Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (4 page)

JANUARY 5

1945
P
EPÉ
L
E
P
EW
makes his screen debut in the short “Odor-able Kitty,” in which Pepé is actually a married American skunk
pretending
to be French so he can seduce a cross-dressing male cat. (“Odor-able Kitty” is obviously ripe for rediscovery by Queer Studies majors.)

COMMON SCENTS

1.
What molecule is named for the Greek word for “smell,” because of the odor associated with lightning storms?

2.
What band’s album
Smell the Glove
was released with an all-black cover because Polymer Records and retailers balked at the misogynistic original cover?

3.
What port’s name comes from the Cantonese for “fragrant harbor”?

4.
What TV character’s trademark song was “Smelly Cat”?

5.
Peanut butter, coffee, or roses—according to a Yale study, what’s the number one most recognized smell among American adults?

6.
Joseph Pujol, the French entertainer known as “Le Pétomane,” built a whole stage act out of his virtuosity doing what?

7.
What foursome—two people, an insect, and a Freudian construct—ask to be entertained in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”?

8.
Who is Martha talking about when she tells Jesus, “Lord, by this time he stinketh,” in John 11?

9.
What animal’s intestine secretes ambergris, a strong-smelling, waxy gunk used in making perfume?

10.
Young wines are said to have “aroma.” What do older wines have instead?

11.
J. J. Hunsecker, Burt Lancaster’s unscrupulous character in
Sweet Smell of Success,
is a thinly veiled caricature of whom?

12.
As mystery fans know, cyanide is often said to have the bitter aroma of what?

13.
The title tale in the bestselling children’s book
The Stinky Cheese Man
is an updating of what classic story?

14.
What product did Herbert Lapidus invent in 1974 by impregnating latex rubber with coconut charcoal?

15.
In
Apocalypse Now,
Robert Duvall says he loves “the smell of napalm in the morning” because it smells like what?

1995
A
MERICA FINALLY LEARNS
Kramer’s first name, when the
Seinfeld
character’s estranged mother calls him “Cosmo” for the first time.

FIRST-NAME BASIS

If its title used last names instead of first names, what movie/TV show/literary work would be called…

Easy

1.
Montague and Capulet

2.
Truman & Adler

3.
DeFazio & Feeney

4.
Parker and Barrow

Harder

1.
Jones ’n’ Brown

2.
Sanders & Sanders & Henderson & Henderson

3.
Dickinson and Sawyer

4.
Finklestein & Montgomery

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Shanowski & Fairfield

2.
Hopkins and Leplastrier

3.
Chasen and Chardin

4.
McCardle & Lowell

JANUARY 6

1831
T
HE NAME OF
C
LEAVELAND,
Ohio, permanently loses the first
a
when the first issue of the
Cleveland Advertiser
shortens the city’s name so it’ll fit on the paper’s masthead.

MISPELLINGS

1.
What Margate City, New Jersey, housing area has been misspelled on the Monopoly board for almost eighty years?

2.
What proper name is spelled, unusually, with a single
n
both on the Liberty Bell and in the U.S. Constitution?

3.
In what 1986 film does Brian Cox portray “Hannibal Lecktor” (
sic
)?

4.
Whose first album was meant to be titled for the Mexican expression
Órale,
before a misspelling intervened?

5.
In the Bible, whose daughter-in-law Orpah is the source for Oprah Winfrey’s misspelled name?

6.
What extra letter did Dan Quayle add to the word “potato” when he misspelled it in 1992?

7.
Where is Jacques Plante’s name misspelled five of the six times it appears?

8.
What nation’s dyslexic king Carl XVI Gustaf misspelled his own name on the accession document that gave him the throne?

9.
What Washington Wizards All-Star still bears the misplaced
w
in his name from a birth certificate typo?

10.
According to his best seller, what word inspired Chris Gardner when he saw it misspelled in a Bay Area day care center in 1981?

1896
F
RANCE’S PIONEERING MOVIEMAKING TEAM,
the Lumière brothers, show their fifty-second silent film
Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
to a Paris audience for the first time. According to legend, those in the audience panic and jump from their seats when they see the image of an enormous train barreling toward the camera.

SCREEN DEBUTS

Can you match up these film firsts?