Today is October 28th, which means there are 51 days left until December 18th, the official release date of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. However, since I will be seeing it on December 17th, there are 50 days left until I see the seventh chapter of a film series that has shaped my geeky/nerdy life. As a result, I will be posting one random piece of Star Wars trivia a day until release date. Let's see how many I can do until I run out. Also, this blog will be updated daily (I hope) and I won't be posting new posts, just editing this one to add more trivia. No need to clog up GB's servers, right? Anyway...

50 days to go: The lightsaber props from the original Star Wars were fashioned out of flash attachments for old cameras, namely Graflex brand flash attachments. People in the camera collecting community hate Star Wars fans who bought up (and modified) most of the old Graflex flash attachments. Oops.

49 days to go: None of the following words are said aloud at any point by any character in the original Star Wars trilogy: AT-AT, AT-ST, Sith, Palpatine, Ewok, Y-Wing, A-Wing, B-Wing, Lobot, trash compactor (though garbage smasher is), Organa (Leia's adopted last name), Jar Jar Binks and Gungan (hehe).

The word X-Wing is said exactly once, by an Imperial officer in The Empire Strikes Back, and TIE fighter is said once by Lando during the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi (they are referred to as Imperial fighters or just plain fighters quite a lot though). Cloud City is only said once as well, by C-3PO, when telling the tale of the previous movies to the Ewok tribe.

48 days to go: In the original trilogy, Darth Vader is primarily portrayed by David Prowse (who, at 6'5" made him very imposing) and his voice is provided by James Earl Jones. Despite this fact, the two of them have never met in person, mostly at the insistence of Jones, who maintains that he is simply a special effect and the true performance of the character is that of Prowse. In fact, James Earl Jones wasn't even credited (again, at his own request) when Star Wars was originally released in theaters.

47 days to go: Exactly two actors appear in all 6 (soon to be all 7) Star Wars films. One of them is Kenny Baker, who stands 3'8" tall. He portrays R2-D2 in scenes where the little droid appears to be dancing or rotating his head while standing still. He essentially provides R2 with emotion where a remote controlled robot wouldn't be able to. He also portrays an Ewok named Paploo in Return of the Jedi (the one who steals a speeder bike to distract the guards at the shield generator).

46 days to go: The other actor who appears in all 6 (soon to be 7) Star Wars movies is Anthony Daniels, who portrays the protocol droid C-3PO. He also has a cameo out of his gold metal skin in Attack of the Clones as a bar patron on Coruscant; he turns to see Obi-Wan defending himself from a bounty hunter.

45 days to go: The Tusken Raider who attacks Luke in the original Star Wars is legendary stuntman Peter Diamond, who also performed stunt work in Raiders of the Lost Ark and was one of two sword masters working on The Princess Bride. For the scene in Star Wars, he only raised his Gaffi stick once, but the editor rocked the image back and forth to make him raise it three times.

44 days to go: The original design for Han Solo's ship, the Millennium Falcon, was used as the Rebel ship seen at the beginning of the original Star Wars. It's current iconic design was bass on a hamburger with a bite taken out of it and an olive beside it as the cockpit. Seriously.

43 days to go: The destruction of Alderaan by the first Death Star in the original Star Wars is a truly monumental event in the galaxy. However, the amount of energy required to destroy an Earth-like planet has been calculated. It's several orders of magnitude more than The Sun puts out. You'd actually need several main sequence stars to generate that much energy. If you care to read the relevant math, have a look at the link here.

42 days to go: George Lucas' pet dog, an Alaskan malamute, was the primary inspiration for Chewbacca. The dog would sit in the passenger seat of his pickup truck and be his ersatz co-pilot. The dog, named Indiana, is also the reason that archeologist Henry Jones, Jr. is known by that nickname.

More trivia coming soon!