Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (132 page)

BRUSHES WITH GREATNESS

Five dentists who changed history. Four of them recommend Trident!

1.
What jazz legend was named after his father, an East Saint Louis dentist who once ran for the Illinois state legislature?

2.
What did retired Seattle dentist Barney Clark make headlines for receiving on December 2, 1982?

3.
What did George Harrison’s dentist, John Riley, do in April 1965 that changed the face of rock?

4.
Ex-dentist Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow is now the dictator of what Caspian Sea nation?

5.
In her only book, who gave the unflattering nickname “Dr. Dussel,” meaning “nitwit,” to Amsterdam dentist Fritz Pfeffer?

1988
N
IKE UNVEILS A
$20
MILLION,
one-month campaign for its shoes. The tagline, tossed off by adman Dan Wieder in a meeting, is the simple “Just do it,” which he borrowed from the last words of serial killer Gary Gilmore. It becomes Nike’s corporate slogan for decades, and
Advertising Age
named it the fourth best advertising campaign of the century.

PERFECT PITCH

What brands were hawked by these other slogans from
Advertising Age
’s “Top 100”?

Easy

#1
: “Think small”

#2
: “The pause that refreshes”

#5
: “You deserve a break today”

#10
: “We try harder”

#15
: “Good to the last drop”

Harder

#35
: “When it rains it pours”

#38
: “Look, Ma! No cavities!”

#40
: “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking”

#44
: “Tastes good—like a cigarette should”

#48
: “Always a bridesmaid, but never a bride”

Yeah, Good Luck

#49
: “The penalty of leadership”

#56
: “It’s so simple”

#69
: “A buck well spent”

#71
: “The instrument of the immortals”

#87
: “It’s a miracle”

AUGUST 8

1890
A
N ANONYMOUS ARTICLE
in the
Chicago Tribune
documents the “Indian rope trick” for the first time. A century later, the article will be revealed as a hoax perpetrated by reporter John Elbert Wilkie, who went on to head the U.S. Secret Service for fourteen years.

ON THE ROPES

1.
What Best Picture–winning film was adapted from the short story collection
Rope Burns
?

2.
Who began his career as “the Cherokee Kid,” the trick roper in Texas Jack’s Wild West Circus?

3.
What measurement was derived from the rope to which a boat’s “chip log” was tied?

4.
What’s the American term for the rope maneuver called “abseiling” in Europe?

5.
In a famous short story, on what bridge was Peyton Farquhar condemned to be hanged before the rope broke?

6.
Where did tightrope artist Philippe Petit illegally walk on August 7, 1974?

7.
What famous murders inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s film
Rope
?

8.
Who provoked controversy with the phone-sex conversation on her 1997 album
The Velvet Rope
?

9.
Who was knocked out in 1974 by the “rope-a-dope” method?

10.
According to legend, who cut the tree-bark rope tied into a “Gordian knot”?

1991
T
HE
G
ABIN
-K
ONSTANTYNOW
radio mast near Warsaw collapses, meaning that the title of “world’s tallest structure” once again belongs to the KVLY-TV antenna near tiny Blanchard, North Dakota.

SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS

Get high on these lofty questions.

1.
What’s the highest-pitched instrument in the orchestra?

2.
Mount Sunflower is what state’s highest point?

3.
Who has held the world record in the pole vault—6.14 meters—for more than twenty years?

4.
Where did the world’s tallest bird, the giant moa, live until it went extinct around 1500?

5.
What musical instrument does Jack steal from the beanstalk giant?

6.
Which of the main categories of cloud, with a name meaning “curl of hair,” forms at the highest altitudes?

7.
What soft drink line was named after a competitor’s unusually tall bottles?

8.
Before being surpassed, what was the world’s tallest building for just a few months in 1930?

9.
Which player has the all-time highest
career
salary (not adjusted for inflation) in Major League Baseball?

10.
What number from drug-culture slang probably originated in 1971, from the time of day when a group of San Rafael High potheads would meet up to get high?

AUGUST 9

1944
S
MOKEY
B
EAR (NO “THE”!)
first appears on Forest Service posters.

A CHILD’S GARDEN OF URSUS

Only
you
can name the creators of these famous bears.

Easy

1.
Winnie-the-Pooh

2.
Yogi Bear

3.
Fozzie Bear

4.
Baloo

Harder

1.
Paddington

2.
Corduroy

3.
Br’er Bear

4.
Papa, Mama, Brother, Sister, and Honey Bear

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Rupert Bear

2.
Old Ben

3.
Gentle Ben

4.
P. T. Bridgeport

1974
I
N AN
E
AST
R
OOM CEREMONY,
Gerald Ford, by all accounts a very nice guy, somehow becomes leader of the free world.

IT’S RAINING MEH

Answer these questions about mediocrity. Or don’t. Whatever.

1.
Who hit .202 with three homers while playing outfield for the Birmingham Barons in 1994?

2.
What Canadian-born educator became famous for noting that “Every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”?

3.
What do the initials stand for in PGP digital encryption?

4.
What eighteenth-century opera composer, actually a hit musician in his day, was converted into a symbol of spiteful mediocrity by Peter Shaffer’s

Amadeus
?

5.
IQ tests are designed to produce what number as an average score?

1983
I
N
M
BABANE
, Q
UEEN
D
ZELIWE
is replaced by Ntombi as queen regent of Swaziland.

MPROBABLE SPELLINGS

These answers, like many Swazi words, all begin with an unusual pair of consonants.

1.
What company opened its first Italian eatery at Brooklyn’s Kings Plaza Shopping Center in 1967?

2.
What bird’s “Willow” species is the state bird of Alaska, while its “Rock” species represents Canada’s Nunavut province?

3.
What African country calls itself the “Land of a Thousand Hills”?

4.
What murder mystery novelist got her unusual first name from a Maori word meaning “reflections on the water”?

5.
What alternate to the QWERTY keyboard layout puts all the vowels under the home fingers of the left hand?

6.
What band based its hit “China in Your Hand” on Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
?

7.
What translucent, multilayer painting technique gives the
Mona Lisa
’s smile its famously enigmatic appearance?

8.
What imp would return to his native fifth dimension only when Superman tricked him into saying his name backward?

9.
What ethnic group began a wave of immigration to the U.S.—specifically the Minneapolis and Fresno areas—after the 1975 Communist takeover of Laos?

10.
What Toyota sports car model had to be renamed the “Celica Sports Package” in January 2005, for PR reasons?