Author: Jennifer M Wood

When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440, he couldn’t have foreseen how his humble creation would eventually lead to a global industry churning out millions of books each year. In the centuries since, new books continue getting published while old books pile up so that the total number of books that exist would be inconceivable to a man who placed every letter by hand. While counting up all the actual individual texts populating bookstores, public libraries, and private collections throughout the world would be a Sisyphean task, there might be a way to at least approximate how many unique book titles have ever been published.

Trying to determine how many books there are first raises a deceptively simple question: What is a book, anyway? That can get deeply philosophical very quickly, and there’s no single answer to it. The team behind Google Books (whose ambitious goal is to digitize all printed material, allowing unprecedented access to the world’s knowledge in a single database) came up with their own definition in 2010, in an attempt to answer this thorny query: What they refer to as a “tome” comprises an “idealized bound volume,” covering the range from a bestselling novel with copies available at every airport newsstand to a rare, leather-bound out-of-print edition to a single catalogued manuscript of someone’s PhD dissertation going quietly unread in a university collection.

On its surface, this definition replicates the concept underlying International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN), the universal identifiers for all books in the commercial marketplace. However, ISBNs have only existed since the mid-1960s and have yet to be widely adopted in non-Western regions of the world, so relying solely on that single number omits vast portions of printed material. Even when they are used, the process of assigning ISBNs isn’t particularly rigorous, so plenty of “book-like objects” that are definitely not books come with an ISBN: audiobooks, instructional DVDs, flash cards, etc. Relying solely on ISBNs to determine the number of published books offers a murky, unsatisfying answer.

Other institutions have attempted to standardize their comprehensive book catalogs, among them WorldCat and the Library of Congress, but these numbers are even more likely to be assigned in multiples to the same titles due to different cataloguing rules. Simple titles, author names, and publishing companies are less reliable still, as human error in transcribing all that information into a database can also lead to duplicates.

The success of Google Books’s attempt at solving this problem takes into account all these various shortcomings, and uses them to cross-reference nearly a billion raw records from 150 distinct providers to narrow down the number to just one of each book. After weeding out all the assumed duplicates, there are still certain non-book entries that need to be discarded, including two million videos, two million maps, and a turkey probe that was once added to a library card catalog as an April Fools’ Day joke. All told, Google Books came up with—drumroll, please!—129,864,880 books total. Phew.

But wait, there’s more! Despite Google’s best efforts, their algorithm fails to account for certain crucial factors: Not only is their calculation outdated, having been tallied in 2010, but it predates the recent surge in self-publishing, especially in digital formats. Though ISBNs are recommended for all titles, they are not required for self-published works carried in most e-book marketplaces, and there is no reliable system for keeping track of them otherwise. As the popularity of self-publishing increases, with nearly half a million new titles released in 2013 alone, the Google Books algorithm only gets further from reality.

Until Google updates its methodology, we can at least do a little extrapolation with the data we have to figure out a more accurate number of published books in existence in 2016. It’s a moving target, relies on unreliable ISBNs, and will require some educated guessing along the way, but here it goes anyway.

According to Bowker, the organization responsible for keeping track of all newly assigned ISBNs in the United States, the years 2011 to 2013 saw the publication of nearly one million new titles (and maybe a few reprints). A U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook statistic indicates that the United States produces about 40 percent of the world’s printed material; if it would be fair to assume that the U.S. is responsible for a similar percentage of non-printed text, it becomes possible to estimate a figure for total global book production, which comes out to about 2,267,265 new books published worldwide from 2011 to 2013.

More recent data is hard to come by, so the best way of filling in the gap between 2013 and now may be to average book production over the last three years (755,755 new titles annually worldwide) and add that to the 2013 total. After some basic arithmetic, it seems that a low threshold for the number of unique books in existence as of halfway through 2016 is (another drumroll, please) 134,021,533 total. And that’s all she wrote—for now, anyway.

Gene Wilder fans who missed out on last weekend’s cinematic tribute to the late actor when two of his classic films, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Blazing Saddles, returned to theaters won’t have to wait long to see the beloved comedian on the big screen again. On October 5, Young Frankenstein will return to theaters across the country for a one-night-only screening, with a special live introduction from the film’s creator—and regular Wilder collaborator—Mel Brooks (who co-wrote the film with Wilder).

The screening comes courtesy of Fathom Events, who will bring the 1974 comedy to 500 theaters across the country.

“The idea for the screening had actually been in the works for about six months,” Brooks told GOOD. “After Gene died, they didn’t want it to seem like they were taking advantage. But it’s still going to be wonderful to see him in his most beautiful and magnificent performance. He was never better.”

Plus: Who wouldn’t want to see Wilder’s performance on “Puttin’ on the Ritz” on the biggest screen possible?

[h/t: CBS News]

Know of something you think we should cover? Email us at tips@mentalfloss.com.

What would it be like to be a quarter of an inch tall? Moviegoers in the summer of 1989 were eager to find out. They flocked to theaters to watch as the Szalinski and Thompson kids dodged refrigerator-sized drops of water, befriended a giant ant, fought a fearsome scorpion, and feasted upon a massive cream-filled cookie. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is often viewed as the quintessential live-action Disney film, but its roots are firmly in the horror movie genre. Here are a few surprising facts about the 1989 classic.  

1. THE HORROR DIRECTOR BEHIND RE-ANIMATOR CAME UP WITH THE IDEA.

Stuart Gordon wasn’t the first filmmaker one would think of to direct a Disney film. With a background in experimental theater—including a trippy, in-the-nude version of Peter Pan—he made his name with campy horror films like 1985’s Re-Animator, about a scientist who brings the dead back to life, and 1987’s Dolls, about a murderous collection of dolls (tagline: “They Walk. They Talk. They Kill.”). After he became a father, Gordon decided to make a kids’ movie. Along with Brian Yuzna, who had worked with him on Re-Animator, and Dolls writer Ed Naha, Gordon came up with an idea for a film about a hapless inventor who accidentally shrinks his children and throws them out with the garbage. He pitched the idea to Disney, who loved it and gave Gordon the green light to direct.

2. ITS ORIGINAL TITLE WAS TEENIE WEENIES.

The title was a nod to William Donahey’s comic strip from the early 1900s, which followed the adventures of a tiny, inoffensive band of characters. Disney executives hated it, thinking the title would turn off adult moviegoers. So Gordon and company changed the title to Grounded, then The Backyard before deciding to borrow a line of dialogue that Wayne Szalinski utters to his wife, Diane. 

3. DISNEY WAS REALLY NERVOUS ABOUT THE FILM.

Although Disney was excited about Gordon’s idea, they weren’t exactly confident the horror director could deliver a family-friendly feature. “Disney was worried that I was going to kill all the kids,” Gordon said in one interview. “And I kept saying, ‘No, I’m not going to kill them. But I want the audience to think they might die.'” Disney’s trepidations extended to the movie’s creature effects—most notably Anty, the heroic ant.

The studio told Gordon they wanted Anty to look less like a real ant and more like E.T. “I said, ‘Well E.T. scared more kids than an ant does,'” according to Gordon. To convince the brass, Gordon invited them to the workshop where crew members were putting the finishing touches on the robotic puppet. Gordon made Anty nuzzle him like a horse to show how friendly the creature could act. And just like that, the executives were convinced.

4. JOE JOHNSTON REPLACED GORDON AT THE 11TH HOUR.

Just as production on the film was set to begin, Stuart Gordon became sick and had to leave the set. Unable to delay the shoot, Disney brought in Joe Johnston, a visual effects specialist who had worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark and all three Star Wars films. It was his first directing job. After the success of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Johnston went on to direct The Rocketeer, Jumanji, Jurassic Park III, and, most recently, Captain America: The First Avenger. Gordon, meanwhile, finally got his shot at directing Honey, I Shrunk the Kids—albeit 10 years later, helming one episode of the television show, which ran for three seasons in the late 1990s.

5. IT WAS FILMED IN MEXICO CITY.

If you thought the Szalinskis’s suburban California neighborhood and backyard looked like the real deal, well, think again. The entire set—including several houses, complete with white picket fences and manicured lawns—was erected on a back lot at Mexico City’s Churubusco Studios. Established in 1945, Churubusco was the epicenter of Mexican film production in the 20^th century and a favorite of cost-conscious American producers, with scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Total Recall, Free Willy, and numerous other films shot there. The set work is very convincing, but there are a few seams showing: If you look carefully in the scene where the mailman is walking the neighborhood, you can see the beams in the back lot wall, which had been painted blue to stand in as the sky.

6. ANTY TOOK UP TO 12 WORKERS TO OPERATE.

The heroic ant, who befriends the pint-sized Szalinski and Thompson kids and (SPOILER ALERT) tragically dies fighting off a scorpion, took a lot of effort to bring to life. The special effects team built multiple versions of Anty, including a miniature for stop-motion animation sequences. Most of the scenes in which Anty interacts with the actors involved a large robotic puppet whose legs, eyes, head, and antennae were all controlled by separate crew members. “It takes somewhere between seven and 12 people to make the ant run,” Peter Zamora, the film’s miniatures assistant, said in a making-of documentary.

7. MARCIA STRASSMAN’S HAIR WAS TWO DIFFERENT COLORS.

Two weeks into filming, Marcia Strassman, who played Diane Szalinski, received a note from Disney head Jeffrey Katzenberg requesting she change her hair color from reddish-brown to blonde. Strassman complied, and she kept her hair that color for the sequel, 1992’s Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. “We said, ‘But we’ve been shooting for two weeks,'” Strassman told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “And [Katzenberg] said, ‘No one will notice.’ And no one did. No one noticed that my hair is two totally different colors in that movie.”

8. THE SET DESIGNERS USED A LOT OF FOAM.

From giant broom bristles to towering blades of grass, the movie’s set designers were masters at fashioning latex and polyurethane foam into outsized versions of everyday objects. To show the kids getting swept into Wayne Szalinski’s dustpan, designers attached the giant foam bristles to a hanging screen that swept across the stage. The enormous cream-filled cookie, meanwhile, was also made out of foam, with globs of actual cream mixed in for the kids to shovel into their mouths.

9. THE BUMBLEBEE FLIGHT REQUIRED SOME TECHNICAL WIZARDRY.

By 1980s movie standards, and even current ones, the bumblebee ride that Nick Szalenski and Little Russ Thompson take is impressive. Creating the sequence required a giant bee model for close-up shots with the actors, along with an extended shot by a camera that zipped and dove around the Szalenski backyard. Pretty standard stuff, but visual effects lead Tom Smith added a third element: a small, $30,000 robotic bee with miniatures of the actors on top. The fine movements of the robotic bee were spliced in with the close-up shots against the green screen, then touched up with some added digital effects in post-production to create the final sequence. “We were able to cut them quickly enough and mix them up so that it gives the incredible sense of flight when you see it,” Smith said.

10. THE ANIMATED OPENING CREDITS WERE GROUNDBREAKING.

The movie opened with an animated sequence showing two tiny children running from a record needle, a typewriter, and other menacing everyday objects as title credits cleverly materialized. According to the graphic design site Art of the Title, the sequence—created by Kroyer Films—was one of the first to combine hand-drawn animations with 3D models. The team that created the sequence included Andrew Stanton, who would go on to work on Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and WALL·E, along with Eric Stefani, an acclaimed animator and brother of Gwen Stefani. Kroyer went on to produce animated sequences for two other films that year: Troop Beverly Hills and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

11. IT WAS ALSO GROUNDS FOR A LAWSUIT.

The musical score that accompanies the animated credits, written by James Horner, sounds very similar to the 1937 song “Powerhouse,” by jazz composer Raymond Scott—a little too close, by some estimations. Scott’s estate sued Disney for failing to credit the composer. The studio settled the case out of court and made sure the estate received its fair share of future royalties.

12. DISNEY REVIVED THE LONG-DORMANT ANIMATED SHORT.

Those who saw Honey, I Shrunk the Kids in theaters may remember the animated short Tummy Trouble, starring Roger Rabbit, that preceded the film. The seven-minute romp—which also features Baby Herman, a swallowed rattle, and a trip to the hospital gone awry—was the revival of the short films that studios often played before a feature presentation. It was Disney’s first “short” in nearly 25 years, and one of several that the studio released aimed at boosting the popularity of classic characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck with younger viewers.

Given the popularity of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, released the previous year, Disney figured its goofball hare would also boost viewership for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Indeed, Disney gave the two productions equal space on promotional posters and print ads, despite the difference in run times.

13. IT WAS A SURPRISE HIT.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’s $14 million haul on opening weekend was the biggest opening ever for a Disney movie—by a long shot. It was also a surprise for the studio, considering the movie wasn’t a sequel, and had received mixed reviews from critics. “Our tracking showed that there was awareness of the film out there, but there was nothing to make us think it would do what it did,” then-Disney head Jeffrey Katzenberg said at the time. In all, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids would earn more than $130 million domestically and $92 million in worldwide release.

14. BATMAN CONTRIBUTED TO ITS SUCCESS.

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids opened on June 23, 1989—the same day as Tim Burton’s Batman, which finished number one at the box office and had fans lining up around the block to see it. According to the Los Angeles Times and other sources, many theatergoers who couldn’t get in to see Batman opted to see Honey, I Shrunk the Kids instead, helping to boost that movie to number two at the box office.

15. IT EARNED AN AWARD FOR POOR GRAMMAR.

As any English major could tell you, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is not a grammatically correct title (it should be “Shrank”). This earned public ridicule from SPELL, the Society for the Preservation of English Language and Literature, which awarded the film its Dunce Cap Award for 1989. A Disney executive was quick to fire back that the mistake was deliberate, as it’s taken from a line of dialogue in the film (and the error certainly didn’t do anything to hurt the movie’s box office haul).

16. THE SOUNDTRACK CAME OUT 20 YEARS LATER.

Aside from the film’s opening theme, which became tainted by controversy, the music from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids isn’t particularly memorable. Thus the film’s score wasn’t subsequently released as a soundtrack. But composer James Horner, who had previously scored Aliens and Cocoon, became increasingly popular in the years to come as he scored films like Field of Dreams, Braveheart, Titanic, and Avatar. Demand for the score also rose as Honey, I Shrunk the Kids became a reliable cable rerun. So in 2009, tiny music label Intrada put out a limited run of 3000 copies of the Honey, I Shrunk the Kids soundtrack. It’s sold out, but if you just have to have such classic tracks as “Watering the Grass” and “Lawnmower,” you can nab a used copy for around $50 on Amazon.

17. ONLY ONE OF THE YOUNG ACTORS IS STILL WORKING.

For the young actors in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, box office success didn’t translate into long-term career success. Robert Oliveri and Jared Rushton, who played young Nick Szalinski and Ron Thompson, respectively, gave up acting in the 1990s. Same with Amy O’Neill, whose only other major role was in 1993’s White Wolves: A Cry in the Wild II (though she popped up in an uncredited role on Baskets earlier this year). Only Thomas Wilson Brown, who played Little Russ Thompson, continues to appear in films and TV shows, and only sporadically at that.

The adult ensemble, meanwhile, fared somewhat better. Matt Frewer (Big Russ Thompson) has worked steadily in films and TV series like Orphan Black and 12 Monkeys, while Marcia Strassman, known for roles in M*A*S*H and Welcome Back, Kotter, made regular appearances on shows like Tremors, Highlander, and Providence, until her tragic death from breast cancer in 2014. And then there’s Rick Moranis, who went completely off the radar in the mid-1990s to focus on raising his two kids after his wife passed away. In recent interviews, he has said that he would return to acting if the right role comes along. His last movie came more than 10 years ago as the voice of Rutt in Disney’s Brother Bear and Brother Bear 2.

18. IT’S BASICALLY A HORROR MOVIE.

Consider the evidence: It’s got an obsessive scientist, giant bugs, a near-death by lawnmower, and the Freudian nightmare of a father nearly eating his son. The nod to horror films of the past was intentional on the part of Gordon, who sees the movie as an homage to fright-night flicks like Attack of the Crab Monsters and The Incredible Shrinking Man. In recent interviews, he’s quick to lump it in with other horror movies he’s made. “Really, it’s not that different than Re-Animator,” Gordon said. “It’s about a mad scientist and an experiment that goes wrong, and so forth. The potential for severing some heads was there when you have a giant ant coming at you with those big mandibles. Who knows what could happen?”

From her first appearance on Last Comic Standing to her headlining role in Trainwreck, Amy Schumer has never shied away from the spotlight. (Even when, as of late, she courts controversy.) The comedienne is so famous for her candor about her professional and personal life that it may seem like we know everything there is to know about her—especially with her memoir, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, now out on shelves. But these 13 facts might come as a surprise. Discover which roles Schumer nearly played, what Inside Amy Schumer originally looked like, and which celebrity’s cake she ate below.

1. HER GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS A MANHATTAN BOOTLEGGER.

Amy Schumer’s familial connection to Senator Chuck Schumer (they’re second cousins once removed) tends to get all the attention, but we should really be talking about her great-grandmother: Estelle Schumer was a New York bootlegger back in the days of Prohibition. Once booze was legalized again, her liquor store on 54th Street (Schumer’s Liquors) nabbed the seventh liquor license in the city. It’s still there today. “She was a badass,” Schumer told The Daily Beast. “She’d always say, ‘Hide your money from men,’ and lived in a studio apartment in a trundle bed into her 90s.”

2. HER PARENTS RAN A HIGH-END BABY FURNITURE STORE.

Schumer spent much of her childhood on Manhattan’s swanky Upper East Side, and it was all thanks to the cash flow from her parents’ baby furniture shop. Called Lewis of London, the store imported cribs from Italy. This played well with the Manhattan crowd, until other companies muscled in on the Italian imports and Lewis of London went under. The family had to downsize to a much smaller home in Schumer’s preteen years, but she says she wasn’t aware of the lifestyle change at the time. “I never really felt the effects of having less money,” she said in an interview with NPR. “I was I think 12 or 13 and just, you know, boy crazy and worried about what I was going to wear.”

3. SHE KILLED AT HER BAT MITZVAH.

The first time Schumer slayed a room wasn’t during one of her first stand-up sets—it was in the middle of her bat mitzvah. Schumer chose to chant rather than read from the Torah and completely cracked on her closing note. Although she was embarrassed at first, once everyone laughed, she laughed, too.

4. SHE WAS VOTED “CLASS CLOWN” AND “TEACHER’S WORST NIGHTMARE” IN HIGH SCHOOL.

The 1999 senior class at Long Island’s South Side High School bestowed two superlatives on Schumer: Class Clown and Teacher’s Worst Nightmare. Although the first one might seem obvious, Schumer explained that the second one was a bit misleading. “Half my teachers, like my English teacher and my history teacher, were shocked. Because if it was a class I was really interested in I would just listen and be attentive and was a good member of the class,” she said. “But if it was a class that I struggled or I felt wasn’t, you know, like business law, I remember, those are the classes I would kind of act up in.”

5. SHE HAS A THEATER DEGREE.

Schumer majored in theater at Towson University, and continued her acting education once she moved to New York. She took classes at the famed William Esper Studio for another two years, where she learned the Meisner technique. (While often confused with Method acting, the Meisner technique is a separate approach that focuses on instinct.) Schumer even starred in an off-Broadway play; Keeping Abreast was a dark comedy centered on a young woman diagnosed with breast cancer.

6. HER COLLEGE DEGREE WAS HELD HOSTAGE FOR FOUR YEARS.

Although she completed her credits on time, Schumer did not receive a college diploma with the rest of her class in 2003. The reason? Towson charged a fee to post her credits and Schumer found the policy maddeningly arbitrary. So she didn’t pay. But she received her degree four years later when she was passing through Baltimore on a Last Comic Standing tour. The Towson theater department chairman had been watching her on the show, and promised to fork over her diploma if she met him in the Baltimore Lyric Opera House with the cash. Schumer finally acquiesced. Today, Schumer has buried the hatchet and the Towson theater department refers to the incident as a “minor administrative matter.”

7. SHE REVIEWED HER EARLY STAND-UP TAPES ON THE BIG SCREENS AT BEST BUY.

When Schumer saw the footage from her first stand-up show at the Gotham Comedy Club, she was ashamed. So she decided to get serious. She began reviewing tapes from each of her subsequent sets and taking notes—but since she didn’t have a fancy TV, she watched herself on the display screens at Best Buy.

8. SHE AUDITIONED FOR GIRLS.

Schumer appeared in two episodes of Girls as Angie, the annoying friend of Adam’s girlfriend, Natalia, but she originally auditioned for a starring role. Lena Dunham recently revealed that Schumer auditioned for the principal role of Shoshanna. “Everyone in the room was stunned by the detail and skill of her improv, the wild talent radiating off her,” Dunham recalled. “It was clear Amy wasn’t meant to play an innocent Juicy Couture lover obsessed with emoji—even if her Meatpacking District club lingo was the funniest sh*t I had ever heard. But when she left the room, the vibe was very, ‘Someone get that lady a show, STAT!’”

9. INSIDE AMY SCHUMER WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A TALK SHOW.

When Inside Amy Schumer was still in its early stages of development at Comedy Central, the series was designed to be a talk show. After some prodding from her head writer, Jessi Klein, Schumer decided to switch gears. “I got a text from Amy before meeting with Comedy Central,” her co-creator Daniel Powell remembered. “It said: Scratch that. I want to do my Louie.” And so the show became the blend of stand-up, sketches, and man-on-the-street interviews it is today.

10. HER HOWARD STERN INTERVIEW GOT HER A MOVIE DEAL.

The way Trainwreck director Judd Apatow tells it, a single Howard Stern interview sold him on Schumer. She appeared on the radio show in 2012, and spoke very openly about her father’s battles with multiple sclerosis and alcoholism. Apatow was riveted. “Amy was so interesting that I didn’t leave, I just sat there in my car listening,” he said in an interview. “She was telling all these stories about her relationships, and about her dad and how she deals with that emotionally. It was very brutal, and also very sweet and funny. I thought, ‘Wow, she really sounds like a screenwriter.’” After he wrapped This Is 40, Apatow set a meeting so they could discuss a screenplay. That screenplay became Trainwreck, and Apatow soon moved into the director’s chair.

11. SHE MEDITATES REGULARLY AND AVOIDS CAFFEINE.

Despite Schumer’s bawdy image, she’s fairly health-conscious. According to Vogue, she currently practices Transcendental Meditation, schedules weekly acupuncture sessions, juices every morning, and avoids caffeine. Which means she probably won’t be returning to Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee any time soon.

12. SHE WAS CONSIDERED FOR THE GHOSTBUSTERS REBOOT.

Lots of insider information came out of the infamous Sony hack of 2014: Some of it revealed alarming pay gaps, some of it just concerned Adam Sandler flops. But one email floated Schumer as a possible ghostbuster in this summer’s all-female reboot. The email was sent by former Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal to original Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman, and mentioned Schumer along with Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Lizzy Caplan, and Melissa McCarthy as potential cast members. Obviously only McCarthy ended up in the picture, but Schumer was still stoked. “I saw that email! Sorry that happened, but I was psyched to be on that list,” she said in an interview.

13. SHE ONCE CRASHED AT JAKE GYLLENHAAL’S PLACE AND ATE HIS CAKE.

No, Schumer didn’t break into Gyllenhaal’s house and raid his fridge. She actually rented his apartment with her sister for a brief time. As she explained to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show, she discovered an old birthday cake in his freezer while she was there. So naturally, she drunkenly ate it and declared herself a princess. Don’t worry: her sister got it on film.

Fifty years ago, Gene Roddenberry’s galaxy spanning Star Trek saga debuted on NBC and helped transform sci-fi television from tired stereotypes into a genre rich with multi-layered drama, ethnically diverse characters, and real world issues. While it wasn’t a big hit at the time, Star Trek eventually developed a loyal following that continued through an animated series, the long-running film franchise, and other live-action television series from the late 1980s onward. The show sometimes hired iconic sci-fi writers including Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison (who won a Hugo Award for his episode, “City On The Edge Of Forever“), while Isaac Asimov developed a friendship with Roddenberry.

To commemorate this momentous occasion, let’s look back at the groundbreaking series, during which the crew of the Enterprise journeyed on far-flung peacekeeping and rescue missions, answered distress calls on distant planets, and faced confrontations with warmongering aliens. There has been plenty written about this iconic show, but there always seems to be something new to learn.

1. CAPTAIN PIKE PRECEDED CAPTAIN KIRK.

The unaired pilot “The Cage” (which finally debuted on home video in 1986) featured an almost entirely different cast and crew, with Mr. Spock being the lone holdover on the bridge when the classic team appeared in the first official episode. Jeffrey Hunter (The Searchers) starred as Captain Christopher Pike, who gets abducted by telepathic aliens for psychological experiments involving a human woman. The original pilot was actually pretty good, but the cast lacked the same warmth and diversity that would ultimately emerge. When the studio rejected the original pilot—allegedly for being too cerebral and lacking in action—creator Gene Roddenberry sought to make another, but Hunter chose to move on to other projects. In the end, it was good that NBC rejected the original pilot, because the show was revamped into something much stronger.

2. PIKE RETURNED FOR TWO EPISODES AND THE MOVIE REBOOT.

Several episodes in, the producers of Star Trek created a two-part episode called “The Menagerie” that utilized much of the original pilot. Mr. Spock was taking a now battle-scarred and disfigured Captain Pike back to the planet Talos IV (which was off limits to Federation vessels) for unknown reasons, and he would not reveal why until he seized control of the Enterprise and faced a court-martial. It was a clever and cost-effective way to reuse the unaired material and craft a new storyline. In J.J. Abrams’ 2009 movie reboot, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman brought back Pike (played by Bruce Greenwood) as Kirk’s superior officer and mentor on his first mission in space. It was a nice nod to the original series.

3. THE ORIGINAL NUMBER ONE WAS A WOMAN.

In the original pilot, Gene Roddenberry’s girlfriend and future wife, Majel Barrett, was Kirk’s first officer (who still had to deal with the Captain’s presumptions about women on the bridge). Test audiences allegedly did not like her character because they thought she was too pushy and tried to be like the men, but modern audiences would not think of any of those things. When Pike was kidnapped, she led a mission to the planet to rescue him and proved herself to be a capable leader, but this was about a year before the women’s liberation movement began gestating in America. The Star Trek universe finally got its first female captain with Captain Kathryn Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager, which aired between 1995 and 2001.

4. MAJEL BARRETT RODDENBERRY HAS WORKED ON EVERY STAR TREK SERIES.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry returned in many episodes of the original series to play Nurse Christine Chapel, who had unrequited romantic feelings toward Mr. Spock. She played a more nurturing character, but did not have the command duties of her original role. Following that, Barrett Roddenberry—who has been called “The First Lady Of Star Trek”—had roles in every Star Trek series, playing Nurse Chapel, Lt. M’Ress, and other characters on Star Trek: The Animated Series; Lwaxana Troi and the voice of the Enterprise Computer on Star Trek: The Next Generation; and the computer voices on Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. She also appeared as Dr. Chapel in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and as Commander Chapel in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and she provided voice work to other films (including the 2009 reboot) and various video games. After her husband died in 1991, Barrett Roddenberry served as executive producer on two series he had created: Earth: Final Conflict (1997-1999) and Andromeda (2000-2005).  She passed away in 2008, but not before recording—you guessed it—the Starfleet Computer voice for J.J. Abrams’s 2009 movie reboot.

5. KIRK HAD A DARK PAST BEFORE STAR TREK.

Prior to venturing into space and encountering all sorts of intergalactic nemeses like the Romulans, Klingons, and the superhuman Khan, William Shatner appeared in a variety of dark film and television projects. In Roger Corman’s underrated film The Intruder, he played a racist agitator in a Southern town who pushes things too far. In Incubus, a film shot entirely in the Esperanto language, he played a good-hearted man with whom a succubus falls in love, angering her sister and setting about retribution. His appearance as a man terrified of a gremlin on the wing of a plane in an episode of The Twilight Zone is famous, but he also made a turn in possibly the best horror TV episode ever, “The Grim Reaper” on Thriller, as a man who warns his aunt that the previous owners of the portrait of the titular character, which she now owns, have died violently.

6. SPOCK HAS GREENISH SKIN, BUT IT WAS ORIGINALLY MEANT TO BE RED.

While Spock’s skin has a slight green tint to it, the original plan was to give him red skin. But back in the mid- to late 1960s, a majority of households still had black and white televisions, so his skin would appear very dark when viewed on their sets. In one early episode, however, Spock looked really green. Someone messed up the color palette that day. One wonders if the chance to see the shows in color during their subsequent syndicated runs helped lure new viewers and give excited longtime fans the chance to re-watch the episodes in a way they had never seen them before.

7. WILLIAM SHATNER AND LEONARD NIMOY BOTH GOT TINNITUS ON SET.

After an explosion on the set of one of the Star Trek films, both stars developed tinnitus, a ringing or buzzing in the ears than is often permanent and can be debilitating for some sufferers. After seeking help all across the country, Shatner learned to deal with it through habituation by wearing a hearing device for a time that produced white noise to help him cope. He has helped others as well. “I’ve talked people down from suicide,” Shatner told me earlier this year in an interview for The Aquarian. “A famous musician got a hold of me cold. I didn’t know him. He knew I got it because I was the official spokesman for tinnitus at one period, and I talked him down and encouraged him to do habituation, you know, the white sound, because when I was asked when I first got it how it affected my life from 1 to 10, it was 9 1/2. Now I don’t hear it except when you and I are talking about it.”

8. A LOT OF STAR TREK TECHNOLOGY BECAME REALITY.

If one looks at the original series, much of the technology being used ultimately became real. The communicators are like modern cell phones, the earpieces worn by Uhura and Spock are basically Bluetooth devices, the Universal Translators are echoed by the use of modern voice recognition software, tricorders have become the LOCAD-PTS, a portable biological lab used by NASA, and the use of interactive video screens (telepresence) is akin to current video conferencing. While Enterprise crew members recorded audio on hard-cased cassette tapes, they looked like soon-to-be modern floppy discs, which are now outdated in our digital era.

9. THERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN 125 STAR TREK-RELATED VIDEO GAMES.

Since 1971, more than 125 video games based on or inspired by the Star Trek series have been created, beginning with a text game written in BASIC in 1971, a standup arcade game in 1972, and later early computer and gaming systems like the Commodore 64 and Atari 5200 through to modern PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles. Many of the titles are quite colorful, like The Kobayashi Alternative, Klingon Honor Guard, and Delta Vega: Meltdown on the Ice Planet. It would probably be hard to collect them all at this point—or to be able to play them, unless one owns all the various video game platforms required—but perhaps someone has.

10. THE VULCAN SALUTE IS ACTUALLY A HEBREW BLESSING.

Leonard Nimoy did not create the Vulcan salute that means “Live Long and Prosper” out of thin air for the season two opener “Amok Time,” which was the first time we got to see Spock among his people on Vulcan. It was actually borrowed from something he had witnessed as a child when he was attending a service at an Orthodox Jewish church with his family.

“Five or six guys get up on the bimah, the stage, facing the congregation,” Nimoy told the Yiddish Book Center in 2014. “They get their tallits over their heads, and they start this chanting—I think it’s called duchening—and my father said to me, ‘Don’t look.’ So everyone’s got their eyes covered with their hands or they’ve got their tallit down over their faces … And I hear this strange sound coming from them. They’re not singers, they were shouters. And dissonant. It was all discordant … it was chilling. I thought, ‘Whoa, something major is happening here.’ So I peeked. And I saw them with their hands stuck out from beneath the tallit like this [does salute with both hands] towards the congregation. Wow. Something really got hold of me. I had no idea what was going on, but the sound of it and the look of it was magical.”

The hand gesture represents the Hebrew letter Shin, which represents the word Shaddai, a name for God. It looks like a lot of people have been blessing each other without knowing it.

11. THE KIRK/SPOCK CONNECTION CONTINUED IN REAL LIFE.

The bond that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock enjoyed throughout their long onscreen association was also echoed by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy’s off-camera relationship. It’s interesting to note that while Spock seemed like the more isolated member of the crew who needed that human connection with Kirk, in real life Nimoy was an important person for his co-star. In an interview for The Aquarian earlier this year, Shatner admitted that he never had had a close, intimate friendship with anyone before then. “I had that with Leonard, and that was the only time I had it,” he confessed. “I envied it for the longest time, achieved it, then the book [Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship with a Remarkable Man] continues on. It’s a very interesting aspect of life, developing a friendship. Not the ‘Let’s go get a beer’ friendship, but deep, deep down, ‘Here’s my problem, I need your help.'”

12. IN A WAY, STAR TREK WAS THE ORIGINAL BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.

Despite not really having many ass-kicking women on the original show, Star Trek was the predecessor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and like-minded shows that were not ratings toppers, but which hit a key demographic effectively every week. When Roddenberry’s show was canceled after just three seasons, the advertising people at NBC allegedly complained to programming executives because, while the show was not highly rated, they were reaching the target audience they wanted. That statement is supported by the success that the series experienced in off-network syndication, especially since the show’s three seasons (1966-1969) were one shy of what was generally required for daily syndication, and the emergence of the first Star Trek convention in January 1972. Today, a show like Star Trek would have likely lasted at least twice as long.

13. ONE OF BONES’S SIGNATURE LINES WAS TAKEN FROM A 1933 FILM.

“I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer!” Bones was always making a variation on that gripe when asked to ascertain or do something outside of his medical expertise, and it is one of many Star Trek lines that has become a permanent part of pop culture lexicon. However, the idea originated with a 1933 film called The Kennel Murder Case, which starred William Powell and Mary Astor. In the film, the character of Dr. Doremus utters these quips: “I’m a doctor, not a magician.” “I’m a doctor, not a detective.” “I’m the city butcher, not a detective.” Bones McCoy had many variations to offer throughout the Star Trek TV and film series, and he certainly made the gag his own.

14. THE SERIES HAS A CONNECTION TO STANLEY KUBRICK.

Before he appeared as an astronaut on the Jupiter mission sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gary Lockwood appeared in the episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” which was the third episode of season one. His character attained godlike powers that made him drunk with power and posed a grave threat not just to the Enterprise, but to the galaxy itself.

15. THE SHOW STRIVED FOR ETHNIC AND GENDER DIVERSITY, BUT THE WOMEN STILL HAD TO LOOK SEXY.

While Gene Roddenberry strived to push boundaries as much as he could, women were still sexed up for the show. Consider that Lieutenant Uhura, Yeoman Rand, Nurse Chapel, Dr. Helen Noel, and other female members of the Enterprise crew all wore mini-dresses. Further, close-ups of the female crewmembers were given a slightly softer focus to make them look dreamier, which was a common Hollywood trick at that time. While some of the female characters were strong, others—like Lt. Marla McGivers in the “Space Seed” episode—were rather frail when it came to men. Things got better for women in later Star Trek series, but then they came about in more enlightened times.

16. MANY OF THE EFFECTS IN THE ORIGINAL SERIES WERE UPGRADED FOR HD BROADCAST AND RELEASE IN 2006.

When Star Trek: The Original Series was being prepared for its initial HD broadcast (and subsequent HD-DVD release) for the fall of 2006, Paramount decided to take a chance and upgrade all of the sequences involving the Enterprise flying and any background shots of space or environmental matte paintings. While some fans (and Leonard Nimoy, at least at first) thought this was heresy, visual effects producer Michael Okuda—who had been involved with the franchise since Star Trek V: The Final Frontier—made sure that the new CGI sequences and backgrounds were integrated smoothly with the old footage.

17. MARK LENARD WAS A ROMULAN, A KLINGON, AND A VULCAN.

Actor Mark Lenard had a dramatic visage that lent itself well to space opera, and he was the first actor in the franchise’s history to have played members of three different alien races. In the season one episode “Balance Of Terror,” he played the Captain of an ultimately doomed Romulan vessel that has invaded Federation territory. In the opening to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, he plays a Klingon commander on a doomed ship caught in the path of the mysterious cloud that is wiping out anything in its path. But his biggest role in the franchise was portraying Spock’s father, Sarek, in the second season episode “Journey To Babel,” the Animated Series episode “Yesteryear,” and in the third, fourth, and sixth Star Trek films.

18. MALCOLM MCDOWELL RECEIVED DEATH THREATS AFTER KILLING CAPTAIN KIRK ONSCREEN.

McDowell played the charmingly misanthropic droog Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, but he was on the receiving end of Star Trek fans’ wrath when his character, Dr. Tolian Soran, killed Captain Kirk in Star Trek: Generations—the first film born from the Star Trek: The Next Generation series that bridged the two series onscreen. In 2010, McDowell admitted that he was shocked at the vitriol of devout Trekkies—and that he actually received death threats.

“I didn’t take it seriously,” McDowell told me. “The studio took it seriously. I suppose they had to because they didn’t want a lawsuit. They assigned two detectives to come with me to New York to do the press. It was a complete waste of time and quite funny. I kept telling the guys to go home, and they were going to stay outside my room the whole night at the Carlyle Hotel. I went for a walk, and they came with me. I literally came out of the Carlyle at 10 o’clock at night. I looked this way and that way, and there wasn’t one person on the street. Not one. I went, ‘Wow, this is some death threat.’ I said, ‘I feel embarrassed that nobody’s tried to kill me, for Christ’s sake! I feel like I’m letting the detectives down.'”

19. THE EPISODES ARE NOT IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER.

If one lists the stardates for each episode, it is soon apparent that the series is not told in order—not that it was intended that way, since the episodes of the original series were not always broadcast in production order, leaving some fans to scratch their heads. Roddenberry improvised an explanation that worked at the time. “I came up with the statement that ‘this time system adjusts for shifts in relative time which occur due to the vessel’s speed and space warp capability. It has little relationship to Earth’s time as we know it. One hour aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise at different times may equal as little as three Earth hours. The star dates specified in the log entry must be computed against the speed of the vessel, the space warp, and its position within our galaxy, in order to give a meaningful reading,'” he told The Making Of Star Trek author Stephen E. Whitfield. “Therefore stardate would be one thing at one point in the galaxy and something else again at another point in the galaxy. I’m not quite sure what I meant by that explanation, but a lot of people have indicated it makes sense. If so, I’ve been lucky again, and I’d just as soon forget the whole thing before I’m asked any further questions about it.”

20. SHATNER PISSED OFF STAR TREK FANS WHEN HE HOSTED SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE.

While the thespian with the famously quirky cadence has embraced his Star Trek legacy, he has not let it define his life since he has become known for other roles in other shows as well, most notably T.J. Hooker and Boston Legal. But back in the 1980s, when the movie franchise was a hit and conventions kept growing, the befuddled star decided to make a statement about the ardent fandom that he had not yet understood by doing a skit when he hosted Saturday Night Live on December 20, 1986. 

In the sketch (which you can watch above), Shatner played himself attending a convention of newly renamed “Trekkers” and, once he started getting ultra nerdy questions, he literally told the crowd to get a life. “You’re turned an enjoyable little job that I did as a lark for a few years into a colossal waste of time,” he griped. “I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves?” Some fans did not appreciate the joke. In 1999, Shatner penned a book called Get A Life!, which examined the cult of Star Trek fandom, and was turned into a documentary in 2011. It seems like Kirk decided to appreciate his followers after all.