Johannes Gutenberg is often credited as the inventor of the printing press in 1454. However, the Chinese actually printed from movable type in 1040 but later discarding the method. More

Rodin died of frostbite in 1917 when the French government refused him financial aid for a flat, yet they kept his statues warmly housed in museums.

The Statue of Liberty is the largest hammered copper statue in the world.

Vincent van Gogh, the world’s most valued painter, sold only painting in his entire life – to his brother who owned an art gallery. The painting is titled “Red Vineyard at Arles.”

The first illustrated book for children was published in Germany in 1658.

The world’s longest nonfiction work is The Yongle Dadian, a 10,000-volume encyclopaedia produced by 5,000 scholars during the Ming Dynasty in China 500 years ago.

When Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1912, 6 replicas were sold as the original, each at a huge price, in the 3 years before the original was recovered.

The Library of Congress, the largest library in the world, stores 18 million books on approximately 850 km (530 miles) of bookshelves. The collections include 119 million items, 2 million recordings, 12 million photographs, 4 million maps and 53 million manuscripts.

Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Meteorologica in 350 BC – it remained the standard textbook on weather for 2,000 years.

The first Oxford English Dictionary was published in April 1928, 50 years after it was started. It consisted of 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes. The latest edition fills 22,000 pages, includes 33,000 Shakespeare quotations, and is bound in 20 volumes. All of which is available on a single CD.

The oldest surviving daily newspaper is the Wiener Zeitung of Austria. It was first printed in 1703.

Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist suffering from “locked-in” syndrome, wrote the book “The Driving Bell and the Butterfly” by blinking his left eyelid – the only part of his body that could move.

The first color photograph was made in 1861 by James Maxwell. He photographed a tartan ribbon.

The first book published is thought to be the Epic of Gilgamesh, written at about 3000 BC in cuneiform, an alphabet based on symbols.

The world’s libraries store more than a 100 million original volumes.

Picasso could draw before he could walk and his first word was the Spanish word for pencil.

The largest statue in the world is Mount Rushmore, the heads of four US Presidents carved into the Black Hills near Keystone. The heads are 18 m (60 ft) tall.

In 1816, Frenchman J.R. Ronden tried to stage a play that did not contain the letter “a.” The Paris audience was offended, rioted and did not allow the play to finish.

In 1097, Trotula, a midwife of Salerno, wrote The Diseases of Women – it was used in medical schools for 600 years.

The shortest stage play is Samuel Beckett’s “Breath” – 35 seconds of screams and heavy breathing.

The first novel, called The story of Genji, was written in 1007 by Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu.

The largest horse statue in the world, the Zizkov Monument in Prague, stands 9 metres (30 ft) tall.

When Auguste Rodin exhibited his first important work, The Bronze Period, in 1878 it was so realistic that people thought he had sacrificed a live model inside the cast.

Noah Webster, who wrote the Webster Dictionary, was known as a short, pale, smug, boastful, humourless, yet religious man.

Ian Fleming’s James Bond debuted in the novel “Casino Royale” in 1952.