Interesting Facts

Clarence "Ducky" Nash, an American voice actor, was the voice of Disney's Donald Duck. (He provided Donald's distinctive voice for over 50 years, but he was also the original voice for Tom in Tom and Jerry.)

Walt Disney, Henry Ford and Henry Heinz were all bankrupts before becoming rich. (Walt Disney got cheated when he started a small film company. Henry Heinz got his fingers burnt with horseradish, before he tried ketchup. Henry Ford's first car factory only made 20 cars in two years and unsurprisingly the enterprise went bankrupt in 1901. There's hope for me yet.)

Over the past 70 years, Disney studios have created eight princesses - Snow White, Cinderella, Princess Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan. (The great news is that the ninth princess, in the new Disney cartoon The Princess And The Frog, will be a bit different from those who have gone before. Her name is Tiana and she is African-American. I bet Walt is spinning. He he.)

Every year at Thanksgiving in the USA two turkeys are "pardoned". For many years the turkeys were given to Kidwell Farm, a petting zoo at Frying Pan Park in Herndon, Virginia. In 2005 they were flown to Disneyland in California for the famous Thanksgiving Day parade. They will spend the rest of their lives at a Disneyland ranch. (Disneyland somehow seems better than Frying Pan Park if for a turkey who has escaped being part of someone's Thanksgiving feast. In 2005, President Bush gave two turkeys named Marshmallow and Yam a last-minute reprieve. The two turkeys hail from Henning, Minnesota, For the third time, the American public was allowed to vote for the turkeys' names on the White House web site. 2004's turkeys were named Biscuit and Gravy, and in 2003, Stars and Stripes.)