Shining facts

While investigating facts about Shining, I found out little known, but curios details like:

The “XXX” signifies how many times the moonshine batch had been run through the still. Three X’s indicated that it had been run through three times and that the shine was pure alcohol.

When ‘The Shining’ premiered, the MPAA wouldn’t allow blood to appear in any trailer “approved for all audiences,” but Stanley Kubrick managed to get a trailer comprised solely of the elevator scene passed by convincing the board the tsunami of blood was rusty water.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 50 of the best facts about Shining I managed to collect.

1. About Otto, an octopus that was able to climb onto the rim of his tank, squirt a jet of water to a bright light shining into his aquarium and cause a power outage. Staff believe that Otto had been annoyed by the lamp

2. There is a 20 story light spire on a building in downtown Stockholm, and anyone with a smartphone can change the colors on the lights that are shining in it. Its creators hope that the work can stand as a statement on the power of democracy and the power of the public.

3. Hunter S. Thompson pranked Jack Nicholson on his birthday by shining a spotlight on his house, blasting a recording of a pig being eaten alive by bears, firing his pistol, and leaving an elk's heart at the front door, while Nicholson and his two daughters hid in the basement.

4. After Betelgeuse goes supernova, it will be brighter than a full moon and visible during the day. It will shine for weeks/months before fading away.

5. After Mick Jagger rang up bandmate Charlie Watts during the night and asked "Where's my drummer?" Watts got out of bed, shaved, dressed in a suit, put on a tie and freshly shined shoes, then went to Jagger's room and punched him in the face.

6. Stanley Kubrick was asked not to depict room #217 (featured in the book) in The Shining, because future guests at the Lodge might be afraid to stay there. So a nonexistent room, #237, was substituted in the film.

7. While the "Shining" was playing in New York and Los Angeles, Stanley Kubrick ordered projectionists to cut the original final scene from the film by hand, and mail the deleted film strips back to Warner Bros. The original ending has never been released since.

8. Stanley Kubrick recorded a typist hammering out “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” because he believed each typewriter key made a slightly different sound and he wanted the audio track of “The Shining” to be perfectly accurate.

9. The band They Might Be Giants wrote a song, "Why Does the Sun Shine?" explaining that the Sun is mostly gas. After learning that isn't true though, they made another song called "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?" to rectify their mistake.

10. On May 24, 1996, a drive-in theater in Canada was destroyed by a tornado when the theater was scheduled to show the 1996 disaster movie ‘Twister’. In ‘Twister,’ a scene parallels the exact event of the theater destruction by a tornado during a showing of ‘The Shining.’

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In 2012 rumors began circulating on the Iranian Internet that Pepsi planned to use powerful lasers to shine the image of their logo on the Moon’s surface. Thousands of Iranians climbed onto their roofs to stare at the Moon. When nothing happened, some bought Coca-Cola out of spite.

Director Stanley Kubrick's secretary often heard the sound of a book hitting the wall as he flung it into a reject pile when looking for a novel to adapt. When it had been a while since she had heard any sound, she walked in to check on her boss and found Kubrick deeply engrossed in The Shining. - source

Greek "Zeus" and Latin "Jupiter" stem from the same Proto-Indo-European word for "Sky Father" (Dyeus ph2tēr), from the root verb "to shine" (dyeu) - source

JFK's father, Joseph P Kennedy, realised in 1929 that speculation would cause a stock market crash when a shoe-shine boy offered him some trading advice

Danny Lloyd, the child actor who played Danny Torrance in The Shining, was closely guarded by Kubrick during filming and didn't know it was a horror film until several years later. - source

Quasar 3c273, which is 4 trillion times brighter than the sun, and 100 times brighter than the output of all the stars in the milkyway. It’s so bright, that if it were 33 light years away, it would shine just as bright in the sky as the sun, which is only 8 light minutes away.

The hotel that inspired Stephen King to write "The Shining" plays the Kubrick film on continuous loop on channel 42 for all guests.

While filming Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey stayed in the Stanley Hotel (where The Shining was filmed) for a night and requested to be in room 237. About three hours after he went to sleep, he came running out of the room and left the hotel. To this day, he hasn't told anybody why.

70% of Mongolian nomads have solar power since 2013. The sun shines 250 days on average each year in Mongolia. It shines, even during the frigid winter days, on the hundreds of thousands of nomads who still roam the steppes, herding animals and living in dome-like tents calling gers.

Stanley Kubrick fooled the MPAA into thinking that the blood flowing out of the elevator in The Shining was just "rusty water"

Stephen King novels "IT" and "The Shining" are set in the same universe, the character Dick Hallorann that is the head chef of the Overlook hotel in The Shining, very briefly appears as a character in IT.

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