Short answers, pulled from the story.
Admission to Griffith Observatory has been free since its opening on the 14th of May 1935, as directed by its benefactor Griffith J. Griffith in his will. Griffith wanted astronomy to be accessible to the general public, not restricted to scientists.
More than 9 million people have looked through the 12-inch Zeiss refracting telescope at Griffith Observatory since 1935, making it the most viewed telescope in the world.
Griffith Observatory opened on the 14th of May 1935, as the country's third planetarium. It logged more than 13,000 visitors in its first five days of operation.
More than forty films have used Griffith Observatory as a location, from The Phantom Empire in 1935 to Family Switch in 2023. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) used the building in two sequences and helped establish it as an international emblem of Los Angeles. Other productions include The Terminator (1984), Back to the Future (1985), and La La Land (2016).
The Big Picture is a 150-foot by 20-foot photograph mounted in the Depths of Space Hall, depicting a portion of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. It was captured over 11 nights using the 48-inch Samuel Oschin telescope at Palomar Mountain at an angular scale of 0.1 degree per foot.
The Tesla coil at Griffith Observatory, labeled GPO-1, was built in 1910 by Earle Ovington. It was donated to the observatory in 1937 and restored by staff member Leon Hall with help from Kenneth Strickfaden, who designed the electrical effects for Frankenstein (1931). The chief engineer of the General Electric Company estimated it discharged at least 1.3 million volts.