Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (167 page)

OCTOBER 4

1883
T
HE ORIGINAL
O
RIENT
E
XPRESS
runs for the first time, from Paris to the Romanian city of Giurgiu. Ah, glamorous Giurgiu.

EXPRESS YOURSELF

1.
What director’s first theatrical film was
The Sugarland Express
?

2.
What future showman was a rider for the Pony Express in 1860?

3.
What unusual item do the cast members of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
Starlight Express
wear throughout the play?

4.
What question from American Express ads was first asked by actor Norman Fell?

5.
Midnight Express
is set in a prison in what country?

6.
What U.S. metropolis’s daily paper is the
Express-News
?

7.
In a nod to a Frank Sinatra film, what baseball pitcher was nicknamed “the Express”?

8.
What experimental writer’s “Cut-Up Trilogy” ended with 1964’s
Nova Express
?

9.
What tiny item does the protagonist of
The Polar Express
choose as a Christmas gift?

10.
What quarterback signed what was then the largest contract in sports history in 1984 with the USFL’s Los Angeles Express?

1959
A
LLEN
K
APROW’S PERFORMANCE ART
series 18
Happenings in 6 Parts
begins at New York’s Reuben Gallery. This was the first “Happening” of 1960s pop art—and it freaks me out!

POP GOES THE EASEL

What pop artists made their names with these favorite subjects?

Easy

1.
Blown-up comic panels

2.
Campbell’s soup cans

3.
L.A. swimming pools

Harder

1.
Flags and bull’s-eyes

2.
The word “LOVE”

3.
Giant soft sculpture

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
The “Radiant Baby”

2.
Rows of diner baked goods

3.
“Combines”

1986
D
AN
R
ATHER IS ATTACKED
and beaten on Park Avenue by two assailants repeating the mysterious question “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”

WHAT’S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH?

No, you tell me. Give the frequency of these events.

1.
The U.S. Census

2.
The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, for most of the year

3.
The Ryder Cup

4.
The Economist
being published

5.
Pon farr,
the Vulcan mating urge

6.
Old Faithful erupting, on average

7.
High tide, most places

8.
Presidential elections in Mexico

9.
Muslims’
salah
prayers

10.
A solstice

OCTOBER 5

1916
T
HE
K
ARABOVSK
B
RIDGE
over the Amur River opens, completing the 5,800-mile Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to the Sea of Japan, the world’s longest rail route.

EYE OF THE TAIGA

1.
What name did Alexander Solzhenitsyn coin for the Stalin-era prison camps dotted like islands across Siberia?

2.
What lake, the world’s deepest, is called the Blue Eye of Siberia?

3.
What happened at Tunguska, Siberia, at 7:17 a.m. on June 30, 1908?

4.
What movie’s climax is the retrieval of the second half of the “Triangle of Light” from a ruined Siberian city?

5.
Who was Dima, discovered in northeastern Siberian permafrost in 1977?

1949
A
MERICAN
H
ELENE
H
ANFF
sends her first letter to Frank Doel of London’s antiquarian bookshop Marks & Co. This kicks off a twenty-year transatlantic friendship, immortalized in the book, play, and film
84 Charing Cross Road.
Sadly, Marks & Co. is gone today, and 84 Charing Cross Road is an ugly wine bar franchise.

FAKE BOOKS

Do you know your fictional bookshops as well as your real ones?

1.
Meg Ryan’s children’s bookstore in
You’ve Got Mail
is named for the 1940 comedy on which
You’ve Got Mail
is based. What’s the name of her bookstore?

2.
What fictional hero does his book shopping at Flourish & Blotts?

3.
Who’s the only actor ever to win an Oscar for portraying a bookseller?

4.
What comedian played a bookstore owner in the sitcom
These Friends of Mine,
before the show was renamed after her?

5.
What kind of specialty bookshop did Hugh Grant own in the 1999 film
Notting Hill
?

2004
R
ODNEY
D
ANGERFIELD HAS TUGGED
on his too-tight collar for the last time, passing away after heart surgery. His tombstone reads “
RODNEY DANGERFIELD—THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD.

GENTLEMAN COLLARS

1.
Which president has his full collar and lapels, and not just his face, carved into Mount Rushmore?

2.
For what world leader is the sherwani jacket, with its characteristic upturned collar, usually named?

3.
According to ads, what product targeted “ring around the collar”?

4.
Daniel Whitney is the real name of what Blue Collar Comedy Tour star?

5.
What Japanese maestro conducts in a turtleneck rather than a shirt and bow tie?