The term was coined by American writer Norman Mailer in his 1973 biography of Marilyn Monroe.[4] Mailer described factoids as "facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper",[5] and created the word by combining the word fact and the ending -oid to mean "similar but not the same". The Washington Times described Mailer's new word as referring to "something that looks like a fact, could be a fact, but in fact is not a fact".[6]