1.
The US version of The Office was almost canceled after its first season due to low ratings and mixed reviews. NBC executives were also unsure if the mockumentary-style sitcom would ever connect with American audiences. However, everything changed a few months after the show premiered, when Steve Carell starred in the 2005 box office hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which made him a big star. NBC also did something unusual for the time: it began selling the first season of The Office on iTunes, where it would go on to be a huge success (selling 100,000 copies). Carell’s rising fame and the success of the show’s digital sales led NBC to decide to renew it for a second season.
2.
“…Baby One More Time” has the somewhat confusing “Hit me, baby, one more time” lyrics. Well, that was actually a mistake. The Swedish songwriters of the song, who didn’t really speak English well, Max Martin and Rami Yacoub, thought that “hit” was brand new American slang for “call” (likely confusing “hit” with the phrase “hit me up”). So, Britney is actually singing about begging her ex-boyfriend to call her on the phone.
3.
Tickle Me Elmo was almost Tickle Me Taz — as in the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes. The creators of Tickle Me Elmo, Greg Hyman and Ron Dubren, initially created a chimp that laughed as a prototype toy for Tyco, and thought it would make a great Elmo toy. Tyco liked the idea of the toy. However, they didn’t have the rights to make Sesame Street plush toys (only plastic toys), but they did have the rights to make Looney Tunes plush toys, and thought Taz would work great for it.
4.
The first handbag famously named after a celebrity is the Hermès “Kelly” bag, inspired by Grace Kelly. In the 1950s, she was photographed using a Hermès Sac à Dépêches (a bag first introduced in the 1930s) to discreetly hide her baby bump, and the image became iconic. Public demand for the style grew, and in 1977, Hermès officially renamed it the “Kelly” in her honor.
5.
Our use of the phrase “flying saucers” started on June 24, 1947, after Kenneth Arnold, an amateur pilot from Idaho, saw nine lit-up “circular-type” objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier, Washington. When Arnold (center) landed, he reported what he saw, calculating that they were flying at around 1,700 mph and that they moved like “a saucer if you skip it across water.” News of the sighting spread quickly, and when the newspapers picked up the story, they accidentally described them as “flying saucers.”
6.
Steve Jobs wanted to call the iMac MacMan. In fact, according to Ken Segall, who was the creative director at Apple’s ad agency, TBWA\Chiat\Day, and came up with the name iMac, Jobs really liked the name MacMan and was “fixated” on it. Jobs did approach the agency just to see if they had any better suggestions, saying, “I have a name that I really like, we’re going to go with it, but if you guys can do better we need you to do better within the next two weeks.”
7.
In 2008, at its peak, Apple sold over 54 million iPods just that year alone. This accounted for around 40% of Apple’s revenue. Sales of iPods didn’t see a dramatic drop until 2011, when they dropped to 42 million. By 2014, sales had dropped to just slightly above 14 million.
8.
The iPhone was not the first phone with a capacitive touch-screen. It was actually a Prada (yes, as in the design house Prada) phone released in collaboration with LG. The phone was released in January 2007, and, in fact, a few days before Steve Jobs would announce the iPhone.
9.
Flappers wearing fringe dresses in the 1920s is a bit of a myth. Fringe wasn’t very common, and most dresses would have been embellished with beadwork or embroidery. The reason we associate fringe with flapper dresses is that in the 1950s, Hollywood started making period movies set in the ’20s, and studio costume designers didn’t go for period accuracy because, for audiences at that time, real 1920s clothing would have appeared drab and too old-fashioned. So, costume designers for films like Singin’ in the Rain added fringe to dresses; they also played with silhouettes (making dresses shorter and tighter) and used colors that would not have been used in the ’20s.
10.
The tradition of stars putting their handprints and footprints in front of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood was sort of a happy accident. As the story goes, in 1927, actor Norma Talmadge accompanied the theater’s owner, Sid Grauman, to see how the construction was progressing when she accidentally stepped in wet cement. As a 1958 LA Times article recounted, “When Grauman saw this, it gave him the idea of creating his own special hall of fame.”
11.
Big, glitzy, star-studded Hollywood premieres are almost as old as Hollywood itself. The very first one was for 1922’s Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, and was held at the Egyptian Theatre. Sid Grauman, who also owned the Egyptian, had the idea to put together the huge premiere.
12.
When YouTube originally launched in 2005, it was meant to be a video dating site. The founders of it even had a slogan for it: “Tune in, hook up.”
13.
The term “fast fashion” was first coined in 1989 by the New York Times when the writer of an article about the opening of the first Zara store in New York was describing what Zara’s business model was like.
14.
Walt Disney almost built his second theme park in St. Louis. In the early ’60s, the city asked Walt to create a historic film about St. Louis for a 360-degree theater they were planning to build. However, Walt thought the city would be the perfect place to build a theme park, though this one would be a very large, multi-story indoor park called Riverfront Square. While it would’ve featured some classic Disneyland attractions like Peter Pan and Snow White, it also would have had attractions not yet built for the Anaheim park, like Pirates of the Caribbean. Reportedly, the deal fell apart in 1965 over the cost and how much the city (already financially drained from constructing The Gateway Arch and Busch Stadium) would have to put in for the park’s construction.
15.
When CDs first came out, manufacturers knew that people would be slow to adopt them. They were expensive, and most people were unlikely to replace decades worth of vinyl collections. So instead, they decided to market it toward classical-music lovers who would be more affluent and care about sound quality.
16.
Dolly Parton refused to let Elvis Presley record a cover of “I Will Always Love You” because his team demanded half the publishing rights in exchange for him doing it. This was a common practice for songs Elvis recorded. Dolly’s friends told her she was being silly for passing up the chance to have the legendary singer sing one of her songs, but she knew the song was too personal and valuable to give up ownership. Of course, her decision, though difficult, proved to be very smart after Whitney Houston’s 1992 version became a massive, massive hit. Dolly has since said she was thrilled at the idea of Elvis singing it and cried when turning him down, but never regretted protecting her work.
17.
Contrary to popular belief, Michael Jackson did not own the rights to all the Beatles’ songs. It’s a bit complicated, but he purchased ATV Music Publishing in 1985, which controlled about 250 Beatles songs. However, purchasing the music publisher did not grant Jackson ownership of the songs themselves; he owned only the publishing rights, which entitled him to a share of income. The Beatles’ primary songwriters, Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s estate, continued to receive their full 50% songwriter royalties on all Lennon/McCartney compositions. Additionally, ATV did not own the rights to songs written by George Harrison, because his songwriting contract with Northern Songs (which was later bought by ATV) expired in 1968.
18.
And lastly, a Twitter user invented the hashtag. It was created by Chris Messina, a tech product designer who ran an internet consulting company. Messina was an early adopter of Twitter and found it frustrating that you could not filter tweets by subject. He had the idea that if people put the hashtag with a word or phrase that it would “create an instant channel that anybody can join and participate in.” Messina even pitched the idea to Twitter in person at their offices, but it wasn’t a priority for them to develop. However, he kept promoting their use (even if they didn’t work), and other users also began to use them organically, especially during major events. Seeing its popularity, Twitter integrated hashtag hyperlinking in 2009 — it would then become standard on all social media platforms.