Page 290 - Celebrity Facts

President George H.W. Bush once vomited on the lap of the Japanese prime minister.

In January of 1992, President Bush was in Japan at a state dinner held at the home of Kiichi Miyazawa. Bush had not been feeling well prior to the event, and reportedly had been told by his doctors not to attend. Never one to refuse hospitality, Bush decided to soldier on through his flu, and expressed his gratitude to the prime minister from the bottom of his...stomach.

The illness caused quite a scene - it's not too often that you see a president go completely pale and topple over onto a foreign diplomat:



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An Australian performance artist had a third ear surgically implanted in his arm.

Stelios Arcadiou, better known as Stelarc to his fans, waited years to find a doctor who could graft an ear onto his arm! He says that it is an artistic augmentation of the body's form. Of course, Stelarc is not able to hear out of this extra ear, but he hopes to one day implant a microphone inside the ear so that others can listen through his arm!
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The girl who voiced Ducky from The Land Before Time and Annie-Marie from All Dogs Go to Heaven was brutally murdered by her father.

Since her unlikely discovery at a skating rink five years earlier, 10-year-old Judith Barsi had quickly soared to child stardom. Over her short career, Judith appeared in over 70 commercials, several episodes of television shows, and four films. Her overnight success took its toll on her father József, who was an alcoholic out-of-work plumber. While his daughter was pulling in $100,000 a year, József struggled to find consistent work, and he took out his jealousy on both his wife and young Judith. In 1988, his paranoia spiraled to the point where he decided to shoot his wife and daughter in the head before using the gun on himself. What an awful, awful tragedy.

Here is one of Judith's commercials. Was she adorable? "Yep, yep, yep!"


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The movie She's the Man is based on Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night."

This movie is just chock full of references to the play, too! The teens' school is called Illyria, which is the name of the country the play is set in. On Viola's first day at Illyria, she walks by a sign for a school play entitled "What You Will," which is the alternate title for "Twelfth Night." Duke Orsino is based on the character of Orsino, a duke. Duke's friends Toby and Andrew are friends of Orsino in the play and Malcolm is based on Malvolio, which happens to be the name of Malcolm's pet tarantula!
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Tom Hanks patterned his accent in Forrest Gump after the actor that played young Forrest.

Hanks initially wanted to tone the Southern accent down a bit, but director Robert Zemeckis convinced him to speak in with a heavy drawl, as described in the original novel. Tom based his tone after Michael Conner Humphreys, who actually spoke that way!

It honestly would not be the same movie without his accent. Here's Tom Hanks playing Forrest without the accent (it's really bizarre):
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