Walt Disney, host of TV's "The Wonderful World of Disney," knew what the public wanted, and he was very good at giving it what it wanted. This applied to more than movies, television and theme parks.

When Alicia Markova, nee Alicia Marks, was 8 years old, she danced briefly for Anna Pavlova at the great Russian ballerina's apartment. Young Alicia noticed that Ms. Pavlova was wearing mauve clothing, and mauve instantly became her favorite color.

Alicia Markova's father died when she was very young, leaving the family destitute. Her friend Anton Dolin wanted her to dance with Sergei Diaghilev's dance company, but Mr. Diaghilev would not hear of it, in part because he was not interested in child prodigies and in part because he was displeased over publicity that the dancers in his company were British at a time when many great dancers were Russian.

Comedian Fannie Brice needed time to develop a sense of fashion. When Ziegfeld Follies impresario Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld invited her and Lillian Lorraine to dinner, Fannie went all out in acquiring what she thought was an outfit that would impress Mr. Ziegfeld.

Nineteenth-century cartoonist Bernhard Gillam's first attempt at oil painting was a dismal failure. When he was 18 years old, he painted a battle between the Aztec Native Americans and the Spanish explorers. The painting was filled with dead and dying soldiers, but when exhibited at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts as number 93, it did not produce the seriously dramatic effect Mr. Gillam wanted.

In April 2012, the Coca-Cola Company put a special Coke machine in Singapore. It looked like a regular Coke machine, but it had the words "Hug Me" written on it in large letters. Anyone who hugged the machine got a reward: a free cold Coca-Cola.

• When Robert Lanza, M.D., was a boy, he was entranced by science, and he undertook a pilgrimage by bus and trolley to Harvard. Unfortunately, he was not allowed into the building where the Harvard scientists worked. However, he did not go away but instead he hung around the dumpster...

For years, male legislators have sought to regulate women's rights to legal abortion and legal access to contraception. For example, House Bill 125, also known as the "Heartbeat bill," which was sponsored by a male legislator named Lynn Wachtmann, a Republican from Napoleon, Ohio, would ban abortion if the fetus has a heartbeat, something that can be detected as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

Jonathan Ive’s talent for design was not immediately recognized. After graduating from Newcastle Polytechnic, a school that is now known as Northumbria, he worked for a design company called Tangerine, which was based in London. He once designed a new toilet and made a presentation in front of an executive who was wearing a red clown nose.

Natalina DePina passed out homemade sandwiches that she carried in a large plastic bucket to the homeless in Los Angeles. She had made a wrong turn one day and ended up driving through Skid Row. She said, "I broke down. I had never seen anything like this in my life. It was hard to imagine this existed a few blocks from where I shop for things to sell at my boutique."