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"Without you, I'd be the publisher of a literary magazine," Hugh Hefner once said to a group of playmates at a Playboy reunion.
Was it a nod to the infamous excuse: "I read Playboy for the articles"? Or did he truly mean it?
In the wake of Hefner's death, a Twitter user joked the 91-year-old Playboy founder was responsible for generations of young men locking themselves in bathrooms for long periods.
But it's possible that during those sessions spent gazing at nudes, those young men also read, or at least encountered, works by Truman Capote, Roald Dahl, Jack Kerouac and Margaret Atwood, who all contributed to the magazine.
Or read interviews with historic figures like Fidel Castro, John Lennon and Martin Luther King.
Some Twitter users swore that was the case for them in their tributes to Hefner.
The articles you didn't know about
In 1965, Playboy published the longest interview Dr King ever granted to a publication.
The civil rights leader recalled the first time he became aware of racial prejudice — that moment took place on a bus.
"We stood up in the aisle for the 90 miles to Atlanta.," he told Playboy.
"That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life."
Months before Lennon was assassinated in 1980, he and Yoko Ono talked to Playboy, and one of his final interviews was published in the magazine in 1981.
Asked if he agreed, "the Beatles created the best rock 'n roll?", Lennon replied, "I don't".
In 1985, Fidel Castro told Playboy in an interview, "I meet people who I immediately know are going to die young".
In a separate interview with the magazine, he claimed multiple times he had never told a lie.
Kerouac, Capote and Dahl
In 1959, an opinion piece published in Playboy by American author and poet Kerouac explained the origins of the Beat Generation — a literary and social movement that explored nonconformity and social revolution in post WWII America. Playboy also reviewed Kerouac's On the Road in 1957.
Another American great, Capote, penned an article titled Remember Tennessee after his friend and playwright Tennessee Williams died in 1983.
It ran alongside a portrait by Andy Warhol, who was a friend of both men and fellow contributor.
Canadian novelist and poet Atwood had more than one story published in Playboy, including The Bog Man — a progressive piece of literature about a woman who uncovers a 2,000-year-old corpse.
And what was children's author Dahl doing in the mix? He wrote stories for adults too.
Switch Bitch, a collection of four short stories written by Dhal about sex and deception, were published in Playboy between 1965 and 1975.
One of those short stories, The Visitor, chronicled the life of Uncle Oswald, "the greatest fornicator of all time".
In 2015, Playboy announced it would stop publishing the "passe" full-blown nudes so readily available on the internet nowadays, and revamp the magazine by continuing its tradition of publishing investigative journalism, interviews and fiction alongside "articles" of women in provocative poses, just less pornographic.
Topics: books-literature, arts-and-entertainment, pornography, united-states