This week Jay Leno passes his Tonight Show baton to Conan O’Brien.

Here’s some surprising random facts about Leno’s replacement, according to omgyahoo.com.

* In 1984, when Conan was a student at Harvard and president of the Harvard Lampoon, Burt Ward came to the school to give a lecture with his cape in hand. He arrived on campus to be greeted by “security guards” sent to “safeguard the costume.” But Burt realized he’d been taken for a ride when those same security guards burst into the middle of his speech, dimmed the lights and stole the costume. Conan held hostage negotiations with the actor the following day.

* Conan was a huge risk for NBC. Yes, he was funny and had written for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, but he wasn’t really a stand-up and hadn’t spent a lot of time in front of the camera. It’s a good thing for NBC that Lorne Michaels knows talent, because the gamble paid off.

* Conan decided he wanted to be an entertainer in grade school so he asked his parents if he could take tap dance lessons. After a considerable amount of begging, they signed him up with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson protégé Stanley Brown, who taught him how to tap.

* Before either of them were famous, Conan and Lisa Kudrow were a couple. They split up when Conan left L.A. for New York to host Late Night. It’s rumored that he pined for Kudrow for two years until she married Michel Stern in 1995. Conan met his wife, Liza, in 2000, but he and Kudrow are still friends.

* In 2005 Conan did a cameo in The White Stripes’ The Denial Twist after befriending them in a bowling alley in the late ’90s. They performed many times on his show and in a final farewell, Jack and Meg, who hadn’t played live together in almost two years, reunited on Conan’s last Late Night to perform We’re Going to Be Friends.