The 1998 Golden Globe award for Best Picture went to "Saving Private Ryan" beating out favorites such as "Shakespeare in Love" (voted Best Picture in the Academy Awards), "Life is beautiful," & "There's something about Mary"
Alexander Fleming's lab at St. Mary's Hospital in London, where he discovered penicillin, is now a museum.
Fettuccine Alfredo was created by Alfredo di Lelio in Rome in the early 1900s and became famous in the US after Hollywood stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks raved about it.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the only woman named in the Quran, and she's mentioned there more often than in the entire New Testament. A whole chapter, Surah Maryam, is named after her.
Many people think the Immaculate Conception refers to Jesus's birth, but the Catholic doctrine, defined in 1854, actually says Mary herself was conceived without original sin.
In 1950, Pope Pius XII officially declared the Assumption, the Catholic belief that Mary was taken body and soul into heaven at the end of her life.
In 1858, a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous reported visions of Mary at Lourdes, France, which became one of the world's most popular pilgrimage sites.
In 1917, three shepherd children in Fátima, Portugal, reported seeing visions of Mary, and the site now draws millions of pilgrims.
Our Lady of Guadalupe refers to visions of Mary reported by Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531, and her basilica in Mexico City is one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world.
The rosary is a string of prayer beads Catholics use to pray a series of prayers, many of them devoted to Mary.
Two of Mary's major Catholic feast days are the Assumption on August 15 and the Immaculate Conception on December 8.
Mary's name in Hebrew was Miriam.
Franz Schubert's famous "Ave Maria" was originally a setting of a poem by Sir Walter Scott, not the Latin prayer it's now sung with.
Agatha Christie wrote romance novels under the pen name Mary Westmacott.