Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (14 page)

JANUARY 25

1848
H
OLY
R
OMAN
E
MPEROR
H
ENRY
IV travels to Canossa, Italy, hoping to persuade Pope Gregory VII to lift his excommunication. Gregory famously snubs His Highness, leaving him stewing in the snow outside the castle gates for
three full days.

COLD SHOULDERS

Do you remember these infamous snubs?

1.
Which core
Flintstones
cast member was absent from Flintstone vitamins until 1996?

2.
Alfred Hitchcock famously never won a Best Director Oscar, but he did direct one Best Picture. Which movie?

3.
What goddess started the Trojan War in a fit of pique, having not been invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis?

4.
Who’s the only eligible back-to-back MVP not enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame?

5.
What novel’s events are kicked off when Countess Ellen Olenska is snubbed by New York society?

1905
T
HE
3,100-
CARAT
C
ULLINAN,
the largest rough diamond ever discovered, is found in South Africa. For most of the twentieth century,
both
diamonds cut from the stone were the world’s two largest, and today both are part of Britain’s crown jewels.

CARAT CAKE

1.
On which Hawaiian island would you find Diamond Head?

2.
What, at their most difficult, are rated “Double Black Diamond” in the United States?

3.
What was the last name of the two brothers who discovered diamonds on their farm, Vooruitzigt, in 1870?

4.
What two Arizona Diamondbacks shared
Sports Illustrated
Sportsman of the Year honors in 2001?

5.
Which Monkees number one hit was written by a young Neil Diamond?

6.
What U.S. state depicts a large, round-cut diamond between the letters and numbers on its license plates?

7.
What’s the diamond card in a “pinochle”?

8.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a famous short story about “A Diamond as Big as” what New York landmark?

9.
What color is the supposedly cursed Hope Diamond?

10.
What’s the name for the diamond-shaped “soft spots” on the skull of a newborn?

1954
D
YLAN
T
HOMAS’S RADIO PLAY
Under Milk Wood
first broadcasts on the BBC. The play is set in the Welsh village of Llareggub—an in-joke by Thomas. Llareggub is “bugger all” spelled backward.

RREPEATED LLETTERS

All these answers will begin with a doubled letter, like “Llareggub.”

1.
Who wins the Hundred Acre Wood’s first Poohsticks competition?

2.
What Quechua word is also sometimes used to refer to a vicuña or guanaco?

3.
What 1997 megahit asks, “When you get old and start losing your hair, can you tell me who will still care?”

4.
What cloud of comets, out beyond Pluto, was named for a twentieth-century Dutch astronomer?

5.
What composer’s tune “Hoe Down” is the background music for the “Beef—it’s what’s for dinner” TV ads?

JANUARY 26

1848
I
N A LECTURE AT
the Concord Lyceum, Henry David Thoreau first delivers his landmark essay “Civil Disobedience,” which will go on to inspire both Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

PUTTING DOWN THE MAN

Question authority with
trivia
questions, for a change.

1.
What was “Che” Guevara’s real first name?

2.
According to Bob Dylan in “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Don’t follow leaders. Watch your—” what instead?

3.
What did Tommie Smith and John Carlos do to make headlines in 1968?

4.
What organization’s 1999 conference in Seattle led to massive street protests?

5.
The famous “peace symbol” was designed to combine the semaphor positions for N and D. What do the N and D stand for?

6.
What celebrated antiapartheid activist died in South African police custody in September 1977?

7.
Greenwich Village’s 1969 Stonewall riots took place just hours after what gay icon’s funeral?

8.
What country overthrew its authoritarian regime via the bloodless “Velvet Revolution”?

9.
Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” first appeared on what movie’s soundtrack?

10.
What unknown revolutionary was, alongside “The American G.I.,” one of only two nameless entries on
Time
’s list of the twentieth century’s most influential people?

1972
F
LIGHT ATTENDANT VESNA VULOVIC
free-falls a record 33,000 feet when JAT Yugoslav Flight 364 explodes over Czechoslovakia…and she survives.

GOING DOWN

Trivia you’ll fall for.

1.
How many different types of falling pieces are there in the game Tetris?

2.
Who is pop band Fall Out Boy enjoying an
Evening Out with,
according to the title of their first album?

3.
Albert Fall became the first U.S. cabinet officer to serve jail time for his part in what scandal?

4.
The “crawlers” are the predators in what 2005 horror film?

5.
What book begins “Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree”?

6.
Alicia Keys’s hit “Fallin’” is written in E minor, but the album title suggests it
should
be sung in what other key?

7.
What World Heritage Site is found along the Zambezi River, in Zambia’s Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park?

8.
What TV catchphrase was first uttered, in 1990, by retired nurse Edith Fore, portraying “Mrs. Fletcher”?

9.
What two-word term is the top speed reached by a free-falling object?

10.
What famous structure was transplanted to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, in 1971?

11.
Name either of the two L.A.-area streets mentioned in the lyrics of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.”

12.
What controversial novel begins with Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha falling from an exploding jetliner?

13.
Who missed out on an Olympic gold medal in 1984 after her famous collision with Zola Budd during the 3,000-meter final?

14.
“Defenestration” is the act of being thrown out of what?

15.
What are Butch and Etta riding during the “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” scene from
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
?