Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (100 page)

JUNE 18

1746
O
VER BREAKFAST AT A
L
ONDON TAVERN
, Dr. Samuel Johnson signs a contract to produce his groundbreaking
A Dictionary of the English Language
, which will occupy him for the next ten years.

FROM A TO Z

All these answers have their letters in alphabetical order, like the words “billowy” and “chintz.”

1.
What Sonic Youth LP did
Entertainment Weekly
call the best album of 1992?

2.
Before “hello” was common, what word did Alexander Graham Bell suggest for answering the phone?

3.
What French word for “jewel” became a common name for American movie houses?

4.
What animal is also called a wildebeest?

5.
What kind of tissue sample does a pathologist take to tell whether or not a tumor is malignant?

6.
In 1990, what movie won the first acting Oscar for a black woman since 1939?

7.
The rock band Seven Mary Three took their name from a police call sign on what TV series?

8.
The name of what shield of Zeus from Greek myth has come to mean “protection” or “auspices”?

9.
The ruby anniversary celebrates how many years of marriage?

10.
What kind of khaki cotton pants are so named because U.S. soldiers first bought them in Asia during the Spanish-American War?

2006
P
AUL
M
C
C
ARTNEY TURNS
64, as predicted by a song he recorded forty years ago. But with a personal fortune now estimated at $ 1.5 billion, he probably doesn’t care much if we’ll still need him, if we’ll still feed him.

YE OLDE TRIVIA

1.
In what war did the oak-sided USS
Constitution
gain its nickname, “Old Ironsides”?

2.
What baseball player is Santiago’s hero in
The Old Man and the Sea
?

3.
Who’s the oldest singer ever to win a season of
American Idol
?

4.
What’s the alcohol in an old-fashioned?

5.
What do ventriloquist Señor Wences, first woman governor Nellie Tayloe Ross, football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, director Leni Riefenstahl, and composer Irving Berlin have in common?

6.
What Oscar-winning actor is also the artistic director of London’s Old Vic theater?

7.
Three days before dying, who passed George III as the oldest monarch ever to hold the British throne?

8.
Bear, wolf, or cougar—what kind of animal’s bite forces Travis Coates to put down his dog, Old Yeller?

9.
What Bavarian physician presented a 1906 paper called “On a Peculiar Disease of the Cerebral Cortex”?

10.
What rapper performs at the “Mitch-a-palooza” in the movie
Old School
?

11.
Exodus, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy—which book of the Old Testament also names one of the felines in T. S. Eliot’s
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats
?

12.
Who hosted
This Old House
for its first ten seasons?

13.
The insult “You sockdologizing old man-trap!” were the last words ever heard by whom?

14.
Who’s the oldest major-league pitcher ever to throw a no-hitter?

15.
By what name was the world’s largest-circulation magazine,
AARP: The Magazine,
known for its first forty-five years?

JUNE 19

1910
T
O HONOR
C
IVIL
W
AR VETERAN
William Jackson Smart, his daughter Sonora Dodd organizes the first June Father’s Day festivities, in Spokane, Washington.

DAD TO THE BONE

Match each person to the field they’re sometimes called the “Father of.”

1943
W
ITH SO MANY MEN
overseas fighting World War II, the NFL downsizes. The Steelers and Eagles are combined into one Pennsylvania team commonly called the “Steagles.”

BLEND AMBITION

Give these “portmanteau” (combined-word) answers.

1.
What hometown of Scott Joplin and Ross Perot is named for the three states whose border it sits near?

2.
What genre of film gave us
Dolemite, Superfly,
and
Cleopatra Jones
?

3.
Where did England’s Graham Fagg and France’s Philippe Cozette historically shake hands on December 1, 1990?

4.
What’s the technical term for Internet “smileys” like this one:)?

5.
What fitness program did Judi Sheppard Missett create in 1969 in Carlsbad, California?

6.
What rare economic condition results when rising prices and recession occur at once?

7.
What Adam Sandler movie’s tagline billed it as “a comedy with a language all its own”?

8.
What is the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ biggest-selling album ever?

9.
What “ethnolect” did the Oakland School Board make famous in 1996?

10.
What word has Beyoncé Knowles defined as “beautiful, bountiful, and bounce-able”?

1949
T
HE FLEDGLING
NASCAR
ORGANIZATION
holds its first “strictly stock” race in Charlotte, North Carolina. Unlike today’s high-tech racers, these early cars actually were “stock” cars—practically unmodified factory models.

STRICTLY STOCK

1.
What two things are being compared in a stock’s “P/E ratio”?

2.
What single event shut down the New York Stock Exchange for more than four months, longer than all its other unscheduled closures combined?

3.
Who was president when the Dow Jones Industrial Average finally regained its pre-1929 peak?

4.
What Missouri-based company uses “BUD” as its ticker symbol?

5.
Complete this analogy. New York: Dow Jones:: Tokyo:.