The NFL preseason’s in full swing, but instead of handicapping battles for backup QB jobs, let’s take a look at five things you might not know about one of the greatest signal callers of all time: Johnny Unitas.

1. He Could Go Both Ways

When Unitas was a high school senior from Pittsburgh, nobody could really see that the halfback/quarterback combo would one day become an NFL legend. Notre Dame took one look at his six-foot, 138-pound build and decided against giving him a scholarship, so the son of Lithuanian immigrants ended up at the University of Louisville.

Unitas’ collegiate career at Louisville, which wasn’t even part of the NCAA at the time, largely consisted of him playing very well on mediocre-to-bad teams. During the 1952 season, however, the sophomore was all over the field. The team decided that its players would play both defense and offense, so in addition to playing QB, Unitas also served as a linebacker, safety, and return man. By all accounts the nimble Unitas was pretty tough as a safety, but his team slumped to a 3-5 record, including a humiliating 59-6 blowout at Tennessee.

2. He Could Have Been a Steeler

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I’ll start with a full disclosure: Graham Greene is one of my very favorite writers. While his work runs the gamut from weighty explorations of human evil like Brighton Rock to genuinely funny farces like Our Man in Havana, there’s just something consistently mesmerizing about his crisp prose and ability to work a moral or philosophical dilemma into even his espionage thriller “entertainments.” Let’s take a look at five things you might not know about the moralist/novelist:

1. He Wasn’t Big on School

Going to boarding school can be tough on anyone, but it was particularly rough for Greene, possibly because his father was his headmaster. Greene’s status as an introverted misfit at school led to a number of botched suicide attempts, including drinking chemicals, eating nightshade, and attempting to drown himself in the school’s pool after eating handfuls of aspirin.

Obviously none of these attempts worked, so Greene resorted to running away in 1920 at the age of 16. He didn’t get too far, though, and when his family regained custody of their wayward son, they sent him to live with a London psychoanalyst for six months. Greene later called this period of psychoanalysis one of the happiest stretches of his life, but it didn’t cure him of his suicidal tendencies. Just a few years later he would begin playing Russian roulette after the end of a love affair.

2. Shirley Temple Probably Wasn’t Buying Up His Books

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Saturday is the 166th birthday of Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s oldest son and the only Lincoln child to survive into adulthood. While he didn’t make quite the mark on history that his father did, Robert Lincoln had a pretty interesting life himself. Let’s take a look at five things you might not know about him:

1. He Was on Ulysses S. Grant’s Personal Staff

Part of Abraham Lincoln’s mystique lies in his humble roots as a self-made man who found education where he could. His eldest son didn’t have to go through quite as many trials and tribulations to do some learning, though. Robert left Springfield, Illinois, to attend boarding school at New Hampshire’s elite Phillips Exeter Academy when he was a young man, and he later graduated from Harvard during his father’s presidency.

After completing his undergrad degree, Robert stuck around Cambridge to go to Harvard Law School, but that arrangement didn’t last very long. After studying law for just a few months, Lincoln received a commission as a captain in the army. Lincoln’s assignment put him on Ulysses S. Grant’s personal staff, so he didn’t see much fighting. He did get a nice view of history, though; Lincoln was present as part of Grant’s junior staff at Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse.

After the war ended, Lincoln moved to Chicago with his mother and brother and wrapped up his legal studies.

2. The Booth Family Did Him a Favor

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When talking about director and screenwriter Billy Wilder, one really only needs to list the titles of his many triumphs in genres as disparate as light comedy and film noir. The Apartment. Double Indemnity. Sunset Boulevard. Some Like It Hot. The Lot Weekend. Sabrina. Stalag 17. The Austrian-American filmmaker was so prolific and so brilliant that even his minor works like Ace in the Hole, a scathing indictment of journalism, are unforgettable. I really can’t articulate just how wonderful Wilder’s films are, but I can share a few things you might not have known about him:

1. Before He Was a Director, He Was a Gigolo

Wilder was born in Sucha Beskidzka in what is now Poland in 1906, and attended what he later called “the worst high school in Vienna.” He eventually ended up at the University of Vienna to fulfill his parents’ dreams of becoming a lawyer. Fortunately for the future of film, Wilder didn’t love the ivory tower and quickly dropped out of college to become a journalist in Berlin.

It was tough to make ends meet as a writer, though, so Wilder supplemented his income by working as a gigolo. According to the director this was no Midnight Cowboy stuff, though, and Wilder went into the line of work mostly hoping it would make good research for a series of articles. His job mostly consisted of dining, dancing, and chatting with lonely old ladies. In the excellent book-length interview Conversations With Wilder by director Cameron Crowe, Wilder claims that he never got frisky with any clients “because they would come with their husbands…and the ladies were corpulent ladies, elderly ladies.”

2. He Paid Attention to His Extras

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Now that he’s giving occasionally surreal pep talks and diagnoses to NCAA football teams as part of ESPN’s college pigskin studio crew, it’s easy to forget that Lou Holtz was one of the preeminent coaches in the college game until fairly recently. Let’s look at five things you might not know about Coach Lou:

1. A Young Bill Clinton Had His Back

Throughout his coaching career, Holtz insisted that his players perform well on the field and behave off of it. Sounds like a pretty sound policy, but it didn’t always make him popular with players or win-at-all-costs boosters. In 1977, Holtz’s first season at Arkansas, he found himself in a pickle. Star running back Ben Cowins, top receiver Donny Bobo, and another player were involved in an incident with a woman in a players’ dorm. The woman ended up undressed, and when Holtz caught wind of the story he suspended all three players for the Razorbacks’ Orange Bowl clash with Oklahoma.

Running back Cowins was a decent NFL prospect, and he needed the national exposure of the Orange Bowl to pump up his draft stock. He hired an attorney who filed a suit seeking an injunction to allow the three suspended players to appear in the Orange Bowl. Once Holtz came under legal fire, the university quickly sought top-notch counsel for him in the form of the Arkansas Attorney General, a promising young lawyer named Bill Clinton.

With the help of Clinton and his staff, Holtz’s legal team defended the coach in U.S. District Court, and the players eventually withdrew their lawsuit. Obviously, it was a victory for team discipline, but wouldn’t losing the offense’s two biggest weapons kill the Razorbacks’ Orange Bowl chances against the mighty Sooners? Not quite. Backup running back Roland Sales had an epic 205-yard, two-touchdown game, and the sixth-ranked Arkansas squad crushed number-two Oklahoma 31-6.

2. His Game Didn’t Translate to the Pros

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From her first major screen role as Gary Cooper’s violence-loathing Quaker wife in the classic Western High Noon through her “wedding of the century” and retirement from films to become Princess Grace of Monaco, Grace Kelly made it almost impossible not to stare. Her icy beauty and polished delivery brought something truly unique to each of her parts, so let’s take a look at five things you might not know about Grace Kelly.

1. She Probably Could Have Been an Athlete

When Grace Kelly was born in the East Falls neighborhood of Philadelphia in 1929 to Margaret and Jack Kelly, her athletic pedigree was formidable. Jack Kelly, who ran a wildly successful brick company, was also one of the finest rowers ever to dip his oars in the Schuylkill River. He wasn’t just a local phenom, though; Jack had three Olympic gold medals in sculling to his credit. He picked up single and double scull gold at the 1920 Games in Antwerp and then defended his double scull gold with his cousin Paul Costello in Paris in 1924. To underscore just how great he was, Jack Kelly is the only rower in the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.

Kelly’s mother, Margaret, was no slouch, either. She had been a world-beater as a collegiate swimmer at Temple and then became a physical education instructor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she became the Ivy League school’s first-ever women’s sports coach after she organized a basketball squad.

One of Kelly’s three siblings, John Jr., was a formidable athlete in his own right; he rowed in the 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960 Olympics, picking up a single sculls bronze in Melbourne in 1956. John Jr. gave the medal to his sister Grace as a wedding gift.

2. She Turned Down at Least One Iconic Role

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This week’s installment of our “5 Things You Didn’t Know About…” series focuses on one of the finest comic actors of all time. Whether in comedies like The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby or Hitchcock thrillers like North by Northwest, Cary Grant could make even throwaway bits of dialogue screamingly funny with his superb sense of timing and brilliant facial expressions. Here are a few things you might not have known about him.

1. He Was Almost Cary Lockwood

The man we know as Cary Grant was actually born Alec Archibald Leach in 1904 in Bristol, England. When Archie Leach finally made it to Hollywood in 1931, studio execs at Paramount didn’t think that “Archie Leach” sounded sturdy enough for a leading man. As Grant later told it, someone at the studio said, “’Archie’ just doesn’t sound right in America,” to which he grudgingly admitted, “It doesn’t sound particularly right in Britain, either.”

When he was faced with the task of literally making a name for himself, Leach enlisted the help of his friends Fay Wray and John Monk Saunders, who suggested “Cary Lockwood.” When Leach took the “Cary Lockwood” moniker back to Paramount, the studio honchos liked the “Cary” part but felt that “Lockwood” was too long and too similar to other actors’ names, particularly silent film star Harold Lockwood. Grant would later tell The New Yorker that at this point, someone in the meeting just started reading down a list of potential last names and eventually stopped at “Grant.” Archie Leach liked the sound of it and nodded, and Cary Grant was born. In 1941, the actor legally changed his name to Cary Grant.

2. Archie Leach Had Some Adventures of His Own, Though

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Wilt Chamberlain. The mere mention of the Big Dipper’s name evokes images of hoops dominance and romantic impossibilities. The man who once scored 100 points in a single game and claimed to have bedded 20,000 women was a fairly enigmatic figure, though, as his huge athletic gifts made him something of a loner throughout his career. As we continue our new series of five things you didn’t know about famous people, let’s take a look at Wilton Norman Chamberlain.

1. He Wasn’t Just Great At Basketball

Although Chamberlain is most known for his exploits on the basketball court, he was no athletic one-trick pony. As a high schooler he was intensely interested in track and field, and he continued this passion when he went to college at Kansas University. While at Kansas, Chamberlain won three straight Big Eight high jump championships, ran the 100-yard dash, and could hurl the shotput up to 56 feet.

After his basketball career ended in 1974, the Big Dipper picked up a new hobby: volleyball. That year he became a board member of the International Volleyball Association, a fledgling pro coed volleyball league that only lasted until 1979, and brought his intimidating 7′1″ frame to the Seattle Smashers’ front line. Chamberlain’s presence brought enough attention to the league that the IVA’s All-Star game was televised. (Of course Wilt won the MVP of the game.) His contributions to volleyball earned him a spot in the sport’s Hall of Fame.

2. He Nearly Boxed Muhammad Ali

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A New York Times profile of Charles Bronson once noted that “Bronson looks like as if at any moment he’s about to hit someone.” It’s tough to think of a better way to summarize Bronson’s five-decade film career than that. Since the forthcoming July/August issue of mental_floss contains a picture of Bronson, we thought he would make a good second installment for our new series “Five Things You Didn’t Know About…” Here’s what you might not have known about one of film’s most menacing presences:

1. He Changed His Name for Joe McCarthy (Well, Sort Of)

The man we all recognize as Charles Bronson was actually born Charles Buchinsky in the coal-mining town of Ehrnenfield, PA. It would be a gross understatement to say he was from a large family; Bronson was the 11th of 15 children born to a pair of Lithuanian immigrants. The family was so incredibly poor that when Bronson was six years old the only school outfit his mom could muster for him was one of his sister’s old dresses. (The ensuing teasing would turn anyone into a world-class tough guy pretty quickly.) By age 16, Bronson was working in the mines himself.

So why did Charles Buchinsky originally become Charles Bronson? He’d broken into the film world as Charles Buchinsky with roles in films like the Gary Cooper vehicle You’re in the Navy Now and House of Wax, where he played Vincent Price’s deaf-mute henchman Igor. However, when Senator Joe McCarthy cranked up the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s, Buchinsky thought he might be wise to settle on a name that sounded less Eastern European and thus less potentially Communist, so Charles Buchinsky became Charles Bronson.

2. He Indirectly Helped Launch Clint Eastwood’s Career

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John Cazale may not be a household name, but if you enjoyed classic films from the 1970s, chances are you’d recognize the vulnerable Italian-American character actor from his handful of memorable roles in films like The Godfather, where he played doomed Corleone brother Fredo. Although Cazale’s career was cut short when he died from bone cancer at just 42, his brief stay in Hollywood generated one of the more interesting bodies of work in modern film. Let’s take a look at five things you might not have known about Cazale:

1. He Batted a Thousand With the Academy

While Cazale never earned an Oscar nomination himself, his films fared significantly better; every feature film in which he appeared received a nomination for best picture. Three of his films, The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, and The Deer Hunter took home the top prize. The other two films Cazale made during his life, The Conversation and Dog Day Afternoon, both got nominations but didn’t win. Here’s the real kicker, though: The Godfather: Part III, which didn’t come out until 12 years after Cazale’s 1978 death, featured archival footage of Cazale in the Fredo Corleone role. It got a best picture nod, too.

2. Cazale and Al Pacino Worked the Oil Biz Together

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