Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (66 page)

APRIL 22

1878
C
ONGRESS’S
1876 T
URF
P
ROTECTION
A
CT,
keeping kids off the Capitol lawn, leaves Washington’s annual Easter egg roll homeless, so Rutherford B. Hayes offers to host it at the White House. An annual tradition is born.

A MAD SCRAMBLE

How many of these egg questions can you answer egg-zactly?

1.
What fictional island is constantly at war with Blefuscu over the correct way to eat a boiled egg?

2.
What comedian played the son of Mork and Mindy, hatched during the show’s final season?

3.
Besides the platypus (and Mork), what’s the only egg-laying mammal?

4.
What kind of sauce is served on eggs Benedict?

5.
What was the home country of famed jeweler Peter Carl Fabergé?

6.
What was John Woo’s last Hong Kong film,
God of Guns,
renamed for U.S. release?

7.
If they are the eggmen, what am I?

8.
What 1925 novel was originally titled
Trimalchio in West Egg
?

9.
What open-faced Italian omelette is, despite its name, more often baked than fried?

10.
What screen duo first appeared in the supporting cast of 1949’s
The Egg and I
?

11.
What 1960 classic originated when Bennett Cerf bet one of his authors that he couldn’t write a book using only fifty words?

12.
What 1990 dance craze gave the Digital Underground their biggest hit?

13.
What Italian physician was the first to describe the way the ovaries connect to the uterus in humans?

14.
What’s the better-known word for “aubergine”?

15.
What movie resulted when Woody Allen redubbed the Japanese film
Key of Keys
with a new plot about a top secret egg salad recipe?

1978
S
TEVE
M
ARTIN PERFORMS
“King Tut” on
Saturday Night Live.
The song will propel his album
A Wild and Crazy Guy
to the number two spot on the
Billboard
album chart, the last comedy album to chart so high.

WILD AND CRAZY GUYS

1.
What dog is the hero of Jack London’s
The Call of the Wild
?

2.
Gnarls Barkley’s megahit “Crazy” is on what 2006 debut album, named for an NBC TV series?

3.
What word do we derive from the Salish Indian word for “wild man”?

4.
What did Ignatz Mouse enjoy throwing at Krazy Kat’s head?

5.
Who, per her dying wish, is buried next to Wild Bill Hickok?

6.
What object falls onto a Kalahari Desert village at the beginning of the movie
The Gods Must Be Crazy
?

7.
What’s the name of the little boy who discovers
Where the Wild Things Are
?

8.
What would perform a Crazy Ivan?

9.
What major-league team has won two World Series as a wild card?

10.
What movie’s theme was remixed in 2005 into Crazy Frog’s biggest hit?

APRIL 23

1374
E
DWARD
III
OF
E
NGLAND
grants a favorite poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, “a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life.” A gallon a day?!

BOTTLED UP

1.
What kind of wine takes its name from the Spanish town of Jerez, where it’s made?

2.
What’s the French name for a restaurant wine steward?

3.
UB40’s first number one hit, “Red Red Wine,” was a cover of whose song?

4.
In what state is Sherwood Anderson’s fictional town of Wines-burg?

5.
What red wine does Paul Giamatti refuse to drink in the movie
Sideways
?

6.
Who’s the first person to plant a vineyard in the Bible?

7.
What grape, used to make a popular California wine, is called Primitivo in Europe?

8.
Susie Amy’s character on
Footballers’ Wives,
who killed a man with a wine bottle, also shares her name with what wine?

9.
Who is the Roman equivalent of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine?

10.
Chablis is the northernmost district of what French wine region?

1982
J
ULIO
F
RANCO MAKES
his major-league debut for the Philadelphia Phillies. Twenty-five years later, he’ll still be playing, making him the oldest position player in baseball history.

GOING LONG

This quiz on amazing longevity shouldn’t take you long.

1.
Who filibustered for a record twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes—with a urine pail standing at the ready—in the hope of preventing the Civil Rights Act of 1957?

2.
What kind of animal was Harriet, who died at the Queensland Zoo in 2006 and was claimed to have belonged to Charles Darwin?

3.
What album spent a record 741 weeks on
Billboard
’s Top 200 Albums chart?

4.
According to the Bible, who died at the ripe old age of 930?

5.
What is the subject of Claude Lanzmann’s award-winning nine-hour film
Shoah
?

6.
Having first aired on September 27, 1954, what’s the longest-running show on American nighttime TV?

7.
In office since 1959, who is the world’s longest-serving political leader?

8.
The Tibetan county of Zhongdian has officially renamed itself what, after the valley of long life from the novel
Lost Horizon
?

9.
Though an eleven-year ceasefire held from 1972 to 1983, what African country has been embroiled in a civil war since 1955?

10.
The seventy-four-minute maximum length of a CD was chosen, according to Philips Electronics, to accommodate what famous symphony?