Happy Friday! If you're new to Now I Know, you'll notice that today's format differs from the rest of the week. On Fridays, I pause to write the "Weekender," my  "week in review" type of thing, or to share something else I think you may find interesting. Thanks for reading! — Dan

Getting to See a Fun Fact in Person

Hi!

As I’ve mentioned many times this week, I’m on a work trip. I haven’t had time to write — the days have been great, but long, and the time change hasn’t helped. (I live in New York and work has taken me to California.) But I did have a rare opportunity to see something I’ve written about (or, at least, I thought I wrote about) in real life. I can’t actually find the time I’ve written about it, so, maybe this is new to you!

Walt Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in December 1937, and it was a groundbreaking moment in movie history — it was the first time that an animated feature film released in the United States, and it was the highest-grossing movie of 1938 by a wide margin. But Hollywood’s tastemakers didn’t recognize its greatness right away — it only received one Oscar nomination, and for “Best Original Score” at that. And it didn’t win.

A year later, the Academy recognized its folly and gave Walt Disney an honorary award for his innovative filmmaking. But it wasn’t just any Oscar — it was a custom job, with one large statuette next to seven small ones. (Get it?) Here’s a picture.

I’ve known about this for a while and again, I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it here before. But a couple of days ago, I got to see it in real life. One of our work-trip activities was a storytelling seminar at the Walt Disney Family Museum, a multistory installation dedicated to telling the story of Walt’s life. In the lobby are a few cases displaying the awards he won over his lifetime, and sitting there was right across from me was the Oscar above. (And yes, I told some of my coworkers what it was.)

The award is one of two custom Oscars made — I thought it was the only one, but I checked while writing this and my memory was wrong. Per the museum’s website, “There has only been one other time that an Oscar statuette has been customized. The year prior to when Walt received his award, famous actor and ventriloquist, Edgar Bergen was presented with an honorary award ‘for his outstanding comedy creation, Charlie McCarthy.’ It was a wooden Oscar statuette with a movable mouth.” (I can’t find a picture of that one.)

I find trivia interesting in the abstract, but it’s always fun when you see it come alive in real life.

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The Now I Know Week In Review

Monday: Why a Boy Brought a Microwave to School: A protest, and a bookish one.

Tuesday: The Great Bread Squeezing Crime Spree of the Late 1990s: It’s a crime, technically, but I’m glad he didn’t go to prison for it.

Wednesday: The Most Unlikely Hacker: Oops.

Thursday: Can’t Hardly Wait: The airport that makes you walk more so you’ll complain less.

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And thanks! — Dan

Long Reads and Other Things

Here are a few things you may want to check out over the weekend:

1) “Ben Franklin’s Project” (Harvard Magazine, 22 minutes, May/June 2025). This is a book excerpt from a 400 page book about the Franklin Stove, which was a chimney that Franklin invented in order to limit the amount of wood necessary to heat a home. The fact that a historian could write a 22 minute essay, let alone a 400 page book, about such an invention underscores how interesting the invention is.

2) “If a cat could talk” (Aeon, 10 minutes, July 2013). A philosophy professor notices that cats are both pets and also independent animals that kind of do their own thing, and that turns into a 2,300 word essay on the nature of everything.

3) “The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch” (Slate, 26 minutes, May 2025). The subhead: “It was one of the weirdest errors ever committed to film. It took me months to uncover how it all went wrong.” Thanks to reader Michael B. for sharing!

Have something I should include for next week? Hit reply to let me know. Either way, have a great weekend!

Dan