4. According to common myth, a stuntman died during the filming of the chariot-race scene from the 1959 movie "BEN HUR." But that never happened. Ironically, the director of that scene, Andrew Marton, may have fueled the rumors by denying them, saying sarcastically that 20 people and 100 horses had died filming it. The studio's infirmary primarily was treating sunburns during its filming.
5. EDWARD BERNAYS, a New York publicity agent and nephew of Sigmund Freud, marketed cigarettes to women as a way for equal rights and to stay slim with the slogan, "Reach for a cigarette instead of dessert."
For the 1929 Easter Parade along New York's Fifth Avenue, he orchestrated a stunt in which classy-looking women at designated locations joined the promenade and lit up cigarettes. His product, Lucky Strike.
6. The TOUR DE FRANCE bicycle race was started in 1903 as a publicity stunt to help save a struggling sports newspaper called L'Auto.
And then, there was the famous "Bunion Derby" along Route 66 in, I think, 1929 which did a lot to promote the new road.
7. ALVIN "SHIPWRECK" KELLY is most often credited--or blamed?-- for popularizing the flagpole-sitting craze in the late 1920s. In June 1927, he sat on top of a pole on a Newark, N.J., hotel for 12 and 1/2 days. He returned to the ground to wild acclaim and much fame, and it clearly went to his head.
Seven years later, his wife had him forcibly removed from another pole and charged him with abandoning her and their seven children.
--Cooter
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