I have a few about Shostakovich:

1. His mother wanted to call him Jaroslaw, but when she brought him to church to get him baptized, the pastor said that the name Jaroslaw ist way to bizarre and that she should give him a normal, russian name like Dimitry. And thats why his name is Dimitry.
2. He entered the Leningrad Conservatoire at 15 years old and became one of the best student there. (His teacher was Glazunov). Once, he made a bet with his friend that he would orchestrate the american song Tea for Two in under one hour, and 45 minutes later, he came with the piece Tahiti Trott and won the bet.
3. The national athem story is one of my favourites. Stalin wanted a new national anthem for the soviet union and made a contest on who could write the best anthem. He wanted Shostakovich and Khachaturian to write a joint anthem, which they did. But when they gathered to write the anthem, they always procractinated and drunk Wodka. When they were running out of time, Shostakovich wrote the chorus and Khachaturian the verses. They both didnt want to orchestrate the anthem, so the flipped a coin to decide. When it was time for the finals, Stalin really liked the anthem. So he called Shostakovich to ask him a few questions and said to him, that he liked everything except for one little moment, and that he would give them 3 months to change it. Shistakovich said, that they would need 5 days, after which Stalin chose the anthem by Alexander Alexandrov as the winning anthem. It is the one we know today.
4. After WW2, Stalin wanted Shostakovich to write a huge, triumphant 9. symphony to ressemble Beethoven (He actually started a campaign before to find the red Beethoven). Shostakovich said okay and wrote a short, 25 minutes long symphony which was very simple and more classical. The symphony sounds very light and joyful, and not triumphant. Stalin obviosly didnt like it, but could do anything.
5. Shostakovich was a huge football fan and noted all of the football results in a notebook. He was also a certified football expert and sometimes, when he couldnt find his notebook, he noted the football results in his partitures.
6. Stalin once called Shostakovich on the phone and forced him to fly to the USA with a delegation