Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (117 page)

JULY 16

1868
W
ILKIE COLLINS’S
T
HE
M
OONSTONE
, about Sergeant Cuff’s search for the missing title diamond, is published in London. Today’s it’s called the first English-language detective novel.

WATCHING THE DETECTIVES

What author created these sleuths?

Easy

1.
Miss Marple

2.
Perry Mason

3.
Mike Hammer

4.
Sherlock Holmes

5.
Philip Marlowe

Harder

1.
Nero Wolfe

2.
Father Brown

3.
Dr. Kay Scarpetta

4.
Travis McGee

5.
The Continental Op

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
James Qwilleran

2.
Roderick Alleyn

3.
Adam Dalgliesh

4.
Lord Peter Wimsey

5.
Dr. Gideon Fell

1916
P
ICASSO’S
C
UBIST MASTERPIECE
Les demoiselles d’Avignon
ignites a furor when it’s first exhibited in Paris. (Today it hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York—it
didn’t
go down on the
Titanic,
no matter what James Cameron may tell you.)

AVENUE CUBE

A different kind of Cubist quiz.

1.
Who was the lead singer of the Sugarcubes?

2.
What was the brand name of the 4 × 4 sequel to the 3 × 3 Rubik’s Cube?

3.
What pastime is the subject of the Christian Slater movie
Gleaming the Cube
?

4.
What’s the smallest number, other than 0 and 1, that’s both a perfect square and a perfect cube?

5.
What replaced the GameCube on November 19, 2006?

1995
A
SCIENCE TEXTBOOK
becomes the first item ever sold on a newly opened website called Amazon.com.

NO MORE PENCILS, NO MORE BOOKS

Five questions on textbooks. Please write your answers on a separate worksheet.

1.
Who first formulated the periodic table while writing the landmark 1870 chemistry textbook
Principles of Chemistry
?

2.
In 1936, Dick and Jane’s dog Spot (“See Spot run!”) was changed from a terrier into what newly popular breed?

3.
Whose military textbook
Infantry Attacks
was read, famously, by George Patton?

4.
What hit TV show has a title pronounced the same as—but spelled differently from—an 1858 book now in its thirty-ninth edition?

5.
What state’s board of education voted in November 2005 to teach intelligent design alongside biology textbooks?

JULY 17

1955
W
HEN
D
ISNEYLAND OPENS
, it’s the Unfinished-est Place on Earth. A plumbers’ strike means that the sweltering park has almost no drinking fountains, and the landscaping is still incomplete, so Walt tells gardeners to put fancy Latin labels on all the weeds.

FANTASY LANDS

Name the author who created…

Easy

1.
Oz

2.
Narnia

3.
Middle-Earth

4.
Wonderland

5.
Lilliput

Harder

1.
Neverland

2.
Gormenghast

3.
Earthsea

4.
Utopia

5.
Prydain

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Pellucidar

2.
Poictesme

3.
Alagaësia

4.
Fantastica

5.
Discworld

2006
A
MICROPHONE PICKS UP
George W. Bush greeting Prime Minister Tony Blair with a hearty “Yo, Blair!” at a G-8 conference in St. Petersburg.

TRANSATLANTICISM

Answers these questions about Anglo-American relations.

1.
What’s the only U.S. state with a Union Jack on its flag?

2.
In 2006, what omnipresent song became the first British single to top the U.S. charts in almost a decade?

3.
What movie depicts Harold Abrahams’s victory over heavily favored Americans Charlie Paddock and Jackson Scholz?

4.
Winston Churchill is believed to have invented the term “special relationship” for America’s ties to Britain, in the same Fulton, Missouri, speech more famous for coining what other phrase?

5.
What album track, never a Top Forty hit, was the first song the Beatles ever performed on their
Ed Sullivan Show
debut?

6.
Who’s the only American-born member of Monty Python?

7.
What U.S. state was named for the future James II of England?

8.
What U.S. TV hit was a transplant of the British sitcom
Till Death Us Do Part,
about Alf Garnett and his long-suffering wife, Else?

9.
What chemical element has an extra syllable in its more correct British pronunciation?

10.
What famous Briton with an American wife was the governor of the Bahamas during World War II?

11.
What Major League Soccer team signed David Beckham to a $50 million contract in 2007?

12.
Who’s the last British movie star ever to top the annual Quigley Poll of top U.S. box-office draws, in 1966 and 1967?

13.
What famous battle of the War of 1812 took place two weeks
after
the Treaty of Ghent had been signed, ending the war?

14.
What East Coast port is the largest U.S. city to share its name with a British county?

15.
What comic author, the epitome of Britishness, was accused of collaboration with the Nazis after World War II and so spent the last twenty years of his life a U.S. citizen?