Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (12 page)

JANUARY 21

1814
J
ANE AUSTEN BEGINS WORK
on the first chapter of
Emma,
the last novel she’ll see published during her lifetime. And no wonder it ended her career—it’s, like, a
total
rip-off of
Clueless.

IN THE BEGINNING

What novels begin with
these
first chapters?

Easy

1.
“The Three Presents of D’Artagnan the Elder”

2.
“The Bite of the Raptor”

3.
“Marley’s Ghost”

4.
“Spade & Archer”

5.
“The Sound of the Shell”

Harder

1.
“progris report 1 martch 5, 1965”

2.
“The Master of the Universe”

3.
“Jonathan Harker’s Journal”

4.
“The Old Pyncheon Family”

5.
“January: An Exceptionally Bad Start”

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
“The Bertolini”

2.
“Orleanna Price”

3.
“The Last to See Them Alive”

4.
“Not Dick Clark”

5.
“In which the foot of the abbey is reached, and William demonstrates his great acumen”

1908
N
EW
Y
ORK
C
ITY PASSES
the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public.

YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY!

Answer these questions about women who died of lung cancer.

1.
What 1980s icon married her second husband, contractor Roe Messner, in 1993?

2.
What playwright inspired her lover Dashiell Hammett’s character Nora Charles?

3.
What sitcom lost both Selma Diamond and her replacement, Florence Halop, to lung cancer?

4.
H. L. Mencken coined the word “ecdysiast” to describe whose famous stage act?

5.
Who won two Emmys for
Lou Grant
before HBO returned her to stardom in 1999?

1997
C
OLONEL
T
OM
P
ARKER,
Elvis Presley’s longtime manager, dies in Las Vegas. “Parker” was actually the Dutch-born Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk, and he wasn’t a real colonel…

A COLONEL OF TRUTH

…unlike these colonels.

1.
What colonel commanded the first African-American army regiment during the Civil War?

2.
What actor and former
SNL
cast member voiced the “hip” animated Colonel Sanders in recent KFC commercials?

3.
What longtime world leader has retained the rank of colonel rather than promoting himself—to demonstrate, he says, the rule of the people in his country?

4.
What did Colonel Potter typically call Father Mulcahy on
M*A*S*H
?

5.
What 1957 film made the “Colonel Bogey March” famous?

JANUARY 22

1253
H
ENRY
III
GRANTS
the Yorkshire town of Scarborough a charter for a yearly trading fair that will eventually become famous in song.

ARE YOU GOING TO SCARBOROUGH FAIR?

1. Parsley.
What’s made from beets, carrots, celery, lettuce, parsley, spinach, tomatoes, and watercress?

2. Sage.
What editor of
The American Mercury
was called “the Sage of Baltimore”?

3. Rosemary.
What A-list movie star was a pallbearer at his aunt Rosemary’s 2002 funeral?

4.
Time.
Who’s the only U.S. president since World War II never to have been named
Time
’s Man of the Year?

1897
F
ORMER
C
IVIL
W
AR GENERAL
James Shields begins his term as a Missouri senator. This is remarkable because he has already represented both Illinois and Minnesota in the Senate, making him the only senator ever to represent three states.

ACTS TO GRIND

Match these congressmen to the issue addressed by their famous namesake “Act.”

2007
C
ONOCO
P
HILLIPS TELLS
The Wall Street Journal
that, in response to a grassroots Internet campaign, it will
not
be destroying the orange “76” balls on Unocal gas stations after all but will instead donate the iconic signage to museums.

FILL ’ER UP

1.
What mythological creature was the longtime mascot of Mobil gas?

2.
Who opened his first restaurant in the front room of his Corbin, Kentucky, service station in 1930?

3.
After his death, who was hung upside down from an Esso filling station in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto?

4.
What baseball team was the “Gashouse Gang”?

5.
Whose estate was disputed in the “Mormon will” belonging to Utah gas station operator Melvin Dummar?

6.
Whose 1957 killing spree began with the murder of Lincoln, Nebraska, gas station attendant Robert Colvert?

7.
Who was Mayberry’s gas station attendant until he got his own sitcom in 1964?

8.
Name one of the two U.S. states in which it’s illegal to pump your own gas.

9.
According to the four experts on women in the movie
Say Anything,
why
are
they hanging out alone at the Gas ’n Sip on a Saturday night?

10.
In 2006, 7-Eleven ended its twenty-year association with Citgo, in part, it claimed, because of the comments of what world leader?