Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (11 page)

JANUARY 19

1935
C
OOPERS
I
NC. OF
C
HICAGO
first sells a new men’s undergarment it calls the “Jockey.” Tighty-whities are born.

A BRIEF QUIZ

1.
What song is playing during Tom Cruise’s iconic underwear dance in
Risky Business
?

2.
The
Captain Underpants
books take place at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School. Jerome Horwitz is the real name of what comedian?

3.
What was Bill Clinton’s answer to the infamous underwear question seventeen-year-old Laetita Thompson asked him at a 1994 “Rock the Vote” event?

4.
According to the 1980s slogan, what was “underwear that’s fun to wear”?

5.
Where is the “Naked Cowboy,” an underwear-clad guitarist, famous for playing?

1949
F
OR THE FIRST TIME,
an unnamed black-clad man leaves three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on Edgar Allan Poe’s grave. The mysterious annual tradition continues today.

PETAL PUSHERS

Everything’s coming up roses in this quiz.

1.
What actor founded the Purple Rose Theater Company in his native Michigan?

2.
What year’s Rose Bowl was moved from Pasadena to Durham, North Carolina?

3.
What mythical Guns N’ Roses album has been repeatedly delayed since 2002?

4.
What real-life blind librarian was the basis for Jorge of Burgos, the blind librarian in Umberto Eco’s
The Name of the Rose
?

5.
What English dynasty collapsed into the Wars of the Roses?

6.
The fruit of the rose plant shares its name with what part of the body?

7.
After being eliminated in the last rose ceremony of ABC’s first season of
The Bachelor,
who was brought back as the first
Bachelorette
?

8.
What Oscar-winning Best Picture is named for a type of rose?

9.
What two words appear in the original recording of “Candle in the Wind” where “England’s rose” appear in the 1997 version?

10.
Who receives 554 red roses on the first Saturday of every May?

1977
S
NOW FALLS IN
M
IAMI,
for the first and only time in the city’s recorded history.

SNOW WONDER

1.
How many “dendrites,” or arms, does a typical snowflake have?

2.
Why was Ross Rebagliati temporarily stripped of his snowboarding gold at the 1998 Olympics?

3.
“White Christmas” playing on Armed Forces Radio was the secret signal for what April 30, 1975, event?

4.
What chain introduced “the Blizzard” in 1985?

5.
What mountain pass is today named for the Illinois farmer whose family was trapped there in an 1846 snowstorm?

JANUARY 20

1945
L
ITERARY CRITIC
E
DMUND
W
ILSON
demolishes the Agatha Christie genre in his now-classic
New Yorker
essay “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?”

MURDER MOST FOUL

Do you care who killed these literary characters?

Easy

1.
Polonius

2.
Albus Dumbledore

3.
Captain Ahab

4.
Grendel

5.
Aslan

Harder

1.
Cock Robin

2.
Clare Quilty

3.
Uncle Tom

4.
Laius

5.
Richard Cory

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Jay Gatsby

2.
Fyodor Karamazov

3.
Lennie Small

4.
Elizabeth Lavenza

5.
Vladimir Lensky

1964
B
ABETTE
M
ARCH,
giggling in the Cozumel surf in a demure white two-piece, becomes the first-ever
Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue cover girl.

WATER COLORS

What color were the iconic swimsuits worn by…

1982
T
HINKING THAT A FAN
has thrown a rubber toy bat onto the stage at a Des Moines concert, Ozzy Osbourne gamely bites off its head. Unfortunately it is (er, was) a
real
bat, and Ozzy is rushed to the hospital for rabies shots.

DO THE BATUSI

1.
What publication introduced Bat Boy in June 1992?

2.
Most of Transylvania is now part of what modern-day country?

3.
Anoura fistulata,
a bat recently discovered in Ecuador, is the only mammal to have what body part measuring almost twice the animal’s total length?

4.
What city is home to the Big Bat, a 120-foot-tall steel replica of Babe Ruth’s baseball bat?

5.
The Whalers, the Sabres, or the Nordiques—what team’s Jim Lorentz killed a bat with his hockey stick during the infamous “Fog Game” of the 1975 Stanley Cup finals?