Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (50 page)

MARCH 26

1935
C
LIFFORD
O
DETS’S FIRST PLAY,
Waiting for Lefty,
opens on Broadway (and will later be fictionalized as
Bare Ruined Choirs
in the Coen brothers’ Odets-inspired film
Barton Fink
).

IF YOU’RE FEELING SINISTER

Some trivia for the left side of your brain.

1.
What famed object from mythology did the Venus de Milo hold in her now-missing left hand?

2.
What’s the world’s most populous country that drives on the left?

3.
What term is used for surfers and skaters who prefer to have their left foot on the back of the board?

4.
What
Top Gun
actor loses his left arm in three different movies:
Total Recall, Starship Troopers,
and
The Machinist
?

5.
Polo, lacrosse, or darts—what sport officially banned left-handed play in 1975?

6.
What famed Left Bank neighborhood in Paris was named for the medieval academics at the Sorbonne?

7.
What Hall of Fame pitcher of the 1940s and 1950s is baseball’s winningest lefty ever?

8.
What replaced the left lens in the trademark glasses of the late Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, of TLC?

9.
What disease affects the protagonist of
My Left Foot
?

10.
What three consecutive U.S. presidents were born left-handed?

1937
C
RYSTAL
C
ITY
, T
EXAS
, erects a statue of Popeye. Why a statue of a sailor in landlocked Crystal City? Because the town bills itself as “the Spinach Capital of the World.” (Rival Spinach Capital Alma, Arkansas, not to be outdone, has a similar statue.)

SALAD DAZE

Ten questions for vegetarians.

1.
What element, found in thiols, makes your pee smell funny after you eat asparagus?

2.
In the United Kingdom, what’s called a “courgette”?

3.
What vegetable is found in dishes served “Florentine” style?

4.
Which member of the Black-Eyed Peas was also the longest-running cast member of 1980s children’s show
Kids Incorporated
?

5.
What bulb vegetable is traditionally worn on Saint David’s Day, as it’s a national symbol of Wales?

6.
What Grimm’s fairy-tale character is named for a vegetable craved by her pregnant mother?

7.
What British TV character was nearly named “Mr. Cauliflower”?

8.
What vegetable did the Bush White House receive tons of in 1990 after the president, not a fan, banned it from Air Force One?

9.
What comedian voiced Mr. Potato Head in the
Toy Story
movies?

10.
What vegetable secretes a white, opiumlike psychotropic fluid called “lactucarium”?

MARCH 27

1974
C
ONSTRUCTION BEGINS ON
the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a massive construction project that will require three years, 21,000 workers, and thirty-one accidental deaths before it’s completed.

OILY EDITION

1.
What ABC TV star is the great-grandson of a billionaire oilman?

2.
The American Heart Association recommends that heart patients take one gram of fish oil a day, since it contains what kind of fatty acids?

3.
What two slang terms for oil are used in the
Beverly Hillbillies
theme song?

4.
What kind of oil, a product of the flax plant, is used to make most oil paints?

5.
What’s the only New World member of OPEC?

1990
L
UCASFILM FILES A
$300
MILLION
trademark infringement lawsuit against 2 Live Crew rapper Luther Campbell, who’s been using the stage name Luke Skyywalker.

CLONE WARS

Give these answers, which sound like—but aren’t, Lucasfilm!
—Star Wars
characters.

1.
What sandwich bread, because of its shape, takes its name from the Italian for “carpet slipper”?

2.
Bhakti, hatha, and kriya are all varieties of what?

3.
What computer language uses as its logo a blue mug with red steam rising from it?

4.
What Bleecker Street music club became famous for its punk shows, not the bluegrass, blues, and country it was named for?

5.
What film’s theme song is “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” by Starship?

1998
T
HE
FDA
APPROVES
Viagra, the United States’ first male impotence drug.

ARTIFICIAL ERECTIONS

Answer these questions about statues erected to fictional characters.

1.
What two characters are sculpted on Hannibal, Missouri’s, Main Street?

2.
What Copenhagen tourist attraction had a burqa draped over it in 2004 by vandals protesting Turkey’s bid to join the EU?

3.
What sitcom character is depicted in the bronze statue that TV Land erected in downtown Salem, Massachusetts, in 2005?

4.
What German city is home to a statue called
The Town Musicians
?

5.
What character, who led a gang of children who were lost in Kensington Gardens, today stands in bronze in that London park?