I was Petty Officer of the Month in VS-41 back in late 1975. My name was in the base paper, and I got a plaque, which is somewhere in the house, probably in a box. And that’s about as famous as I ever got.
I was one of the chess players who appeared on Derren Brown’s TV show, where he beat 9 top players (including 4 grandmasters) 5-4.
Of course it was a trick - but an incredibly difficult one to perform.
Derren arranged us facing outwards in a large circle, so we couldn’t see each other. As he says in the video, he remembered the moves played at each board, then walked round the circle to play those moves at each corresponding table.
Of course we knew exactly what was happening, but it was still a real feat.
Derren had to precisely remember groups of 4 chess moves and do this about 60 times - which he did in one single take lasting about 3 hours.
I’m a FIDE Master with 45 years chess experience and I’d struggle to do that!
The numbers thing was an envelope switch, which he executed perfectly (even though I was watching for it.)
Finally Derren was a gracious host - he stayed behind at the end to thank us and signed autographs for some of my pupils.
I have two moments of semi-fame:
After working for a company for over 7 years, I became pretty well known to the customers. This was one of those companies that had a healthy and active user group, and we had bi-annual user group meetings. The last one that I attended, when I got there people were clamoring to see me and ask me questions (about the products). It felt kind of nice to be such a rock star. (Then I had a falling out with management and left.)
Also a few years I mistakenly bought tickets for the Spamalot show in Broadway, New York instead of Washington DC. Hubby and I figured, what the heck, let’s make it a weekend, so we did. At the end of the show, guess who was discovered to have been sitting on the Holy Grail the entire time? And got dragged up on stage so that King Arthur could thank me and present me with the Best Peasant Award. That was so mind-blowing that my brain shut down and I just kept repeating “thank you” over and over again like a lame-o. I’ve done high school theater, so it wasn’t too foreign, but when I was up there looking out at the house my brain yelled “Holy shit, I’m on Broadway!”. It was great! 
The first time I gave blood, I was interviewed by the news.
A number of times.
First, when I survived a small plane crash, it made news in our local area.
Second, when I nearly drowned while trying to rescue a child (who unfortunately did drown), it made the news from Chicago to Green Bay and a few other spots outside the Midwest.
I’ve also made the news a few other times, as a doctor who was ‘bad’ because I had a history of alcoholism and addiction (this was reported years after I’d sobered up) and also as a doctor who was ‘good’ because I’d sobered up. Go figure.
I was interviewed by a Dallas Morning News staff writer back in January 2004 about the dim job prospects for recent MBA grads. I was quoted in an article immediately after graduation, and what I had said was that nobody had fessed up to having a job lined up at graduation, but that might just be because nobody was talking, and that a large percentage of us were going on to get PhDs or second MS degrees anyway.
It got paraphrased in the actual article as “At graduation, he says, no one in his class of about 40 — not even the best students — had a job.” which wasn’t exactly what I had said.
Anyway, the article got picked up by a whole bunch of papers outside of the Dallas area, and is still pretty easily googleable (there’s even a PDF of the original article with my picture in it) if you know what to look for.
Back in the year 2000 I published an article in a trade magazine. I received a few phone calls congratulating me the first day the article appeared. It’s been downhill ever since.
A couple posts I’ve made on a comics community have been passed on by the creator they were about - Neil Gaiman recently tweeted a link to a post I did on the pre-Sandman histories of several of that series major (and minor) characters recently, and Gail Simone posted a link to a series I did about Black Alice to another community some years back.
Not 15 minutes, but two 15 second slots. The first was a grad student (not mine) was deported to his native Cuba. He was alleged (correctly, AFAIK) to have acted as a courier between a Cuban spy and the Cuban consulate in Montreal. Some news hawk came around our building with a TV camera and interviewed me. They asked if I had ever seen suspicious characters wandering around. Of course, this is a math dept. It went out on the national news that night.
The second time was when our provincial premier pulled off some bit of boneheaded cowardice. As I was walking down the street heading towards the train station, a news guy and camerman stopped and asked me if said premier had any balls. No balls at all, not a trace, I said. This also went out over national TV. I have no idea why but the station was based in Calgary.
I’m reasonably well known in my martial arts circles and have been interviewed on local TV a couple of times. But recently, I had a role in a feature length film which will be hitting the theaters after it does the film festival circuit.
Joy Comes In The Morning is about cancer survival. It is based on the book by Rebecca Shepard. A close friend of mine had one of the survivor roles. She plays a martial arts teacher who had cancer, was free for two years, then relapsed. She asked if they could use my school to shoot in and of course, I said yes. I wound up with a small, uncredited speaking role (playing myself), but the school got a thank you in the credits.
I was interviewed by the producer during the shooting. If you are interested in it:
As a result of an discussion here on Atheism, I somehow wound up getting a call from ABC about a “Atheism in America” special… and this was back in 2000 or so. My interview resulted in some quotes running on ABC News TV and on the ABC News website, followed by commentary about my quotes and some others.
.
I was on TV for a show called “Check Please!” here in Chicago, which is a roundtable discussion type show with three ordinary people recommending a restaurant, and the others visit and talk about it. After that episode aired, I actually had a couple of strangers recognize me from the show. It was a little odd.
I won (my class) in a National Hare n’ Hound, and got trophies in several others.
I won 5 consecutive local dart championships.
That accounts to about 3 minutes of fame.
I guess I can add that I’ve had my picture (inadvertently) published in multiple media outlets related to a criminal matter I worked on. I was even captioned as “unidentified” in one of them, which has become the stuff of legend in my workplace.
I published a research paper in my younger days that got (and still gets) a lot of attention. Huge number of citations. The discovery has my name on it. A vast number of Google hits. A Wikipedia page page. Etc.
That and a nickel …
I interviewed Pete Townshend on behalf of a fan message board; he posted the interview on his website and mentioned me by name. On a similar note, the program for the Who Hits 50! Tour includes one of my photos and my name is in the credits.
I have actively tried to stay out of the spotlight. Once I appeared on the cover of our very local weekly paper when I helped deliver a baby.
I remember a thread about that. You should be very proud of yourself. Many, would not even try.
Nationally, being on Jeopardy - which was 30 minutes, counting commercials.
In my field a lot more than that.
Thanks. I’m glad I tried. I’m at peace with my lack of success. To not have tried would have been worse for me.