Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (30 page)

FEBRUARY 21

1912
T
EDDY
R
OOSEVELT COINS
a new political phrase when, borrowing a prizefighting expression, he tells supporters in a speech, “My hat is in the ring!” He then confuses the boxing metaphor a bit by threatening to “enter the ring speaking softly and whack President Taft with a big stick.”

RING THINGS

1.
What two NFL quarterbacks have four Super Bowl rings?

2.
What’s divided by the Cassini Division?

3.
According to Clarence in
It’s a Wonderful Life,
what happens every time a bell rings?

4.
The seismic belt called the Ring of Fire surrounds what body of water?

5.
What industry did Finland’s Vesa-Matti Paananen create when he wrote a free program called “Harmonium” in the late 1990s?

6.
In
The Fellowship of the Ring,
what does Gandalf do to the ring to make its secret inscription visible?

7.
What do a ladder, a three-legged lamb, a flaming tree, combed hair, and a centipede have in common?

8.
A benzene ring is made up of atoms of what element?

9.
His first name was Otto, and in 1897, he started a watch repair business in Owatonna, Minnesota. Today his namesake company boasts that it “helps people celebrate important moments.” What was Otto’s last name?

10.
By tradition, what can you call yourself if you were born within the sound of London’s Bow bells ringing?

11.
According to the full title of Richard Wagner’s “Ring Cycle,” the fabulous ring belongs to what race of dwarves?

12.
In 1986, a brittle O-ring seal was determined to be the cause of what?

13.
What kind of ring is a
dohyo
?

14.
What is a fairy ring made of?

15.
What’s the name of the metal link with two screw threads used to attach the ropes to the posts in a boxing or wrestling ring?

1981
I
N AN INTERVIEW WITH
Sounds
magazine, Abbo, of the punk band UK Decay, uses the term “Gothic” to describe a rising London music subculture. The “goth” scene is born.

BABY’S IN BLACK

1.
Ditra Flame was the “Lady in Black” who took thirteen red roses to what actor’s grave every year?

2.
The singer in Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” is, mysteriously, in a California jail for having committed a murder in what other state?

3.
What’s the only
Star Wars
movie in which Darth Vader uses the Force to choke someone to death?

4.
What famous historical figure turns out to be the disguised Black Knight in Sir Walter Scott’s
Ivanhoe
?

5.
What New York country club lent its name to the kind of dinner jacket first worn there in 1886?

6.
What country was policed by the Blackshirts for almost twenty-five years?

7.
Who had a surprise cameo as “Agent M” in
Men in Black II
?

8.
What team’s rowdiest black-clad fans sit in a section called the “Black Hole”?

9.
What TV persona made Cassandra Peterson a star?

10.
Don Diego’s secret identity, “Zorro,” is the Spanish word for what animal?

FEBRUARY 22

10,000
B.C
.
P
EBBLES
F
LINTSTONE IS BORN
at Rockville Hospital at 8 P.M., according to Hanna-Barbera. Wilma’s doing fine, but that forcep-asaurus sure does leave a mark.

ROCK SOLID

Hopefully you won’t find these questions too “hard.”

1.
Which chemical element did the ancients call brimstone?

2.
What’s the only non-R-rated film Oliver Stone has ever directed?

3.
What kind of stone is Georgia’s Stone Mountain?

4.
On the strength of their second single, who made the March 29, 1973, cover of
Rolling Stone,
with the caption “What’s-Their-Names Make the Cover”?

5.
Whose tombstone reads, in part, “Truth and History. 21 Men. The Boy Bandit King. He Died as He Lived”?

6.
What month’s birthstone places highest on the Mohs scale?

7.
What title character of a classic 1891 novel is arrested at Stonehenge?

8.
What made-up Bible verse is the catchphrase of wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin?

9.
What kind of gem is El Corazón, which is “romanced” in
Romancing the Stone
?

10.
In what country would you find the port of Rosetta, of Rosetta stone fame?

1495
K
ING
C
HARLES
VIII
OF
F
RANCE
enters Naples and is crowned king. His campaign is remembered today mostly for spreading syphilis across Europe. For years afterward, the English called syphilis “the French disease,” while the French called it
la maladie anglaise
—“the English disease”!

THE FRENCH CONNECTION

Translate these “French” answers back into ze English.

1.
Pommes frites

2.
Embrasser avec la langue

3.
Portes-fenêtres

4.
Cor d’harmonie

5.
Poignet mousquetaire

2006
A
LEX
O
STROVSKY,
of West Bloomfield, Michigan, downloads the billionth song from Apple’s iTunes Web site. (Luckily for Alex, it was “Speed of Sound” by Coldplay. How’d you like your name to appear in headlines for your download of “Ice Ice Baby”?)

EYE TUNES

Questions both musicological and ophthalmological.

1.
What two other actresses are name-checked in Kim Carnes’s “Bette Davis Eyes”?

2.
What stadium hit do we owe to a pre–Civil War folk song and the Swedish dance band Rednex?

3.
The song “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” was inspired by Stephen Stills’s breakup with whom?

4.
Twenty-six years before it became a pop hit, what song was originally written by Jerome Kern for the Astaire-Rogers film
Roberta
?

5.
Whose first single was “I’ve Cried (the Blue Right Out of My Eyes),” which turned out to be an ironic reverse of her biggest hit?

6.
In a 1989 film, what song finally replaced John Cusack and Cameron Crowe’s earlier choices, Billy Idol’s “To Be a Lover” or Fishbone’s “Turn the Other Way”?

7.
Who sang the theme song of the Bond film
For Your Eyes Only,
making her the only Bond vocalist to actually appear in the opening credits?

8.
What song was written in 1981 when Sylvester Stallone was unable to secure the movie rights to Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”?

9.
What line is missing from some bowdlerized edits of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl”?

10.
What civil rights anthem is actually a rewrite of the hymn “Keep Your Hands on the Plow, Hold On”?