Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (88 page)

MAY 31

1578
K
ING
H
ENRI
III lays the first stone for Paris’s Pont Neuf, the oldest of the city’s many bridges over the Seine River. Ironically, Pont Neuf means “new bridge” in French.

WE BUILT THIS CITY

What’s the major river running through these world cities?

Easy

1.
London

2.
Washington, D.C.

3.
Vienna

4.
Cairo

5.
Rome

Harder

1.
Boston

2.
Baghdad

3.
St. Petersburg

4.
Cleveland

5.
Florence

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Seoul

2.
Dublin

3.
Amsterdam

4.
Melbourne

5.
Buenos Aires

1929
A
TLANTIC
C
ITY
C
ONVENTION
H
ALL
is dedicated. The mammoth organ in Boardwalk Hall Auditorium boasts 33,114 pipes, making it the largest pipe organ ever constructed.

THE ORGAN TRAIL

In what organ of the human body would you find…

1.
Nephrons, loops of Henle, Bowman’s capsules

2.
The islets of Langerhans, the duct of Wirsung

3.
The medulla, the pons, the amygdala

4.
The sclera, the fovea, the cornea

5.
The seminiferous tubules, the Sertoli cells, the efferent ducts

6.
The caudate lobe, the common bile duct, hepatocytes

7.
The malleus, the Eustachian tube, the cochlea

8.
The pleurae, the bronchi, the alveoli

9.
The endometrium, the cervix

10.
The pyloris, the esophageal sphincter, parietal cells

2000
A
STUMBLE BY UKULELE-STRUMMING
senior citizen Sonja Christopher costs her tribe a box of waterproof matches, and so she becomes the first castaway ever “voted off the island” on the American
Survivor.

IMMUNITY CHALLENGE

1.
What letter of the alphabet identifies the “helper” and “killer” white blood cells that play a role in human immune response?

2.
Whose wife, Adrienne, claimed in a 1988 DUI trial that she should enjoy diplomatic immunity, for having married the “Ambassador of Soul”?

3.
What Colorado congresswoman called Ronald Reagan the “Teflon president,” for his seeming immunity to criticism?

4.
The word “vaccine” comes from the Latin for “cow,” because of early observations that dairymaids seemed to be immune to what deadly disease?

5.
In 1991, who received immunity from nineteen counts of murder after he agreed to testify against Mob boss John Gotti?

May Answers

MAY 1

STAR-SPANGLED

1.
Al Reynolds

2.
Charles I

3.
The second Death Star

4.
“Lucky Star”

5.
George Marshall

6.
Brazil

7.
Polaris (the North Star)

8.
Echinoderms

9.
The Minnesota North Stars

10.
Vincent van Gogh (“Vincent”)

11.
Verona

12.
Arsenio Hall

13.
Don Meredith

14.
A red giant

15.
Kris Kristofferson (
A Star Is Born
costars)

LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN

1.
Betamax

2.
Napoleon Dynamite

3.
The La Brea tar pits

4.
Samuel Beckett

5.
Mariano Rivera

6.
Her wedding dress

7.
Bhutan

8.
A madeleine

9.
Jaromir Jagr

10.
The 1980s

MAY 2

POSING POSIES

1.
D

2.
A

3.
E

4.
C

5.
B

WHAT A DRAG!

1.
Achilles

2.
Mrs. Doubtfire
’s

3.
Monty Python

4.
Portia (
The Merchant of Venice
)

5.
The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre

6.
George Sand

7.
Eddie Izzard

8.
Gwyneth Paltrow (
Shakespeare in Love
)

9.
Joan of Arc’s

10.
Hansel

PUB QUIZ

1.
Stout

2.
Its exterior was used for the bar in
Cheers

3.
Fifty

4.
Ploughman’s

5.
Bali

MAY 3

REVOLUTION 9

1.
Hugo Chávez

2.
William and Mary

3.
Dioxin

4.
Czechoslovakia

5.
The Time

6.
October

7.
Dance Dance Revolution

8.
Marian Anderson

9.
The months of the year

A FIT OF PEAK

1.
Montenegro

2.
West Virginia (The Mountain State) and Vermont (The Green Mountain State)

3.
Whoville (
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
)

4.
Mount McKinley (or Denali)

5.
New Zealand

6.
Mountain Dew

7.
The highest unclimbed mountain in the world

8.
Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

9.
Hong Kong

10.
Diana Ross

11.
Mars

12.
The Atlas Mountains