Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (170 page)

OCTOBER 10

1939
A
WOMAN NAMED
Eleanor Rigby dies in Liverpool at age 44. Her tombstone will be discovered decades later at Saint Peter’s Parish in Woolton, just a few feet from the spot where John Lennon first meets Paul McCartney—but there’s no evidence that this Eleanor actually inspired the song of the same name.

WHO ARE YOU? I REALLY WANNA KNOW

Answer these questions about people in songs.

1.
What state did Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” hail from?

2.
What title character do we meet down at the New Amsterdam striking up “a conversation with this black-haired flamenco dancer”?

3.
Whom did Lou Reed find “sweet,” Beck consider a “soldier,” and Perry Farrell quote as saying, “I’m done with Sergio. He treats me like a rag doll”?

4.
How old is ABBA’s “Dancing Queen”?

5.
What 1983 hit did Quincy Jones want to rename, fearing that everyone would assume the title character was the tennis superstar?

6.
What swashbuckling rogue from a 1921 novel does Freddie Mercury ask to “do the fandango”?

7.
What title character in a 1970 song is named for a moon princess in Persian poetry and based on George Harrison’s wife, Pattie?

8.
What’s the name of the girl to whom Bruce Springsteen insists he’s “Born to Run”?

9.
What title character of a 2000 hit has become hip-hop slang for an obsessive fanboy?

10.
What do these songs have in common: “Behind the Wall of Sleep” by the Smithereens, “Slow Turning” by John Hiatt, and “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone-Loc?

1961
T
HE FIRST EXPANSION DRAFT
in National League history stocks the Houston and New York Mets rosters. Among the selections are future manager of the year Don Zimmer and one-vote-away-from-the-Hall-of-Fame first baseman Gil Hodges.

EXPANSION DRAFT

Name these pairs of sports teams. In each pair, one team name can be spelled out (in order) in the letters of the longer team name.

1.
In 1988, Tom Chambers switched between what two teams as the first unrestricted free agent in NBA history?

2.
What two teams met in the World Series that featured Carlton Fisk’s dramatic game six home run?

3.
Grant Fuhr and Marc Denis, the top two goalies on the most-games-played-in-a-season list, set those records while playing for what teams?

4.
What two ABA teams applied to join the NBA in 1975 but were restrained from doing so by a court order?

1985
H
OOPS STAR
D
RAZEN
P
ETROVIC
scores a world record 112 points in a Yugoslavian League game against SMELT Olimpja.

INTERNATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION

In what foreign country were these NBA stars
born?

Easy

1.
Dirk Nowitzki

2.
Yao Ming

3.
Manu Ginobili

4.
Hakeem Olajuwon

Harder

1.
Steve Nash

2.
Patrick Ewing

3.
Pau Gasol

4.
Rik Smits

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Manute Bol

2.
Sarunas Marciulionis

3.
Vitaly Potapenko

4.
Michael Olowokandi

OCTOBER 11

1932
A
RCHAEOLOGIST
A
MEDEO
M
AIURI
announces that he’s discovered the grotto of the famed Cumaean Sibyl, the prophetess who guided Aeneas to hell in Virgil’s
Aeneid.

SIBYL RITES

1.
Augury, in ancient Rome, was the art of foretelling the future by studying what?

2.
The Pythia was the priestess at what most famous Greek oracle?

3.
What Trojan princess was cursed by Apollo so that no one would ever believe her prophecies?

4.
What mythical ship could prophesy the future because its bow contained an oak timber taken from the oracle at Dodona?

5.
What punishment did the blind prophet Tiresias receive for seven years because he clubbed two snakes he found having sex?

1992
D
EION
S
ANDERS,
hoping to become the first person ever to play in two different pro sports on the same day, flies from Atlanta to Pittsburgh after a Falcons game, arriving just in time for the Braves’ championship series game against the Pirates…but Braves manager Bobby Cox keeps him on the bench.

JOCK OF ALL TRADES

1.
What future Yankees Hall of Famer was drafted by the San Diego Padres, the Minnesota Vikings,
and
the Atlanta Hawks in 1973?

2.
What first president of the NFL was also an outfielder who drove in the winning run in the Reds-Cubs “double no-hitter” of 1917?

3.
What NFL legend and actor is also a member of the Lacrosse Hall of Fame?

4.
Baseball is sometimes said to have been the “fifth-best sport” of what legend, the first UCLA Bruin ever to letter in four sports?

5.
Who won two track golds at the 1932 Olympics before rattling off a record seventeen straight amateur golf victories?

6.
Who injured his hip in a playoff game against the Bengals in 1991, only to hit a home run in his first at-bat back for the White Sox in 1993?

7.
Who took a year off from the Dallas Cowboys in 1979 to rack up a 6-0 record as a boxer?

8.
What two-time National League Cy Young winner in the 1990s had also been drafted by the NHL’s L.A. Kings?

9.
Who won a national basketball championship with the Tar Heels in 1994 before she ditched basketball for track?

10.
Who’s the only Heisman Trophy winner ever to play in the NBA Finals?

2005
H
URRICANE
V
INCE,
already unusual for having developed off the Moroccan coast, makes landfall over Spain, becoming the only tropical storm ever to strike mainland Europe.

STORMY WEATHER

1.
What became the world’s third nuclear power with the Hurricane test of 1952?

2.
What actress, an Oscar nominee for
Nashville,
sings backup on Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane”?

3.
What wading bird is the mascot of the Miami Hurricanes?

4.
What tropical fruit provides the syrup in a “hurricane” rum cocktail?

5.
What comedian was sharing the stage with Kanye West when he made his “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” comment at the 2005 Concert for Hurricane Relief?