Heigh-ho, heigh-ho...today we celebrate the anniversary of the launch of the animated Walt Disney classic, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Adapted from the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale, it premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles on December 21, 1937. It went into general release in the United States on February 4, 1938. And, historically, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first full-length animated film.

Despite concern from the film industry that something full-length in animation would not hold the audience's attention, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was both a critical and commercial success. It was the highest grossing film at the box office of 1938 (with international earnings of more than $8 million during its initial release versus a $1.5 million budget). It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Aladdin in 1993. And Snow White revolutionized filmmaking and established the foundation for the animation industry.

In honor of 87 years of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, here are 10 interesting factoids about the animated classic.

1) Snow White was nominated for Best Musical Score at the Academy Awards in 1938, but lost to the musical comedy One Hundred Men and a Girl with Deanna Durbin.

The next year, Walt Disney was awarded an honorary Oscar for Snow White. This award was unique, consisting of one normal-sized, plus seven miniature Oscar statuettes. They were presented to Disney by Shirley Temple.

2) One of the technical innovations in animation pioneered by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the technique known as the multiplane camera, which creates the illusion of depth by moving multiple layers of artwork past the lens at different speeds and distances. The Disney studio experimented with this technique in animated short The Old Mill, a Silly Symphony, released just a month before Snow White's.

3) Walt Disney had originally planned to produce Snow White as a Silly Symphony short, but reconsidered, believing that the story had enough potential for a feature film adaptation.

4) Snow White held the title of the highest-grossing sound film until Gone with the Wind in 1939. The lifetime earnings from re-releases bring its total box office gross to over an estimated $418 million when adjusted for inflation.

5) The name of the seven dwarfs are Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, and Dopey. But other suggested names included Hickey, Gabby, Nifty, Sniffy, Lazy, Puffy, Stuffy, Shorty, Wheezy, Burpy, and Dizzy.

6) Some people had referred to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as "Disney's Folly" during production because they thought it would fail.

7) Walt Disney wanted to keep Snow White's voice as a special one-time sound, and held the actress who voiced her, Adriana Caselotti, to a very strict contract. Except for a tiny bit part in The Wizard of Oz, and an uncredited role singing in Martini's bar in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, she never had a real singing part in a movie again.

8) Lucille La Verne, who voiced both the calculating Queen and her wicked alter ego (the Hag), differentiated between the two voices by removing her dentures when voicing the latter. After Snow White, she retired from acting and opened a nightclub.

9) In 1989, the United States Library of Congress deemed Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it as one of the first 25 films for preservation in the National Film Registry. In 2008, the American Film Institute named Snow White as the greatest American animated film of all time.

10) Disney's take on the Snow White fairy tale has had a significant cultural effect, resulting in theme park attractions, a video game, a Broadway musical, countless memorabilia items, and an upcoming live action film with Rachel Zegler as Snow White.