Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (203 page)

DECEMBER 4

1961
A
FTER A
W
ALL
S
TREET
stockbroker tips off
The New York Times,
the Museum of Modern Art finally takes another look at
Le Bateau,
a Matisse painting that has been hanging there for forty-seven days and seen by 118,000 people. For the entire exhibition, nobody has noticed that it was hanging upside down.

BOTTOM TO TOP

Upside-down trivia you’ll flip for.

1.
What was 1918’s famed “inverted Jenny”?

2.
What Dutch artist is well known for lithographs like 1953’s
Relativity,
with its gravity-defying upside-down staircases?

3.
If, from anywhere in the contiguous U.S., you were to tunnel through the center of the earth and come out the other side, in what body of water would you emerge?

4.
In what movie does Fred Astaire do his famous dancing-on-the-ceiling number to “You’re All the World to Me”?

5.
What lowercase letter is turned upside down to denote the neutral vowel “schwa”?

6.
What band’s hit “Head over Heels” anchored the soundtrack of the 2001 movie
Donnie Darko
?

7.
If you turned the Indonesian flag upside down—as a distress signal, say—you would actually be flying the flag of what other nation?

8.
Mike Leigh’s 1999 movie
Topsy Turvy
is a behind-the-scenes look at what famous partnership?

9.
What company chose to call a spun-off division “Dynec” so that its own corporate logo could be turned upside down to make the new company’s “dy” logo?

10.
Traditionally, which of Jesus’ disciples asked the Romans to crucify him upside down?

1998
H
ASBRO CLOSES
the Milton Bradley Wood Products Company in Fairfax, Vermont, which has, for twenty years, produced North America’s entire supply of Scrabble tiles: a million a day.

INTO THE WOODS

Never fear: Scrabble tiles are still made of Vermont maple, but now the logs are shipped to China and then shipped
back
in tile form. What kind of wood are (or were) these items made from?

DECEMBER 5

1945
F
LIGHT
19, made up of five U.S. Navy bombers, disappears on a training mission off the coast of Florida. In the 1950 s, this incident will become one of the founding myths of the “Bermuda Triangle” legend.

BIZARRE QUIZ TRIANGLE

1.
What state’s three most prestigious universities form its Research Triangle?

2.
In what novel would you find the love triangle of Charles Darnay, Lucie Manette, and Sydney Carton?

3.
What word, from the Greek for “uneven,” refers to a triangle whose sides all have different lengths?

4.
Goya’s controversial 1798 painting
The Naked Maja
includes the first depiction of what in Western art?

5.
A Citgo Petroleum sign in Kenmore Square is the iconic red triangle that can be seen above left field in what major-league ballpark?

6.
What nerdy Martin Short character played the triangle?

7.
What is shipped along Indochina’s “Golden Triangle”?

8.
A red and blue triangle is, appropriately, the logo of what major airline?

9.
What industry-changing event happened at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on March 25, 1911?

10.
“Triangle Man” is the only combatant who goes 2-0 in what They Might Be Giants song?

11.
What NBA head coach won nine championship rings using the “triangle offense”?

12.
What’s the only European country with a single triangle on its flag?

13.
Why did the pink triangle, as a gay pride symbol, originate?

14.
What’s the longest side of a right triangle called?

15.
What game uses twenty-two balls, including fifteen red ones arranged in a triangle?

1952
L
ONDON’S QUAINT
“pea-soup fog” becomes a little less charming as “the Big Smoke” descends on the city. The lethal sulfur-coal smog will kill thousands by the time it lifts four days later, resulting in new clean air legislation in the U.K.

GIVE PEAS A CHANCE

1.
Whose landmark 1865 paper recorded seven characteristics of peas, including “color, form, and size of the pods”?

2.
What 1959 musical ends with the happy refrain “It wasn’t the pea at all”?

3.
What breakfast cereal becomes a disturbing sexual metaphor in the Black-Eyed Peas hit “My Humps”?

4.
What Roman orator was named for the chickpea?

5.
How long has “pease-porridge” been in the pot, according to the nursery rhyme?