Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (109 page)

3.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

4.
Five Easy Pieces

5.
Paul Shaffer

FORBID AND FORGET

1.
Google’s

2.
Airplane!

3.
The Outer Limits

4.
Its use in the last scene of
The Sopranos
’ finale

5.
Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

6.
A rattlesnake

7.
A villanelle

8.
Gremlins

9.
Do Not Resuscitate

10.
“Don’t Stop” by Fleetwood Mac

JUNE 28

BLOW ME

1.
A clarinet

2.
The bassoon

3.
The flugelhorn

4.
The didgeridoo

5.
Ricola

6.
The tuba

7.
The kazoo

8.
Cattle’s (because of Aaron’s golden calf)

9.
The trombone

10.
The ocarina

MY LITTLE PONY

Easy

1.
Silver

2.
Pokey

3.
Mister Ed

4.
Trigger

5.
Horse

Harder

1.
Traveller

2.
Rocinante

3.
Tony

4.
Bucephalus

5.
Scout

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Incitatus

2.
Gunpowder

3.
Marengo

4.
Shadowfax

5.
Tornado

LEI LADY LEI

1.
Maui

2.
The ukulele

3.
Duke Kahanamoku

4.
Arizona (the USS
Arizona
)

5.
Rainbow

JUNE 29

HOOKED ON CLASSICS

1.
Samuel Barber’s

2.
Antonio Vivaldi (
The Four Seasons
)

3.
The Thames

4.
Richard Wagner

5.
Elise

ROADS SCHOLARS

1.
Utah

2.
Alabama

3.
Pennsylvania (a keystone)

4.
California (a 49ers mining spade)

5.
Nebraska

6.
North Dakota

7.
New Mexico

8.
Washington

9.
New Hampshire

10.
Kansas (a sunflower)

ALTAR EGOS

1.
Elizabeth Taylor

2.
The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

3.
Kill Bill
(
Volume 2
, to be specific)

4.
Jane Eyre’s

5.
Tricia Nixon

JUNE 30

DON’T GO CHASING WATERFALLS

1.
The Mission

2.
David Livingstone

3.
Venezuela

4.
Professor Moriarty

5.
The Columbia’s

WHO’S THAT GIRL?

Easy

1.
“Jessie’s Girl”

2.
“Hollaback Girl”

3.
“My Girl”

4.
“Girlfriend”

5.
“What a Girl Wants”

Harder

1.
“West End Girls”

2.
“Big Girls Don’t Cry”

3.
“Rich Girl”

4.
“Forever Your Girl”

5.
“Bad Girls”

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
“Oh Girl”

2.
“Go Away Little Girl”

3.
“Girl I’m Gonna Miss You”

4.
“Island Girl”

5.
“The Most Beautiful Girl”

THE THING WITH FEATHERS

1.
(
Three Days of
) The Condor

2.
The Penguin

3.
Swan

4.
The Cardinal

5.
The Falcon

JULY 1

1862
A
FTER THE COSTLY LOSSES
of the Seven Days’ Battles, George McLellan’s “Peninsula Campaign” ends in failure, just miles from the Confederate capital of Richmond. McLellan’s larger army could have won the war if he’d pressed on to Richmond; instead, three years of bloodshed lie ahead.

PENINSULA CAMPAIGN

1.
What peninsula is held together, at its narrowest point, by the Isthmus of Kra?

2.
At what Seward Peninsula city does the Iditarod end?

3.
“Al-Jazeera,” which means “the peninsula” in Arabic, is a reference to what peninsular nation, where it’s headquartered?

4.
What does “lo Stivale,” the local name for the Italian peninsula, mean in Italian?

5.
What U.S. peninsula is home to a namesake national park, whose Quinault Rain Forest is the wettest spot in the continental U.S.?

6.
What triangular peninsula’s highest point is actually Mount St. Catherine and not its namesake peak?

7.
Anzac Day, in Australia and New Zealand, commemorates the date of the bloody 1915 landing on what Turkish peninsula?

8.
What name is given to the mainland peninsula that’s part of Hong Kong?

9.
Where do “Yoopers” live?

10.
In what country is the Bataan Peninsula, home to a famous 1942 “Death March”?

2007
N
EW
Y
ORK
C
ITY RESTAURANTS
are now strictly limited in what they fry or spread thanks to America’s strictest ban on trans fats.

“TRANS-” FACTS

1.
What nation removed the prefix “Trans” from before its name in June 1949?

2.
What TV series has produced episodes called “…And Found” and “…In Translation”?

3.
What gets changed by the process of transubstantiation?

4.
What city is the eastern terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway?

5.
Who bought Trans World Airlines in 1939?

6.
A poster for what band’s album
Transatlanticism
hung in Seth Cohen’s bedroom on
The O.C.
?

7.
What movie character is a “sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania”?

8.
What kind of transplant was first performed in France in

2005, on a woman who’d been attacked by her dog?

9.
What is the home planet of Hasbro’s Transformers toys?

10.
What novelist’s father, Bronson, was one of the founders of the Transcendentalist movement?

JULY 2

1942
C
ARY
G
RANT STARS
as Cole Porter in the lavish Warner musical
Night and Day.
The title might as well describe the movie’s differences from Porter’s real life, since Grant plays the gay Porter as deeply, heterosexually in love with his “beard” wife, Linda.

BIO-PICKS

Who’s been played, in the movies, by both these actors?

Easy

1.
Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench

2.
Willem Defoe, James Caviezel

3.
Denzel Washington, Mario Van Peebles

4.
Robert Downey, Eddie Izzard

5.
Ray Liotta, D. B. Sweeney

Harder

1.
Kirk Douglas, Tim Roth

2.
Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda

3.
Catherine O’Hara, Sandra Bullock

4.
John Gavin, Rex Harrison

5.
Norma Shearer, Kirsten Dunst

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
John Cusack, Edward Norton

2.
Robert Duvall, Colin Farrell

3.
Laurence Olivier, Gregory Peck

4.
Rosemary Murphy, Jennifer Jason Leigh

5.
Gailard Sartain, Stephen Lee

1957
T
HE
C
ARY
G
RANT
–D
EBORAH
K
ERR
tearjerker
An Affair to Remember
premieres, for which we can blame
Sleepless in Seattle.

AFFAIRS TO REMEMBER

Name these “affairs” from a few of their principals.

1.
Marie-Georges Picquart, Émile Zola, Auguste Mercier

2.
John Poindexter, Robert McFarlane, Oliver North

3.
Christine Keeler, Dr. Stephen Ward, Yevgeny Ivanov

4.
John Marshall, Elbridge Gerry, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

5.
Buffy, Jody, Cissy

2000
V
ICENTE
F
OX IS ELECTED
president of Mexico, ending the PRI party’s uninterrupted sixty-year rule.

CRAZY LIKE A FOX

1.
What TV series closes with a logo for “30th Century Fox”?

2.
What phrase for false disdain comes from one of Aesop’s fables, about a fox unable to leap up to a hanging vine?

3.
What was comedian Redd Foxx’s real last name?

4.
What actor did Michael J. Fox replace as Marty McFly in
Back to the Future
?

5.
Which of Santa’s reindeer is named for a female fox?

6.
George Fox is traditionally called the founder of what religious group?

7.
Flying foxes aren’t foxes at all—they’re the largest type of what kind of animal?

8.
Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady” was a tribute to Heather Taylor, the model who later married what rock front man?

9.
In what country was actor and former NBAer Rick Fox born?

10.
What famous event happened in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant outside Detroit on July 30, 1975?