Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (209 page)

DECEMBER 16

1959
C
HICAGO’S
S
ECOND
C
ITY
T
HEATRE
opens, home to the improv troupe that will give the world legendary comics, from Fred Willard to Bill Murray to Stephen Colbert.

WE’RE NUMBER TWO!

What nation is home to these “second cities”?

Easy

1.
Antwerp

2.
Medellín

3.
Mumbai

4.
Cape Town

5.
Tel Aviv

Harder

1.
Guayaquil

2.
Mandalay

3.
Bergen

4.
Surabaya

5.
Mombasa

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Oran

2.
Split

3.
Plovdiv

4.
Santa Cruz de la Sierra

5.
Samarkand

1970
L
OVE
S
TORY
IS RELEASED,
trumpeted by one of Hollywood’s most famous taglines: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”

TAG! YOU’RE IT

What movies used these memorable taglines?

1.
You won’t believe your eye.

2.
This is Benjamin. He’s a little worried about his future.

3.
The Monster demands a Mate!

4.
Does for rock and roll what
The Sound of Music
did for hills.

5.
It’s 4 a.m.—do you know where your car is?

6.
For anyone who has ever wished upon a star.

7.
Before you die, you see…

8.
It’s scrumdiddlyumptious!

9.
An adventure sixty-five million years in the making.

10.
They’ll never get caught. They’re on a mission from God.

11.
Garbo
laughs
!

12.
This is the weekend they didn’t play golf.

13.
Where were you in ’62?

14.
She was marked with the curse of those who slink and court and kill by night!

15.
Check in. Relax. Take a shower.

16.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

17.
Jim Stark—a kid from a “good” family—what makes him tick…like a bomb?

18.
For three men, the Civil War wasn’t hell. It was practice!

19.
Escape or die frying.

20.
They’re young…they’re in love…and they kill people.

21.
Being the adventures of a young man whose principal interests are rape, ultraviolence, and Beethoven.

22.
Five criminals. One lineup. No coincidences.

23.
The chauffeur’s daughter who learned her stuff in Paris!

24.
The fiery cross of the Ku Klux Klan.

25.
Look closer.

DECEMBER 17

1865
T
HE LATE
F
RANZ
S
CHUBERT’S
“Unfinished Symphony” is first performed, in Vienna. The last movement of his third symphony is tacked on so listeners don’t experience
Schubertus interruptus.
More than a hundred years later, the symphony will become Gargamel’s theme music on
The Smurfs.

I HEAR A SYMPHONY

Who composed symphonies nicknamed…

1.
“Tragic,” “Resurrection,” and “…of a Thousand”

2.
“Eroica,” “Pastoral,” and “Choral”

3.
“The Farewell,” “The Clock,” and “The Surprise”

4.
“Winter Daydreams,” “Little Russian,” and “Pathétique”

5.
“Reformation,” “Scottish,” and “Italian”

1892
V
OGUE
MAGAZINE IS
launched in New York. Back then, I think the devil wore Prada stays and bloomers.

CHIC-ER BY THE DOZEN

Match these down-market retailers to the designers slumming there.

2004
A
RCHAEOLOGISTS ANNOUNCE
that they’ve discovered the world’s oldest musical instrument in a cave in the Swabian Alps. It’s a three-hole ivory flute, carved from a mammoth’s tusk around 35,000 years ago. (Other instruments made from swan bones have already been found at the same site, so maybe this cave was also the world’s oldest band camp.)

FLUTE-Y FLAKES

1.
What band, after winning the first hard rock/metal Grammy in 1989, took out an ad reading “The flute is a (heavy) metal instrument”?

2.
What movie director’s father was Arturo Toscanini’s first flautist in the NBC Symphony Orchestra?

3.
Which character reaches an F an astonishing two and a half octaves above middle C in her famous aria from Mozart’s
The Magic Flute
?

4.
What title character of the 2004 film
Anchorman
plays the jazz flute?

5.
After what Greek god is the flute sometimes called a “syrinx” usually named?