.
The Guinness World Records book was invented by the head of a brewery.
The book of the world's wildest records owes its existence to a bar argument.
In 1951, the managing director of the Guinness brewery argued with friends over which was Europe's fastest game bird. Unable to find the answer in any book, he decided to create his own guide.
In Jaws, the shark broke down so often that it appears very late in the film.
Nicknamed “Bruce,” Spielberg’s mechanical shark worked poorly in salt water. It doesn’t fully appear until more than an hour into the film.
With no shark to show, Spielberg played on suspense, the barrels and John Williams’s music. That choice made the threat more frightening. “Bruce” bears the first name of the director’s lawyer, Bruce Ramer.
Aldous Huxley took the title “Brave New World” from a Shakespeare play.
The famous dystopia criticizes the excesses of a conditioned, futuristic society.
The phrase “brave new world” comes from an ironic line spoken by the character Miranda in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” It shows her naïveté toward the modern world.
From 2019 to 2024, the most-followed YouTube channel in the world was an Indian music label.
T-Series, a Bollywood record company, was the most-subscribed channel from April 14, 2019 to June 2, 2024, before being overtaken by MrBeast.
T-Series mostly publishes clips from Hindi-language films. Its channel exceeds 300 million subscribers (2025), behind MrBeast. It overtook the Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie, who had long been number one.
The French weekly Le Canard enchaîné carries no advertising, to stay free.
Founded in 1915, the satirical weekly lives off its newsstand sales and subscriptions.
Not depending on any advertiser lets it reveal scandals without fearing a loss of revenue. It has thus exposed many political scandals. In slang, “canard” (“duck” in French) means a newspaper, or a false story.
The initials of DC Comics, the publisher of Superman and Batman, stand for “Detective Comics.”
The company Detective Comics, Inc., created in 1937, takes its name from its magazine “Detective Comics,” where Batman would make his debut two years later.
So Batman was born in a crime magazine: it was in 1939, in issue no. 27 of “Detective Comics,” that he first appeared. Superman, for his part, debuted in 1938 in “Action Comics” no. 1.
Hergé sent Tintin to the Moon in an album published in 1954, fifteen years before Apollo 11.
“Explorers on the Moon” (“On a marché sur la Lune”) came out from the Belgian publisher Casterman in 1954; the story had run in Tintin magazine since 1952.
Hergé wanted realism: no aliens or monsters, and a rocket inspired by the German V-2s. The first human steps on the Moon took place in 1969, fifteen years later.
Pac-Man was called “Puck-Man” in Japan, and renamed to avoid vulgar graffiti.
The Japanese name came from “paku-paku,” the sound of a mouth opening and closing. It was changed before the 1980 US release.
Ahead of the US release, there was concern that pranksters would turn the “P” in “Puck” into an “F” on arcade cabinets. The hero therefore became “Pac-Man,” a name that later caught on almost everywhere.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “Treasure Island” to entertain his stepson.
One of pop culture’s greatest pirate tales was born from a drawing game.
In 1881, during a rainy vacation in Scotland, the author drew an imaginary treasure island map to keep the boy busy. He made up the story as he went along to amuse him.
The first brand-name TV commercials in France date only from 1968.
On October 1, 1968, five brand commercials aired in the evening, shortly before 8 p.m., on the public television of the ORTF, the French state broadcaster.
Before that, there were only public-interest messages. Brand advertising was authorized to supplement the ORTF’s funding. It quickly became a major source of income for television.
A film by Brussels-born Chantal Akerman was voted the “greatest film of all time” in 2022.
“Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975) topped the Sight and Sound poll of the British Film Institute.
It is the first time in 70 years that a film directed by a woman has won this poll. Set in Brussels, it runs almost three and a half hours. It ranked only 35th in 2012, when it entered the list.
Samuel L. Jackson asked for a purple lightsaber so that his Jedi, Mace Windu, would stand out in battle.
In “Attack of the Clones,” the purple blade makes him easy to pick out in large battle scenes.
The saber appears on screen only in this film: the “Phantom Menace” action figures still showed Mace Windu with a blue saber. It has remained one of the most recognizable sabers in the saga.
Popularized by South Korea's Pinkfong, “Baby Shark” is the first YouTube video to pass 10 billion views.
Pinkfong's version, published in June 2016, reached that mark on January 13, 2022, after dethroning “Despacito” in late 2020.
The original song dates back to the 20th century and comes with a hand-motion dance. It is Pinkfong's version, which went viral on social media, that turned this children's chant into a global hit.
“Gangnam Style” broke the limit of YouTube's view counter.
In December 2014, the video passed 2,147,483,647 views, the limit of a 32-bit counter.
YouTube had not expected that a video could ever reach such a number. The site switched to a 64-bit counter. Gangnam Style was also the first video to cross a billion views, in late 2012.
In Disney's film, Pocahontas loves John Smith, but in reality she was only about ten years old.
Smith himself describes her as a child of about 10 (later 12 or 13) in 1608. Sources from the time speak of friendship, not romance.
The first mention of a love story dates from 1803. Pocahontas's rescue of Smith, told only by him in 1616 and 1624, is disputed by descendants and by some historians.
Deep Purple's “Smoke on the Water” tells the story of the casino fire in Montreux, Switzerland, in December 1971.
On December 4, 1971, the casino burned down during a Frank Zappa concert. Deep Purple was recording an album there and had to find another place.
The band ended up recording in a grand hotel in Territet, soundproofed with mattresses. Claude Nobs, founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival, convinced them to keep the song. The fire caused no casualties.
In Alien, the actors didn’t know fake blood was about to spray all over them.
During the “chestburster” scene (1979), the actors knew the scene but hadn’t been warned how much fake blood would spurt.
Director Ridley Scott wanted to capture the crew’s genuine horror. Veronica Cartwright’s reaction, drenched in blood, is authentic. The film earned over $100 million and launched a franchise.
The first known animated feature film is Argentine: “El Apóstol,” released in 1917.
Director Quirino Cristiani made it with cut-out figures. The film is now lost.
Released in 1917, “El Apóstol” by Argentine director Quirino Cristiani, silent and animated with paper cut-outs, is considered the first animated feature in history. His next film, “Peludópolis” (1931), with a synchronized soundtrack, is considered the first animated feature with sound, coming six years before Disney’s.
In 1968, the Cannes Film Festival was shut down halfway through by filmmakers.
On May 19, 1968, in solidarity with the students and the strike, Godard, Truffaut and others got the festival stopped, with no prizes awarded.
Some directors withdrew their films and jury members resigned, including Louis Malle. It is the only time the festival has been stopped midway, and no Palme d'Or was awarded that year.
Popeye boosted spinach sales so much that Crystal City, Texas, built him a statue
Spinach sales benefited from the popularity of the sailor who gets strong by swallowing spinach, and the town's growers thanked Popeye with a statue.
The widely repeated figure of a 33% rise in the 1930s could not be found in any reliable source. A 2010 study also showed that children ate more vegetables after watching Popeye cartoons.
French television went color in 1967 with a homegrown system, SECAM.
SECAM, developed in France, was used to launch color on the second channel in 1967. The USSR later adopted it too.
France and Germany (which backed PAL) clashed over the standard. As a result, a TV bought in France did not always work abroad. The two standards remained in competition for decades.
Disney bought Marvel (about $4 billion) and then Lucasfilm and Star Wars ($4.05 billion) within three years.
The Marvel acquisition was announced on August 31, 2009 and finalized in late December 2009; Lucasfilm's was announced on October 30, 2012 for $4.05 billion.
The same group thus owns the Avengers, Star Wars and Pixar (acquired in 2006). In 2019, Disney also bought most of 21st Century Fox for $71 billion.
The audio cassette took over the world because Philips let all its competitors make it.
Launched in August 1963, Philips' compact cassette was licensed free of charge to other manufacturers starting in 1966.
Philips preferred to turn its invention into a universal standard rather than keep it for itself. The team was led by the Dutch engineer Lou Ottens, who also launched the development of the compact disc.
Switzerland hosted and won the very first Eurovision Song Contest, in Lugano in 1956.
Lys Assia won on May 24, 1956 with “Refrain,” in French. Each country performed two songs back then, a rule unique in the contest's history.
Only the winning country was announced: the detailed votes were never made public. The contest took place at the Teatro Kursaal in Lugano and was hosted by a single man, Lohengrin Filipello.
The smiley “:-)” was proposed in 1982 by a computer scientist to mark jokes on a forum.
Scott Fahlman, of Carnegie Mellon University, proposed “:-)” and “:-(” in a message on the university's forum.
On these forums, humor didn't come across well in writing: Fahlman proposed two little signs, to be read by tilting your head, to tell jokes apart from serious remarks. In 2021, he had a version of these “first emoticons” put up for auction as an NFT.
Batman was co-created by Bill Finger, whose name was long forgotten.
Gotham City's Dark Knight owes a lot to a writer working in the shadows.
Although Bob Kane long took all the credit for creating Batman, it was Bill Finger who came up with the dark costume, the cowl with pointed ears and the city of Gotham.
Cannes' Palme d'Or has existed only since 1955: before that, the top prize was the “Grand Prix.”
The festival was born in 1946; the first film to receive the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) was the American “Marty,” by Delbert Mann, in 1955.
From 1946 to 1954, the best film received the “Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.” The Palme symbol is drawn from the coat of arms of the city of Cannes, just as the Lion of Venice and the Bear of Berlin have their own local emblems.
The cult film “Le Père Noël est une ordure” started as a stage play, created in 1979 by the Splendid troupe.
Jean-Marie Poiré's cult film (1982) adapts a play performed in Paris by the troupe of the Le Splendid café-théâtre.
Le Splendid is a café-théâtre, a small comedy venue, founded in 1974 in the back room of a bistro in the Montparnasse district. The same troupe also turned its play “Amour, coquillages et crustacés” into the film “Les Bronzés” (1978).
New York's famous Statue of Liberty was originally copper brown.
The famous American symbol has not always worn its characteristic green hue.
A gift from France in the late 19th century, the statue was covered in thin plates of shiny copper. Natural oxidation from sea wind and rain turned it green over the decades.
The real Cyrano de Bergerac was a Parisian, not from Gascony, and he wrote a story about a trip to the Moon.
Savinien de Cyrano was born in Paris in 1619; his “de Bergerac” comes from family lands in the Chevreuse valley, not from the Dordogne region.
Historian Auguste Jal revealed in 1872 that the “sieur de Bergerac” was a Parisian. The real author wrote a “Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon,” published after his death: one of the first stories of a voyage to the Moon.
Psycho’s famous shower scene needed 78 camera setups for 45 seconds.
Hitchcock used 78 camera setups and 52 cuts for this 1960 scene, shot in a week. It is said the “blood” was chocolate syrup.
The film was in black and white: according to the most widespread anecdote, chocolate syrup therefore did the job as blood. The scene still shocks with its fast editing: you almost never see the knife touch the victim.
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