Who Is the Youngest Oscar Winner and Other Fun Oscar Trivia

From the youngest Oscar winner to the person who has won the most Oscars, there is a wealth of trivia surrounding the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards. First held in 1929 in an attempt to polish the overall image of Hollywood, the Academy Awards have grown into one of the biggest and most prestigious award ceremonies in the world.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is broken into 15 branches. Each branch is responsible for nominations within their specialty. For example, Academy actors choose the nominations for the best actor award. The only exception to this is the Best Movie Oscar, which all branches help nominate. Once the nominations are determined, the entire Academy votes on the winners.

Fun Oscar Trivia

• Tatum O'Neal is the youngest person to ever win an Oscar in a competitive category. She won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the 1973 film Paper Moon when she was 10 years old. Shirley Temple is the youngest person to win an Oscar in a general category. She was six years old when she was given a special honorary Oscar.
• Jessica Tandy is the oldest person to win a competitive Oscar. She was 81 years old when she won the Best Actress Oscar for her role in the 1981 film Driving Miss Daisy.
• Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Oscar. She won Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind. Though racism was rampant at the time, and the choice raised an uproar, the Academy could not ignore her amazing performance.
• Oscar Hammerstein II is the only person named Oscar to win an Oscar. He won two times, once in 1941 and once in 1945, in the Best Song category.
• It Happened One Night, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs are tied as the only films to win the top five Oscars. Each movie won for Best Picture, Directing, Actor, Actress and Writing.
• Cimarron, Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven are the only three western genre films to win the Best Picture Oscar.
• All about Eve and Titanic are the two films to receive the most Oscar nominations at 14 each. All about Eve won six Oscars and Titanic won 11 Oscars.
• Ben-Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are the three movies that have won the most overall Oscar awards. They each won 11 total awards.
• The Oscar statuette is officially named the Academy Award of Merit. It is believed the nickname Oscar originated with an Academy librarian's innocent comment that the statue looked like her uncle Oscar. The name stuck and both the statues and awards ceremony are now referred to as Oscars.
• The Oscar ceremony, also known as the Academy Awards, has occurred every year since the first ceremony in 1929. During that time the ceremony has only been delayed three times. It was delayed once in 1938 due to flooding at the ceremony location, once in 1968 out of respect for the recently assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King and once in 1981 after the assassination attempt on US President Ronald Reagan.