January is False Facts about Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope month.
1. Alec Guinness took his lightsabre home every night to cut bread and salami for sandwiches.
2. The third stormtrooper to die in the Death Star battle scene was played by Rosemary Clooney.
3. George Lucas resisted casting Harrison Ford as Han Solo because he found Ford to be "too dimply."
4. C-3P0's original name was Bert, but the Children's Television Workshop threatened to sue if it wasn't changed.
5. Wookiee is actually an acronym for Weird Old Organist Keeping It Especially Extraterrestrial!
6. George Lucas named the villain Darth Vader as a tribute to the Space Invaders arcade game, to which he was addicted.
7. The smeared light of going into hyperdrive effect was accomplished with cream cheese, a favorite at Industrial Light and Magic.
8. Carrie Fisher wanted to play Princess Leia bald; Lucas saddled her with hair buns in response.
9. The cantina was originally called Ollie's Free Range Okipaki Bar and Grill. It didn't test well...
10. When Lucas hired John Williams to do the score, he thought he was getting Mason Williams.
11. Lucas planned on making 137 Star Wars movies. (Lucas planned on living 5,000 years.)
12. Harrison Ford patterned his performance as Han Solo after Don Knotts in The Incredible Mr. Limpet.
13. In the 1980s, watching Star Wars backwards made people believe Reagonomics made sense.
14. The original design of the X-Wing fighter was a Q.
15. Lucas planned to make the Sand People out of real sand, but he found that the substance is terrible at taking directions.
16. When George Lucas picked up The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he thought it was a biography of Lon Cheney.
17. Yoda was supposed to be in this film, but he was written out because he was committed to doing dinner theatre in Poughkeepsie.
18. Lucas first got the idea for the film after a drunken bar fight with Akira Kurasawa.
19. Mark Hamill wanted to pattern his performance as Luke after Don Knotts in The Incredible Mr. Limpet, but Ford beat him to it.
20. For the first month of shooting, whenever Lucas said "Jedi," the crew replied, "Gezundheit!" When he fired them, it stopped.
21. The base of the model for the Death Star was a disco ball Lucas stole from Studio 64. Shh...
22. R2-D2's original name was P6L1, but it blooped and bleeped and whistled until the name was changed.
23. Stormtrooper uniforms had built-in human waste disposal systems because the Death Star had no bathrooms.
24. The movie was called A New Hope because the old hope was in the cleaners.
25. The Rolling Stones intended to call their 1981 album "Tatooine You," but LucasFilm lawyers had other ideas...
26. Peter Cushing was cast as Grand Moff Tarkin because Lucas loved his work in the film A Chump at Oxford.
27. Moff is the Norwegian word for a splinter from a piece of onyx that was shaved off by a feral muskrat.
28. Editing of the cantina scene for the DVD release of the film spawned t-shirts with the phrase: "Han drank the first shot!"
29. The first line of the movie was originally: "Not now. Not here." It lacked a certain poetry...
30. The stick shift on the Millenium Falcon was dodgy.
31. At 21:47, a single frame reads: "Eat at Joe's Garage." Nobody knows how it got there.
June is False Facts about the War of 1812 month. Happy almost birthday, Canada and the US!
1. The War of 1812 actually took place in 1792.
2. Upper Canada was named after one of George Washington's dentures.
3. One of America's reasons for declaring war was Upper Canada's humiliating geographical naming conventions.
4. Borders were so fluid before the war that some people considered Florida a part of Upper Canada.
5. Both sides were so unprepared for war that, for the first six months, they threw cannonballs at each other.
6. Federalists wanted to declare war on Bermuda because it had a warmer climate, but they were outvoted by Republicans.
7. Republican Henry Clay insisted that Canada must be invaded because it had tomahawks of mass destruction.
8. Americans believed many in Upper Canada would greet a US invading army as liberators. Some things never change.
9. The St. Lawrence was spared fighting because of the chicken feet trade based in Ogdensberg, New York.
10. Americans lost important early battles to Isaac Brock because none of them could spell Michilimackinac.
11. After the Battle of Lake Erie, Oliver Hazard Perry sent a message that would be immortalized by a possum: "Bazzfazz!"
12. American looting parties in the Niagara Peninsula were stopped because the Surgeon General said they caused cancer.
13. The British Secretary of War was the Earl of Bathurst, which explains why his Toronto street is never well paved.
14. The Battle of Lundy's Lane started because of a disagreement over a parking space.
15. The Americans fought especially hard at the Battle of Chateauguay - they thought it was a resort for homosexuals.
16. The USS Constitution beat the HMS Gruyere - the British were foolish to send a ship made of cheese into battle.
17. Laura Secord was made out of chocolate. This made holding her lantern problematic.
18. George Izard was known as "our meandering general" owing to the flowery prose he used to write interoffice memos.
19. Brock's dying words, "Mash the wingtip urgle burgle!" were misreported in the press, spurring Canadian war efforts.
20. Burning down the White House was no big deal, as First Lady Dolly Madison wanted an excuse to redecorate.
21. In response to the Fort McHenry attack, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem that would become the song "Rockafella Skank."
22. Native leader Tecumseh bravely died during the Battle of the Thames of an infected cavity in one of his wisdom teeth.
23. One battle was called Beaver Dams because French soldiers were unhappy with their prostitutes of the evening before.
24. The War of 1812 ended because both sides got tired of Francis Scott Key's poetry.
25. To fight against American invaders was the last time English and French Canadians agreed on anything.
26. The US might have won the war, had not a sandstorm north of Montreal grounded all their predator drones.
27. To reward natives for their help in the war, Canada gave them residential schools and smallpox laden blankets.
28. The Treaty of Ha Ha You Suckers was renamed the Treaty of Ghent to spare delicate American sensibilities.
29. A ceremonial codpiece taken at the Battle of York has still not been returned to Canada. Not that we want it back...
30. To this day, Japanese warriors living on small islands in the lakes don't believe the battle of Lake Erie is over.
31. Contrary to popular opinion, the War of 1812 was won by Sweden. They were as surprised as anyone.
