History Nerd @_HistoryNerd

Norm Macdonald perfectly predicts the answer on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire before anyone else

The night Prince Charles admitted to cheating, Princess Diana made a statement with her iconic “revenge dress"

Winona Ryder on the return of Stranger Things: "It was definitely overwhelming." In 2016, Winona Ryder stepped back onto a set that would change the trajectory of her career for the second time. The first wave had come decades earlier, when she became one of the defining faces of her generation through films like Heathers and Edward Scissorhands. Then came years away from that kind of cultural saturation. And then, almost without warning, Stranger Things arrived. She describes what happened next: "I have a pretty good system: I'm not on the internet that much, but my parents are, and they forward me the good stuff." In the past, she explains, that forwarded content was the gentle kind. "Oh, you know, Winona Ryder gave a nice performance in this." But with Stranger Things, everything shifted: "With this, it was like... it was different." The show's popularity came fast and came hard. Set in 1983, built around kids on bikes with walkie-talkies and rabbit-ear televisions, it asked audiences to step back into a world before the internet existed at all. The irony was not lost on Ryder, who admits she is herself something of a stranger to the online world her own show was dominating. She found the experience overwhelming, though not unwelcome. What makes her account of it particularly interesting is how she chose to carry the emotional weight of the role. Playing a mother in crisis across the show's first season, she was on screen in states of panic and grief for the majority of her scenes. That kind of sustained emotional performance requires a specific approach, and Ryder's is a decidedly old school one: "I pretty much the first five out of the eight episodes I'm pretty hysteric... I kind of have to really cry." Not simulated tears. She notes that she is allergic to those eye drops anyway, which forced the issue, but the approach clearly aligns with her instincts as a performer: "You have to really be hydrated to be able to cry that much." It is a small, telling detail. The kind that reveals something true about what it costs to show up fully in work that asks a great deal of you. And yet despite the difficulty, the show delivered her back to a cultural moment she had not anticipated. On the very day Stranger Things launched on Netflix, she received an email from the platform informing her the subscription price was going up. Her face was in the ad attached to the notice. "There was an ad for the show with my face and it was like, 'But you have to get from $7.99...' so..." History does not always announce itself in dignified ways.

Footage from 2001 shows just how fresh grocery store vegetables used to look

In 1978, a 13-year-old walked onto The Tonight Show and held her own with Johnny Carson. Her name was Brooke Shields. She had already filmed Pretty Baby. She had a book written about her. She was mid-production on Wanda Nevada, starring opposite Peter Fonda and Henry Fonda. And she had been in front of cameras since she was 11 months old. Carson opened the interview marvelling at the sheer volume of recognition she had already accumulated at 13. He told her he had seen her photographs hanging in Francesco Scavullo's studio in New York. "I did my first job with him," she told Carson. "How old were you?" "11 months old." Her first job was an Ivory Snow ad. She does not technically remember it, she says, but she remembers something: "I remember when I walked in there were like hundreds of screaming little babies and I just remember my mom holding me and just looking around to see what was going on." The earliest shoot she properly remembers was a Johnson's Baby Shampoo commercial. Then Johnson's Band-Aids. "I had a cut on one knee and I was wondering why they were putting the Band-Aid on the other knee," she recalled, a trace of the confused little girl still in the story. Carson asked her whether she found modelling and performing hard work or fun. Her answer was precise for someone her age. "It's both. I mean, it's work, but you have to make it fun, otherwise it won't be good."

A Turkish soldier raised a 5-year-old Korean girl during the war. 65 years later, they finally met again

In 2015, Wisconsin star Nigel Hayes accidentally left his microphone on during a March Madness press conference

Elvis Presley looking back on what life was really like during his time in the Army: In a 1960 interview at Graceland, Elvis pushes back against the tabloid narratives that had built up around him during his service in Germany. The interviewer asks about rumors of a special someone he met overseas. Elvis responds: "Not any special one. There was a little girl that I was seeing quite often over there that her father was in the Air Force, and actually they only got over there about 2 months before I left. I was seeing her and she was at the airport when I left and there were some pictures made of her. But it was no big romance. I mean, the stories came out 'the girl he left behind' and all that. It wasn't like that." The frustration with how his life was being portrayed comes through when the interviewer casually asks if he liked the food in Germany and whether he ate out at restaurants. Elvis's answer reveals just how isolated his time abroad actually was: "I never ate in a restaurant the entire time when I was in Germany. I either ate in the mess hall or at home. One of the two. In fact, I never went anywhere while I was in Europe except to Paris. I went to Paris on a leave and that was all." The picture he paints is strikingly different from what fans might have imagined — no European adventures, no restaurant dinners, no grand romance. Just the mess hall, home, and one trip to Paris. When asked about what comes next, Elvis keeps it simple and focused: "Well, the first thing I have to do is to cut some records, and then after that I have the television show with Frank Sinatra."

Jackie Chan was still working on his English while filming Rush Hour, adding an extra challenge to some scenes

The movement from the radioactive cloud after the Chernobyl disaster

Carrie Fisher said something in an interview that perfectly captures how creative instinct works. She was asked whether reinventing herself as a writer was a conscious decision. Her answer: "I don't think I've made many conscious decisions. I make most of my decisions in my sleep." She didn't sit down one day and declare herself a writer. It was a slow evolution, pulled forward by what she actually loved consuming. "I wrote fiction, which is what I read. And now I write screenplays, which is what I watch." That's a principle worth sitting with. She was simply doing the thing she already did for pleasure. The writing path itself began almost accidentally. After an interview in Esquire, she was approached to write a non-fiction book. That fell apart. She couldn't even remember the format she was supposed to write in. "Essays or something," she said. "See, you can't even think of the name for it. That's why I couldn't do it." So she did what made sense to her and wrote fiction instead. The screenwriting came the same way. But what most people don't know is that Fisher was doing script work decades before it became widely known. She learned punchup by necessity, not by design. On the set of Star Wars, she and Harrison Ford were handed dialogue that simply could not be spoken aloud. She described telling George Lucas: "You can type this, but you cannot say it. It'll take a couple of minutes for the nava computer to calculate the coordinates." She said it took 20 takes. Out of self-defence, she started reworking lines. Ford did the same. That habit eventually turned into a career doing punchup for major Hollywood films, helping writers fix dialogue that looked good on the page but died in the room. And then there was the work she wrote for her mother, Debbie Reynolds. Two television pilots, neither of which ever aired. Her reason for wanting to work with her mother is one of the more honest things ever said about family dynamics in Hollywood. "The main thing I want to do is work with my mom so that we don't have to have those Christmas dinners anymore. Just have a job with her and you can order her around." It didn't go the way she planned. Her grandmother showed up and bossed both of them around and, as Fisher put it, "got all the money."

Dua Lipa's "Levitating" 1920's vs 2020's

One of the greatest moments in World Cup history

In 1980, a 22-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer walked onto The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson having never taken an acting class, never met anyone in the industry, and having found her agent through the Yellow Pages. She had been boxing groceries at Vons supermarket in Orange County. Then she got promoted to checker. "What am I doing here?" she asked herself. That question changed everything. It was her hairdresser who first planted the seed. He kept asking her why she wasn't pursuing acting. For a long time, she dismissed it. Fear of failure. What will people think? The usual voices that talk most of us out of the things we actually want. Then she stopped listening to them. "I said, 'What do you want to do?' And not what everybody else wants you to do. And acting was it." With no money, no contacts, and no roadmap, she did what any resourceful 22-year-old from Orange County would do. She opened the Yellow Pages and started calling agents. Her pitch to the first one she reached was almost absurdly direct: "This is what I want to do. I don't have any money to go through your school. I don't have any money to pay for pictures. I don't want to sign any contracts with you." She laughed recounting it to Carson, noting that somehow that call still worked. Within two years of that phone call, she was sitting across from Johnny Carson on national television, with two film credits to her name. She credited her naivety as a kind of protection. "I look back and I think it's been very fortunate because I was very naive and I could have been taken advantage of." The industry she walked into had a reputation for chewing up hopeful newcomers. She walked through it without knowing enough to be afraid of it. Her parents were worried. That was real. But the moment she showed them this was not a whim, that it was a genuine calling, the dynamic shifted completely. "I certainly had their support once they knew. I mean, this is really what I wanted to do. Once they knew that, I had their support 100%."

Donald Trump on why "working at a relationship" is the wrong advice: Larry King asks Donald and Melania what makes their marriage work. Donald says he doesn't consider himself a workaholic because he genuinely loves what he does — and then explains why he refuses to apply that same effort to his marriage. "I work very hard from early in the morning till late in the evening," he says. "I don't want to go home and have to work at a relationship." It's his parents: "It's like my mother and father, they were married 63 years. I've always heard you have to work at a good relationship. My father didn't work at a good relationship. He went home, he had dinner, he went to bed, he took it easy, he watched television. My mother did the same thing. She cooked him dinner. And it was just one of those things. It wasn't work." He pushes back directly on the conventional wisdom: "I always heard, you have to work, work, work at a relationship… a relationship, we have to work at it. In my opinion, doesn't work. So maybe I'm wrong." Donald and Melania met at a New York Fashion Week party in September 1998. He was supposed to be meeting a different supermodel that night, but spotted Melania sitting next to her and told the introducer to forget it. They dated for five years before getting engaged. His pitch for why it worked: "We literally have never had an argument or forget about the word fight. We never even had an argument. We just are very compatible." Melania describes the same dynamic from her side. She doesn't try to pull him away from his work ("Saturdays, Sundays, he's playing golf, he's working all the time") and she doesn't see that as a problem. "It's his passion. He loves it. It doesn't bother me. I don't want to change him. I don't want to say, come home and be with me. I want to give him a space. And I think that's very important in the relationship."

Roberto Carlos vs France, 1997 (Le Tournoi) A 30-yard free kick so insane it literally inspired physics papers on the Magnus effect

When VCRs became popular in the early 80s

Melania Trump on why she refuses to try to change Donald: In a 2005 interview with Larry King shortly after their wedding, Melania is asked whether Donald's nonstop work ethic (weekdays, Saturdays, Sundays, even his golf) bothers her. Her answer reframes the entire question. "No, it's his passion. He loves it. It doesn't bother me," she says. Then she goes further, explaining the principle she's built the marriage around: "I don't want to change him. I don't want, you know, to say, come home and, you know, be with me. I don't want to change him. I want to give him a space. And I think that's very important in the relationship." Earlier in the same conversation, Melania pushes back on the idea that Donald is a control freak, drawing a careful distinction: "I don't think he's a control freak. He's perfectionist." She describes the dynamic at home as equal, not hierarchical: "We are very equal in the relationship and that's very important. You know, to marry a man like Donald is you need to know who you are and you need to be very strong and smart." Donald picks up the thread and connects it back to his own parents, who were married 63 years: "I've always heard you have to work at a good relationship. My father didn't work at a good relationship. He went home, he had dinner, he went to bed, he took it easy, he watched television. My mother did the same thing. She cooked him dinner. And it was just one of those things. It wasn't work." He's blunt about why the standard advice doesn't fit him: "I work very hard from early in the morning till late in the evening. I don't want to go home and have to work at a relationship."

When Mike Tyson returned to the ring in 1995, it felt like every celebrity on the planet showed up to watch. The fight was over in just 89 seconds

Asked about the UFO files, former President George W. Bush smiles and says: "I'm not telling you nothing." Sitting down with Jimmy Kimmel to promote his book Portraits of Courage, Bush is asked the question Kimmel says he'd ask first if he were ever president: Did you go through the secret files, the UFO documents? Bush laughs. "You know, it's funny. My daughters asked the very same question." Kimmel presses: would you even be allowed to tell your daughters what was in those files? "No." Kimmel keeps going. Now that you're out of office, you can do anything you want, right? "True. Yeah. But I'm not telling you." When Kimmel tries to corner him, "You're not telling me what? That you looked at them?" Bush just delivers the line cleanly: "I'm not telling you nothing." Kimmel tries one more angle. Are there really great secrets that you know that you can't share with people? "Yeah." Will he ever write about them? No. Even at 90? No. Kimmel jokes about getting him loopy on tequila to crack him open. Bush doesn't bite.