Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (7 page)

JANUARY 11

1862
T
HE CITY OF
W
ALLA
W
ALLA,
Washington, is incorporated. The local low-sulfur soil is what gives the city’s namesake onions their famous sweet flavor.

TRIVIA TRIVIA

Give the doubled-up answers answers to these questions questions.

1.
On what R.E.M. debut album would you find their song “Radio Free Europe”?

2.
What semolina product is used to make the Moroccan dessert
seffa
?

3.
What transmits African trypanosomiasis to humans and cattle?

4.
What Shirley MacLaine movie did Khrushchev call “depraved” and “pornographic” when he visited the set in 1960?

5.
What narrator of a 1955 novel marries Charlotte Haze for ulterior motives?

6.
What 1963 song led to a thirty-one-month FBI investigation into supposed obscenities hidden in its unintelligible lyrics?

7.
What 1950s Kikuyu uprising helped end British rule in Kenya?

8.
What fictional foreign film often referenced on
Seinfeld
describes “a young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk”?

9.
What name is given to the dolphin fish to make it sound more appetizing on menus?

10.
Which
Flintstones
character apparently possessed superhuman strength as a toddler but never as an adult?

11.
What territorial capital is located beneath Mount Alava on the island of Tutuila?

12.
What is believed to have received its name from the Portuguese word for “simpleton”?

13.
What band recorded the only James Bond theme song to become a
Billboard
number one?

14.
For evidentiary reasons, who sued to prevent the demolition of L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel in 2004?

15.
For what film did Robert De Niro learn to play the saxophone?

16.
What would you use to “Walk the Dog,” “Rock the Baby,” or “Pop the Clutch”?

17.
What Jim Carrey movie featured the screen debut of Cheri Oteri?

18.
What Black Forest town was called “Aurelia Aquensis” by the Romans?

19.
What Alban Berg opera is based on the same play as the classic Louise Brooks movie
Pandora’s Box
?

20.
What term does rapper B.G. say he wishes he’d patented when he used it for the title of his massive 1999 hit?

1971
J
OURNALIST
D
ON
H
OEFLER
coins the phrase “Silicon Valley” in an article for
Electronic News.
Hoefler’s “Valley” was the Santa Clara Valley, but today the term is used for much of the east side of the San Francisco peninsula.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

Name the peninsula located between…

1.
Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean

2.
The Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea

3.
Lake Superior and Lake Michigan

4.
The Bay of Campeche and the Caribbean Sea

5.
The Sea of Azov and the Black Sea

JANUARY 12

1963
“B
LOWIN’ IN THE
W
IND,”
by a not-yet-famous Bob Dylan, is broadcast for the first time, on a BBC TV drama (
The Madhouse on Castle Street
), of all places.

JUST FOLK

1.
According to “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” where is Michael rowing?

2.
Who cowrote both “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer”?

3.
Who was famously named for a Joni Mitchell song covered by Judy Collins in 1969?

4.
The title of the song “Kumbaya” is actually a distortion of what three-word phrase?

5.
What actress is the daughter of the Scottish singer Donovan?

1967
R
ETIRED DOCTOR
J
AMES
B
EDFORD
becomes the first person ever to be cryonically frozen, in the hope of being revived one day when science has discovered a cure for (a) cancer and (b) being seventy-three and (c) being crudely frozen in liquid nitrogen for decades.

MANY ARE COLD, BUT FEW ARE FROZEN

Are you cool enough for this icy quiz?

1.
At what chilly temperature are the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales the same?

2.
What’s the name of the “saber-toothed squirrel” voiced by the director in
Ice Age
?

3.
What was the first food ever frozen by Clarence Birdseye, the inventor of frozen food?

4.
What son of Italian immigrants received a 1953 patent for his invention, the “Model A Ice Resurfacer”?

5.
With what metal band did Ice-T record the controversial “Cop Killer”?

6.
What English word comes from the name of a hot spring in Iceland’s Haukadalur valley?

7.
What holiday is the setting for the novel and film
The Ice Storm
?

8.
What is frozen to make dry ice?

9.
In 1988, who became the only male figure skater ever to appear on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
?

10.
What 1942-43 battle took the greatest toll in military history, with more than 1.5 million casualties due to wounds, starvation, and freezing temperatures?

1968
T
HE LAST EPISODE
of Patrick McGoohan’s spy TV hit
Danger Man
(
Secret Agent
in the United States) airs. The show’s final season lasted only two episodes, because McGoohan had resigned to create his own show: the cult hit
The Prisoner.

THEY SPY

Match each TV operative with his or her fictional (and acronymic) employer.