Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (16 page)

JANUARY 29

1802
J
OHN
B
ECKLEY IS APPOINTED
the first librarian of Congress. This was a real cushy job back then, since there were only 740 books in the Library of Congress.

SHUSH LIFE

1.
The first name of the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System was what famous author’s last name?

2.
Mohammed Khatami is both a former national librarian and a former president of what nation?

3.
Rupert Giles was the librarian-mentor on what TV hit?

4.
What composer of the
Symphonie Fantastique
made his living as the librarian of the Paris Conservatoire?

5.
What famous fictional librarian’s last name was Paroo?

1886
K
ARL
B
ENZ PATENTS
the first gas-powered automobile, which he calls the “Motorwagen.” The car was so difficult to maneuver that it repeatedly crashed into walls while Benz test-drove it, to the amusement of onlookers.

DRIVING TEST

1.
What car lost 96 percent of its sales in the four years following the publication of Ralph Nader’s
Unsafe at Any Speed
?

2.
From 1995 almost until it was discontinued in 2004, what was the only U.S. car model to share its name with an element of the periodic table?

3.
What Rolling Stones hit begins appropriately, on the album version, with the sound of car horns?

4.
Whose look-alike archenemy was named KARR?

5.
What company takes its name from the Japanese word for the constellation Pleiades?

6.
What was the only children’s story ever published by James Bond creator Ian Fleming?

7.
What was the name of Henry Ford’s only son?

8.
In what model of SUV is Krayzie Bone “Ridin’,” according to the second verse of the 2006 Chamillionaire hit?

9.
With over 5.3 million sold since 1959, what’s by far the most successful British car of all time?

10.
In what country was the last original Volkswagen Beetle produced, in July 2003?

1995
T
HE
S
AN
F
RANCISCO
49
ERS
become the first five-time Super Bowl champs.

FIVE-TIMERS CLUB

1.
Who was married five times, though she had children only with her second husband and her third, Sid Luft?

2.
What’s being released five times a year from January 1999 to fall 2008?

3.
What horror movie title character will appear if you chant his name five times in a mirror?

4.
Whose album
Some Hearts
is the fastest-selling debut in country history, having gone five times platinum by 2007?

5.
Whom did George Steinbrenner hire and fire five separate times?

JANUARY 30

1958
D
ALLAS’S
L
OVE
F
IELD
introduces the world’s first two-way moving sidewalk.

WALK THIS WAY

1.
What songwriter of “A Boy Named Sue” also wrote the children’s poems in
Where the Sidewalk Ends
?

2.
What does a “screever” do on a sidewalk?

3.
What
Three Faces of Eve
star got the first star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame?

4.
What song, Status Quo’s biggest hit ever, was originally intended as the B-side of the long-forgotten “Gentleman Joe’s Sidewalk Café”?

5.
Who was stabbed on the sidewalk outside her Queens apartment in 1964, though her neighbors didn’t report the incident for half an hour?

1968
T
HE
V
IETNAMESE LUNAR NEW YEAR
holiday of Tet marks the beginning of the largest Viet Cong offensive of the war.

COMING AND GOING

Give these answers that are palindromes, just like “Tet.”

1.
In the Bible, who is the mother of the prophet Samuel?

2.
What was developed thanks to Christian Hülsmeyer’s 1904 invention of the “telemobiloscope”?

3.
What language is spoken in the Pacific capital city of Yaren?

4.
What magazine gives out the Style Awards every October?

5.
In 2001, who gave the first concert in Oslo’s Vallhall football arena?

6.
An “umiak” is a larger version of what?

7.
Who joined Alicia Keys on the 2002 hit “Gangsta Lovin’”?

8.
After Toyota’s Corolla, what coupe introduced in 1972 is the second oldest Japanese car model still on the market?

9.
What’s the name of the inflatable automatic pilot in
Airplane!
?

10.
Kirk Van Houten on
The Simpsons
and Monica Geller on
Friends
have both owned a bed shaped like what?

1995
A
TV G
UIDE
SURVEY
finds that the most trusted media personality is…still Walter Cronkite, more than a decade since he left the CBS anchor desk.

A MATTER OF TRUST

1.
What company advises, “Trust your car to the star”?

2.
What kind of trust is a REIT?

3.
Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Palau—in 1994, what tiny Pacific nation became the last U.N. Trust Territory to gain independence?

4.
Whose song “Clubland” begins his 1981 album
Trust
?

5.
What is unusual about the “In God We Trust” motto on the U.S. Mint’s recent presidential dollar coins?