Otherworldly Collaboration

In his last year, Jullien toyed with the notion of setting the Lord's Prayer to music. The composer's inspiration? The prospect of seeing a title page reading: "THE LORD'S PRAYER. Words by Jesus Christ. Music by Jullien."

One day when commercial air travel was still in its infancy, the great mathematician David Hilbert was invited to give a talk on any subject he liked. His chosen subject - "The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem" - came as something of a surprise, particularly given that the famous theorem, as far as anyone knew, remained unproven (see below). Needless to say, the event was eagerly anticipated...
Soon enough, the momentous day arrived and Hilbert delivered his lecture. While undeniably brilliant, however, it had nothing to do with Fermat's theorem.
After the talk, Hilbert was asked why he had chosen a title which had nothing to do with his lecture. "Oh," he replied, "that was just in case the plane went down."

I was driving up Laurel Canyon the other day," Ladder 49 star Joaquin Phoenix once recalled, "and I see all this smoke and there's a van on fire - the engine's on fire - and I jump out and I run and the guy's trying to move all this stuff out of the van. I kind of run up and grab a T-shirt and run back... And people are driving by and they're saying, 'It's gonna blow! It's gonna blow!'
"So I'm thinking, 'Don't panic; rely on your training. So I think back and I think back to my training... and I remember weird details, like a window is three feet above the ground in a house, and the female end of a coupling [extension cord] leads you out of a fire, but nothing about cars.
"So I look at the owner and I panic, and I say, 'Run! It's gonna blow!' And I take off running... and duck behind a wall. And all these people - then they recognize me: 'That's the guy from Ladder 49! He did the research. He knows!'
"So everyone goes scrambling. They're hiding under bushes and cars. And we sit looking at each other for, like, ten minutes. There's no explosion, just the sound of this guy's whole life slowly burning.
"The fire department shows up, and they slowly amble up and spray a little water on it. So I come out of hiding from behind the wall and the owner of the van is there looking at me with tear-stained cheeks just looking at me, like, 'Mr Research! Mr Method Actor! Thanks so much!'"

Ron Howard's Children

With one exception, director Ron Howard gave each of his children a middle name inspired by the location of his or her conception. His twin daughters - middle-named Carlyle - were conceived, for example, at New York's famous Carlyle hotel. Bryce Dallas Howard was conceived in Dallas...
The exception? Howard's first son, who was named after a London Street (Reed Cross). The problem? "Volvo," Howard later explained, "isn't a very good middle name."

Winston Churchill and Tonga's Queen Salote Tupou were among the esteemed guests at Elizabeth II's coronation.
When the ceremony dragged on past noon, Churchill began to grow hungry - and irascible (it being what he called his "tummy time").

As the guests finally began to file out, one of Churchill's companions pointed to a small black boy carrying Tupou's train. "Who's that?" he wondered. Churchill's reply? "That's her lunch."