Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (143 page)

AUGUST 29

1885
G
OTTLIEB
D
AIMLER
P
ATENTS
the first motorcycle—just his pioneering gasoline engine mounted onto a wooden bicycle frame. Top speed for the bike: seven miles per hour!

START SEEING MOTORCYCLES

1.
What is the appropriate three-letter stock ticker symbol for Harley-Davidson?

2.
A “thumper” is a motorcycle with how many cylinders in its engine?

3.
Who got his nickname from a Butte, Montana, city jailer after he crashed his motorcycle in a 1956 police chase?

4.
Who played the non-Estrada motorcycle cop in the first five seasons of
CHiPs
?

5.
What NBA coach calls
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
his favorite book?

6.
What bike company makes the Ninja, Vulcan, and Eliminator motorcycles?

7.
On what 1979 song about a motorcycle crash were the cycle sound effects actually played by Todd Rundgren on a guitar?

8.
Peter Fonda’s leather-clad biker in
Easy Rider
adopts the name of what comic book hero?

9.
Who wrote
The Motorcycle Diaries
about his 22,000-mile trip on a 1939 Norton?

10.
What Oscar-winning Best Picture
begins
with the title character’s death in a motorcycle crash?

1995
A
LBERT
C
AMUS’
N
OVEL
The First Man
is published, thirty-four years after his death. The manuscript was found in the wreckage of the car crash that killed Camus in 1960.

GHOST STORIES

Name the late authors behind these posthumously published works.

Easy

1.
Persuasion

2.
The Silmarillion

3.
The Diary of a Young Girl

4.
Faust Part Two

5.
The Man with the Golden Gun

Harder

1.
A Confederacy of Dunces

2.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood

3.
The Last Tycoon

4.
The Prince

5.
Forward the Foundation

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
The Master and Margarita

2.
The Way of All Flesh

3.
Radio Free Albemuth

4.
Bouvard et Pécuchet

5.
A Long Fatal Love Chase

1997
A
CCORDING TO THE
T
ERMINATOR
FILMS,
the “Skynet” defense system becomes sentient and wipes out humanity with a series of nuclear strikes.

SKY NET

1.
October Sky
is an anagram for the title of what book, upon which the film was based?

2.
What movie ends with the line “Keep watching the skies”?

3.
Who plays the same part in
Abre los ojos
and its American remake,
Vanilla Sky
?

4.
What rapper was married to actress Ione Skye for eight years?

5.
What late actor was resurrected to play the villain in
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
?

AUGUST 30

1990
K
EN
G
RIFFEY
, J
R.,
and his veteran father become the first father-son combo ever to play for the same major league team. Both hit singles in the very first inning.

“JR.” SAMPLES

1.
Whom did wordplay-minded sports fans know by the nickname “Mario, Jr.”?

2.
Who was the first actor nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for portraying another Best Actor nominee?

3.
From what historically black Atlanta college did Martin Luther King, Jr., graduate?

4.
Who celebrated his favorite fetish by writing magazine stories under the pseudonym “Ann Gora”?

5.
Who played Dr. Leo Markus, Grace Adler’s husband on
Will & Grace
?

6.
When John Hinckley, Jr., shot Ronald Reagan, he had five photos of whom in his wallet?

7.
What two future Hall of Famers started at third base in the longest professional baseball game in history, a thirty-three-inning marathon between the Rochester Red Wings and the Pawtucket Red Sox?

8.
Freddie Prinze, Jr., met his wife, Sarah Michelle Gellar, on the set of what film?

9.
Describing his most difficult songwriting challenge, Ray Parker, Jr., lamented that “there aren’t many words that rhyme with” what?

10.
As
Monday Night Football
fans know, what is Hank Williams, Jr.’s, real first name?

2000
T
HE
L
IBRARY
H
OTEL
O
PENS
in New York. In this book-lined boutique hotel, every floor has its own library classification (the third floor is 300s for Social Sciences, the eighth floor is the 800s for Literature, etc.). In 2003, the owners of the Dewey Decimal System will—no joke—sue the hotel for trademark infringement.

THE INN CROWD

1.
What city can claim seventeen of the U.S.’s twenty largest hotels?

2.
What two athletes—an Olympic gold medalist and an NFL All-Pro—wrestled the gun away from Sirhan Sirhan after Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 assassination in the pantry of a Los Angeles hotel?

3.
The B-sides of what debut White Stripes single were actually recorded in room 286 of the title establishment?

4.
What Swiss entrepreneur was called “the king of hoteliers and hotelier to kings”?

5.
Burl Ives, Hoyt Axton, or Sheb Wooley—what actor-singer’s mother, Mae, cowrote the song “Heartbreak Hotel”?

6.
What animal is Susie always dressed as in John Irving’s
The Hotel New Hampshire
?

7.
How many Oscar nominations did 1932 Best Picture winner
Grand Hotel
receive?

8.
At what Whitman, Massachusetts, inn was the chocolate chip cookie invented in 1933?

9.
At what fictional hotel and casino is TV’s
Las Vegas
set?

10.
Concierges claim that the name of their profession derives from the medieval position
comte de cierges,
the keeper of what?