1 The Fringe Festival started in 1947 when eight theatre companies turned up to first official Edinburgh Festival uninvited and decided to perform anyway. The Film Festival also started in 1947, but the Book, TV, Art and Jazz and Blues festivals, and the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, all joined the party later.

2 In 1997, an unknown young author called Joanne Rowling read from her debut novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to 30 children at the Book Festival. Seven years later, hundreds of fans queued round the block to hear her talk.

3 The word "tattoo" comes from a 17th Century Dutch phrase, "Doe den tap toe" ("Turn off the taps"), which was shouted at closing time in the pubs of the Netherlands.

4 Rudolph Bing, an Austrian opera impresario and founder of the Edinburgh Festival, had helped to start the Glyndebourne Opera festival before he turned his attention to the Scottish capital. After two years as director, Bing went on to head New York's Metropolitan Opera.

5 At this year's Fringe, 28,014 performances of 1,867 shows will take place at 261 venues - the most Fringe performances ever.

6 In 1988, a troupe of Hell's Angels descended to see their hero, Hunter S Thomson, talk at the Book Festival. The great gonzo never showed. He had met a friend in JFK airport in New York, and decided to stay in America.

7 Mark Watson holds the World Record for the longest ever comedy gig, performed at the 2004 Fringe, for 24 hours non-stop.

8 The International Festival was begun, in the wake of the Second World War, with a remit to "provide a platform for the flowering of the human spirit".

9 Robbie Coltrane, who did some work as a driver before becoming an actor, once took Martin Scorsese to the Film Festival.

10 La Mama's 1967 show, Futz, about a farmer engaged in a love affair with a pig, was one of the great early controversies of the Festival. The Scottish Daily Express' Brian Meek, who was too disgusted even to see the play, said "it was described to me by a Daily Express critic as "the most shocking play I have ever seen".

11 A young journalist called Ian Rankin covered the children's programme at the first Book Festival in 1981 for his student newspaper.

12 In 1991, the Fringe and the Festival, never the closest friends, clashed spectacularly, when the outgoing Festival director called the Fringe "a third-rate circus".

13 The first Festival included some legendary performers. Margot Fonteyn danced in the Sadler's Wells production of Sleeping Beauty, while Alec Guinness took the lead in Richard II.

14 In 1981, The Cambridge Footlights won the first ever Perrier Award (now the if.comEddies) for the best comedy show on the Fringe. Among their number were Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, Tony Slattery and Hugh Laurie.

15 At the first Festival, Edinburgh was still suffering the economic effects of the Second World War. Prominent burghers had to lobby the Minister for Fuel & Power to have the castle floodlit for three days over the Festival period. A crowd of thousands turned up to see the lights switched on.

16 It would take five years, 11 months and 16 days to watch every Fringe show back-to-back.

17 In 1948, a young stage hand called Jimmy Webb became a hero, when, during a performance of Don Giovanni, a piece of vital stage equipment broke. A hunk of machinery was falling from the flies, and just about to crush the Commendatore, as he made his grand entrance, when Jimmy caught the rope.

18 In 1992, Steve Coogan won the Perrier Award for his In Character with John Thomson, beating off competition from Jo Brand and Mark Thomas. The winner of the Best Newcomer that year was Harry Hill.

19 In 1963, during a production of Teatro San Carlo's Luisa Miller, two soloists had a brutal fistfight in the wings. The tenor Renato Cioni took a curtain call at the end of the second act, but baritone Paolo Washington thought the applause was for him. Washington left Cioni to sing the final act with a bloody nose.

21 The Fringe has a better record for premiering plays that go on to become classics than the Festival. One notable example is the Oxford Theatre Group's 1966 performance of Tom Stoppard's seismic Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead.

20 The first Book Festival took place in 1983, with 30 "meet the author" events. Among those pioneers were Jeffrey Archer and John Updike.

22 During the 19th Century, Edinburgh held a number of music festivals. The first held in 1815. The venues included Parliament House and Corri's Rooms (a circus and concert hall). The Festival made ￡1,500 for the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and other local charities.

23 The Fringe is the biggest arts festival in the world.

24 Oxford was founder Rudolph Bing's first choice of venue for a British international festival. When that fell through, his co-founder, Henry Harvey Wood, suggested Edinburgh to him and he was instantly smitten.

25 "Jazz on a Summer's Day", a free event hosted by the Jazz and Blues Festival, is Britain's largest jazz event.

26 Not one performance of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo has ever been cancelled, since its inception in 1950.

27 There is no selection committee to approve Fringe entries, which is why, this year, you can see a one-man production of the Star Wars trilogy.

28 A great Television Festival's moment came in 1993, when a seriously ill Dennis Potter attacked the then chairman and director general of the BBC by saying "you cannot make a pair of croak-voiced Daleks appear benevolent even if you dress one of them in an Armani suit and call the other Marmaduke".

29 Edinburgh's is the longest continually running film festival in the world.

30 The Jazz Festival began in 1979, when Festival Director Mike Hart got a ￡500 sponsorship from the Adelphi Dance Hall to stage a weekend of jazz.

31 Almost every Fringe show staged at Edinbrugh loses money.

32 Performers at this year's International Festival will be ferried around the city in a fleet of 13 Renault Espaces.

33 Christian Slater was sick with chicken pox before performing in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He'd missed two weeks of rehearsals, and had never been on set. But, in his first performance, he didn't miss a line. When he came off stage, he said to one of his fellow actors: "I knew my lines. What the f*** were you doing?"

34 The fireworks which close the Festival will use 3.5 tonnes of explosives.

35 In 1963, two members of the Festival were prosecuted for indecency. At John Calder's Play of Happenings a nude model, Anna Kesseler, was wheeled across the organ gallery on a trolley - it received more coverage from a section of the press than any preceding Festival event. Calder and Kesseler found themselves in the dock shortly afterwards.

36 Each year, about 100 million people watch the Tattoo on TV.

37 The Edinburgh People's Theatre is the Fringe's longest running company, having put on a show every year since 1959. This year they will be presenting Stooshie at the Store, a pioneering work by Irene Beaver.

38 36 per cent of all shows at the Edinburgh Fringe are world premieres.

39 In 2000, a fatwa was issued against playwright Terence McNally, by the Shariah Court of the UK. His production of Corpus Christi, which depicts a gay Jesus, offended Christians, and, it seems, a few Muslims too.

40 The Fringe is known for its eccentric venues but, in 2003, it set new standards of weirdness, when shows were staged in a public toilet, a Ford Cortina, a lift, and up a step-ladder.

41 In 1959, a plane carrying costumes for Jerome Robbins' Ballets USA crashed on its way to Edinburgh. Officials eventually managed to persuade a dress shop, W Mutrie, to open very early and kit out the dancers so the show went on that night.

42 When Sean Connery cruises into town for this year's Film Festival, he can expect a good reception. When last there in 1996, to promote Dragonheart, locals and foreigners lined the streets to get a good look at the tanned uber-Scot.

43 The Edinburgh Mela festival, which celebrates multi-culturalism, is now in its 12th year. In 2005, over 60,000 people attended, eating 180,000 samosas between them.

44 The first performance at the Festival, on 24 August 1947, was L'orchestre des Concerts Colonne's Haydn "Surprise" Symphony No 94; Schumann's Symphony No 4; and Franck's Symphony in D Minor.

45 For the past three years, the Fringe has sold over a million tickets.

46 Rosselini's Paisa was the first film shown at the Film Festival.

47 Mick Jagger loved Albert Watson's photo of his face morphed with a leopard's at the 2005 arts festival and wanted to use it on a Stones album. But, by the time he phoned to buy it, Watson had sent the image to Rolling Stone magazine, which used it on their cover. Jagger was furious.

48 The Edinburgh Police delegate special "Shoplifting Squads" to counter crime during the August invasion.

49 When the Reduced Shakespeare Company first arrived in Edinburgh in 1987, their three-week run sold out in two days.

50 Frankfurt Opera's production of Prokoviev's The Fiery Angel was the talk of the worthies before the 1970 Festival, as its last act included an orgy, with half-naked nuns. Big-wigs, including the Lord Provost, flew to Frankfurt to see this filth before allowing it to be shown. But, having been wined and dined, least two of the panel fell asleep before the offending orgy. The Fiery Angel was given a seal of approval.

51 The 2006 Fringe will feature one massive new venue - the E4 Udderbelly - a 322-seater auditorium shaped like an upside-down cow.

52 In 2004, Dame Muriel Spark, then 86, made her only appearance at the Book Festival. Tickets for her talk sold out in less than two hours.

53 177 shows at the 2006 Fringe are free.

54 When Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu won Best Newcomer's Award for Amores Perros in 2000, he paid the ultimate tribute to his host city. His kids, he said, thought they were in Disneyland, because of the castle.

55 The first foreign regiment (apart from the English) to take part in the Tattoo was the Band of the Royal Netherlands Grenadiers in 1952. Since then 29 others have been involved.

56 Last year, the Film Festival ate itself, when a film about the Edinburgh premiered. Its name: Festival.

57 Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett first starred together in the hugely popular Beyond the Fringe revue show in 1960. Despite its name, the show was part of the main Festival.

58 70 per cent of visitors to the Tattoo are not Scottish.

59 In 1983, the late comic legend Malcolm Hardee became irritated with the noise of the avant-garde performer Eric Bogosian, whose show, was on next door to his own. He drove a tractor, naked, through a hole in the canvas separating them, right over Bogosian's stage.

60 Odd Man Out, which was a huge hit in the Film Festival's debut season in 1947, will close this year's festival.

This is an edited version of an article first published in The Independent. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of Independent News & Media.

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