Random facts about Art, Literature and Music

• Picasso could draw before he could walk and his first word was the Spanish word for pencil.
• The first history book, the Great Universal History, was published by Rashid-Eddin of Persia in 1311.
• A grand piano can be played faster than an upright (spinet) piano.
• Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Meteorologica in 350 BC - it remained the standard textbook on weather for 2,000 years.
• The first illustrated book for children was published in Germany in 1658.
• The word "novel" originally derived from the Latin novus, meaning "new."
• It is said that if a statue of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, like the Zizkov Monument, the person died of natural causes.
• Music was sent down a telephone line for the first time in 1876, the year the phone was invented.
• To save costs, the body of Shakespeare's friend and fellow dramatist, Ben Jonson, was buried standing up in Westminister Abbey, London in 1637.
• 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.
• The only guy without a beard in ZZTOP surname (last name) is Beard.
• The shortest stage play is Samuel Beckett's "Breath" - 35 seconds of screams and heavy breathing.
• The first colour photograph was made in 1861 by James Maxwell. He photographed a tartan ribbon.
• In 1952, John Cage composed and presented ' 4'33" ', a composition consisting of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
• Beethoven was the first composer who never had an official court position, thus the first known freelance musician. Born in 1770, he grew up poor, but published his first work at age 12. By age 20 he was famous. He often sold the same score to six or seven different publishers simultaneously, and demanded unreasonably large fees for the simplest work. He was short, stocky, dressed badly, didn't like to bath, lived in squalor, used crude language, openly conducted affairs with married women, and had syphilis. Beethoven was deaf when he composed his Ninth Symphony.