Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (154 page)

SEPTEMBER 14

1898
T
WO TRAVELING SALESMAN
meet by chance at the Central House hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin, and decide to begin an organization for Christian business travelers. The result of their encounter is the Gideons, the group responsible for countless hotel room Bibles.

PAST BIBLE HEROES

Who performed these biblical miracles? (Hint: we will not accept “God.”)

Easy

1.
Parting the Red Sea

2.
Surviving the lions’ den

3.
Feeding the 5,000

4.
Conquering Jericho

Harder

1.
Destroying Dagon’s temple

2.
Interpreting Pharaoh’s dream

3.
Killing the priests of Baal

4.
Surviving the fiery furnace

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Healing Naaman

2.
The raising of Tabitha

3.
Keeping his wool dry

4.
Surviving a snakebite

1954
T
HE VICTIM OF INDUSTRY
pressure and government censorship, EC Comics announces that it’s folding its flagship horror and sci-fi magazines, a line that produced such classics as
Weird Science
and
Tales from the Crypt.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

How much do you know about stories told from…?

1.
What’s the name of the dead narrator on ABC’s
Desperate Housewives
?

2.
What novel begins, in the past tense, “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie”?

3.
From what unusual location does the late Joe Gillis narrate
Sunset Boulevard
?

4.
Who won a $50 prize for his 1833 story “MS. Found in a Bottle,” narrated by the victim of a shipwreck?

5.
What movie ends with narrator Lester Burnham learning that the moment of his death “isn’t a second at all—it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time”?

1977
C
ONTESTANT
Y
OLANDA
B
OWSLEY,
called to “come on down!” on
The Price Is Right,
becomes the victim of an infamous “wardrobe malfunction” when her tube top slips a crucial four inches.

BREAST IN SHOW

1.
Who designed the famous conical bra Madonna wore during her 1990 tour?

2.
What color ribbon is worn to promote breast cancer awareness?

3.
Because of an oft-cited resemblance to mermaids, what word do we derive from the Carib Indian word for “breast”?

4.
What bare-breasted figure is “Leading the People” in Delacroix’s painting of the 1830 July Revolution?

5.
Jennifer Love Hewitt said that she named her breasts after what film’s two title characters?

SEPTEMBER 15

1938
L
ÉON
T
HEREMIN, INVENTOR
of the eerie-sounding namesake electronic instrument, leaves New York for Russia at the height of his fame…and isn’t seen again in the U.S. for fifty-three years. He was imprisoned by Stalin and spent the intervening decades designing bugs for the KGB.

CAN’T STOP THE MUSIC

1.
What small instrument has a name that means, in its native language, “jumping flea”?

2.
As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing,
or
Twelfth Night
—what Shakespeare comedy begins, “If music be the food of love, play on!”

3.
For what musical instrument was the capo invented?

4.
What are the only two states with musical instruments pictured on their state quarters?

5.
What two compositions do Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia play on the giant piano keyboard in
Big
?

6.
What top secret 2001 product was code-named “Dulcimer” prior to its launch?

7.
What kind of instrument did Laurens Hammond invent in 1934?

8.
Piano, violin, or clarinet—what instrument was the Suzuki method first invented to teach?

9.
What Australian actress named her first child Banjo?

10.
What instrument was played by Big Walter Horton, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Sugar Blue?

1973
A
RCHIE
G
RIFFIN OF
O
HIO
S
TATE
begins his amazing thirty-one-game streak of 100-yard rushing games. He will win Heisman Trophies in
both
of his next two seasons, making him the only repeat winner in the award’s history.

TWO-TIMERS

1.
Who’s the only chief executive who will appear on two of the U.S. Mint’s new series of presidential $1 coins?

2.
What’s the only city that has twice been home to MTV’s
The Real World
?

3.
What literary prize are J. M. Coetzee and Peter Carey the only people to win twice?

4.
Who was the last person to lose two straight U.S. presidential elections as a major-party candidate?

5.
Before Tiger Woods, who was the only golfer to complete a career Grand Slam twice?

6.
Who was the first two-time
People
Sexiest Man Alive, though he shared the first award, in 1993, with his then-wife?

7.
Who’s the only person to win the Indy 500 in both front-and rear-engined cars?

8.
What real-life figure did actor Gael García Bernal portray twice on film, once in a 2002 miniseries and once in a 2004 film?

9.
Who won the NL Comeback Player of the Year award twice, in 1993 and 2000?

10.
Three songs made
Rolling Stone
’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in two different versions. Name the Carl Perkins, Bob Dylan, and Aerosmith songs in question.