Saturday facts

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

1.5 yrs after Norm Macdonald was fired from Saturday Night Live, he was asked back to host. In his opening monologue he asked "How did I go from not being funny enough, to being so funny I'm hosting the damn show? Then it occured to me. I haven't gotten funnier - the show has gotten really bad."

Christopher Walken is one of only two actors (the other being Alec Baldwin) to have a standing offer from Lorne Michaels to host Saturday Night Live whenever his schedule permits. Thus far he has hosted the show 7 times, his most famous appearance being the "More Cowbell!" sketch.

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 Saturday I managed to collect.

1. Norm Macdonald was fired from Saturday Night Live because an NBC executive ordered him to lay off jokes targeting his buddy, O.J. Simpson & instead Macdonald did many more. When Simpson was acquitted, Macdonald opened with: “Well, it’s official: Murder is now legal in the state of California."

2. The International Fixed Calendar which has 13 months with 28 days each. Making every month perfectly divisible into 4 weeks and always starting on a Sunday and ending on a Saturday.

3. Foo Fighters were asked to play with Mick Jagger on SNL the same night they had a sold out show in New Jersey. Instead of canceling on Saturday Night Live or their show, they rehearsed with Jagger, took a helicopter to Jersey, played their show, then flew back to NYC and played SNL.

4. Germany has mandatory quiet time from 1pm to 3pm and 10pm to 6am Monday- Saturday and all day Sundays and holidays.

5. In 1996, Rage Against the Machine played Saturday Night Live with host Steve Forbes. In protest of billionaires like Forbes, they hung two upside-down flags from their stage, against the wishes of staff. After a confrontation with SNL stagehands, they were kicked out before the second song.

6. The Seinfeld episode "The Revenge" was based on an experience by screenwriter Larry David, who once quit his job at Saturday Night Live, felt he made a mistake once he reached home, and returned the following morning as if nothing had happened.

7. The color of the plastic tag on bread actually means something. They indicate the day of the week on which the loaf was baked: Monday - Blue, Tuesday - Green, Thursday - Red, Friday - White, Saturday - Yellow.

8. Kenan Thompson holds the record for longest serving African-American cast member on Saturday Night Live (12 seasons) and is currently the most senior cast member.

9. 10,000 Iowan farmers built 380 miles of road (entire width of the state) in one hour on a Saturday morning in 1910

10. Stephen Colbert, Donald Glover, Aubrey Plaza, Zachary Galifianakis, and Kevin Hart were all rejected by Saturday Night Live

Saturday data charts

For your convenience take a look at Saturday figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.

What is true about saturday?

You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.

Russia removed Saturday and Sunday from the calendar for 11 years to create a "continuous working week" from 1929 to 1940.

Months after the Saturday Night Massacre, President Nixon blamed the media, establishment, partisans and the special prosecutor's staff for trying to take him down, and still had many supporters - source

The Blues Brothers with John Belushi and Dan Akroyd toured as a real band for some times, despite starting as a joke sketch on Saturday Night Live. The band opened up for the Grateful Dead in 1978. - source

In 2012, over 1 million residents in the Zimbabwe city of Bulawayo were asked to flush their toilets exactly at 7:30 PM on a Saturday to unblock and clear out the sewer system of the city.

Henry Ford was the first industrial giant to give his workers both Saturday and Sunday off, in hope that it would encourage more leisure use of automobiles - and thus popularising the idea of the "weekend". - source

On Saturday night (30 March '12), the Chief of the Israeli Navy gave a surprise order for 3 ships to prepare to leave for a 10-day exercise; the men on the ships worked all night only to learn the next morning (1 April '12) that it was all an April Fool's Day joke.

In the memorable Saved By The Bell episode where Jessie gets addicted to caffeine pills, writers had initially planned to make her addicted to speed. However NBC vetoed the idea; feeling that the topic was "too serious" for a Saturday morning kid's show.

Conspiracy Theory Rock - A Banned Segment from Saturday Night Live, part of a March 1998 "TV Funhouse" segment, has been removed from all subsequent airings of the Saturday Night Live episode where it originally appeared because it "wasn't funny".

In 1977 Saturday Night Live had an "Anyone Can Host" contest and the winner was an 80-year old woman named Miskel Spillman.

In 1915, The New York Times invited unborn public officials to attend the opening of the Louis H. Eisenlohr box, 100 years from then. Which will be on the second saturday of 2015.

Eddie Murphy almost didn't get a spot on the Saturday Night Live cast because "the black cast member had already been chosen".

Saturday infographics

Beautiful visual representation of Saturday numbers and stats to get perspecive of the whole story.