Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (87 page)

MAY 29

1660
C
HARLES
II
REENTERS
London on his birthday, completing the English Restoration. The occasion was long celebrated in Britain as “Oak Apple Day,” in memory of the oak tree that saved His Majesty’s life by hiding him after the battle of Worcester.

RESTORED EDITIONS

In honor of the English Restoration, here are five other restorations.

1.
What building was a dilapidated ruin in 1831 when a bestselling novel that year prompted architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc to lead a restoration effort?

2.
What is the primary ingredient in the silvery amalgam still used in dental restoration?

3.
A four-hour restoration of what 1927 epic restored the reputation of forgotten silent film director Abel Gance shortly before his 1981 death?

4.
What country’s Meiji Restoration began in 1866?

5.
What Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece, now restored, was so unrecognizable by 1652 that an arched doorway was cut right through the bottom of it?

1839
H
IRAM
U
LYSSES
G
RANT
arrives at West Point, only to find he’s been misregistered as “Ulysses Simpson Grant.” Hiram, who didn’t think his “H.U.G.” initials would go over well in the military anyway, happily adopts the new name.

SHORT AND SWEET

Answer these questions about abbreviations, acronyms, and initialisms.

1.
Other than poor Hiram Ulysses, who’s the only U.S. president whose three initials spell a word?

2.
What brand is known as PFK in French-speaking Quebec and Spanish-speaking Puerto Rico?

3.
Whose children’s books involve a mysterious secret organization known only as “V.F.D.”?

4.
Where did the abbreviation “INRI” traditionally appear?

5.
Which of these agencies—the FCC, the FDIC, the FTC, and the ICC—is not a commission? What is it instead?

6.
Citigroup jumped on the one-letter stock ticker abbreviation C after what company dropped it in a 1998 merger?

7.
What’s the only U.S. state whose two-letter postal code is two vowels?

8.
What do these abbreviations have in common: ESPN, the AARP, DVD, AT&T, NASDAQ, and SAT?

9.
Why has Sioux Falls Regional Airport in South Dakota been trying to change its three-letter airport designation for years?

10.
What two things are “TO” used to represent in basketball?

1997
A
N EXCITABLE
R
EBECCA
S
EALFON
wins the National Spelling Bee by shrieking the word “euonym” (Webster’s: “a good or appropriate name”).

LET’S EUONYM FIGHT

Name—and spell!—the onetime National Spelling Bee–winning word that means…

1.
The white of an egg

2.
A Japanese aircraft loaded with explosives

3.
The shorter arm of a cruciform church

4.
A trapezoidal stringed instrument played with hammers

5.
Before the Great Flood

MAY 30

1946
T
HE
B
RAVES’
B
AMA
R
OWELL
hits a home run into the right field clock at Ebbets Field, sending up a shower of sparks and inspiring a young aspiring novelist in the stands, one Bernard Malamud, to write
The Natural.

100% ALL NATURAL

1.
What kind of natural disaster destroyed three of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

2.
What irrational number is the base of a natural logarithm?

3.
What famous director asked that his name be removed from the screenplay credit to Oliver Stone’s
Natural Born Killers
?

4.
What Chicago natural history museum features Sue, the world’s largest
Tyrannosaurus rex
skeleton?

5.
What future game show host had a Top Forty hit with 1968’s “Naturally Stoned”?

6.
What cartoonist created the bearded guru named Mr. Natural?

7.
What French obstetrician revolutionized natural childbirth with his 1956 book
Painless Childbirth
?

8.
What state has adopted the new official nickname of “The Natural State”?

9.
What gas is the main component in natural gas?

10.
What philosopher argued for natural rights in his 1651
Leviathan
?

1969
F
ORMER CHILD STAR
Natalie Wood, on a break between her two marriages to Robert Wagner, marries producer Richard Gregson.

MINOR FAME

What future celeb made a child-actor appearance as…

Easy

1.
Kate in
Mermaids

2.
Velvet in
National Velvet

3.
Gertie in
E.T.

4.
Opie on
Andy Griffith

5.
Iris in
Taxi Driver

Harder

1.
Kyra in
The Sixth Sense

2.
Luke on
Growing Pains

3.
Huw in
How Green Was My Valley

4.
Lauren in
Heat

5.
Danny in
City Slickers

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Joe in
Radio Days

2.
Derek on
Silver Spoons

3.
Molly in
Home Alone 3

4.
Mickey in
Our Gang

5.
Lauren in
A Little Romance

1995
NASA
ENGINEERS COME BACK
from Memorial Day weekend only to discover seventy small holes in the space shuttle’s fuel tank insulation, delaying launch by more than a month. Northern flicker woodpeckers are determined to be the culprits, and today NASA employs woodpecker decoys and spotters full-time.

ORBITERS OF TASTE

Which NASA space shuttle shares its name with…

1.
The most-subscribed-to cable network in America

2.
The deepest point of the Mariana Trench

3.
The ship that carried Captain Cook to Australia

4.
The company that introduced the first LP record albums

5.
The largest resort on Paradise Island, in the Bahamas