Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (142 page)

AUGUST 27

1820
T
HE FIRST HARDY MOUNTAINEERS
reach the top of the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest point…or so they think. In 2006, a newly discovered map will show that local hunters and shepherds had been scaling the peak at least fifty years before.

SUMMIT MEETING

What mountain is the tallest point of these nations?

Easy

1.
Greece

2.
Nepal

3.
The United States

4.
France

5.
Japan

Harder

1.
Australia

2.
Tanzania

3.
Russia

4.
Canada

5.
Argentina

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Pakistan

2.
Ecuador

3.
Great Britain

4.
Turkey

5.
San Marino

1943
T
UESDAY
W
ELD IS BORN
in New York City. On a Friday.

WEEK-MINDED

1.
What Broadway great’s daughter wrote the book
Freaky Friday
?

2.
What day of the week do the Bangles
wish
it was in “Manic Monday”?

3.
Three of four assassinated U.S. presidents—Lincoln, McKinley, and Kennedy—were fatally shot on what day of the week?

4.
In 1982, what seven-year-old became
Saturday Night Live
’s youngest host ever?

5.
What day of the week is Mardi Gras?

6.
What is Gabriel Syme’s code name, according to the title of G. K. Chesterton’s most famous novel?

7.
Who was (eventually) fired in the “Saturday Night Massacre” of October 1973?

8.
Which of the two leads of 1995’s
Friday
didn’t appear in either of the sequels?

9.
What did Wednesday Addams call her headless doll on
The Addams Family
?

10.
What badge number was retired by the LAPD when Jack “Joe Friday” Webb died in 1982?

1997
T
HE
I
NTERNATIONAL
F
EDERATION OF
A
NATOMISTS
decrees that the body part popularly known as “cleavage” will now be officially called the “intermammary sulcus.”

GRAZE ANATOMY

What’s the more colloquial term for these parts of the body?

Easy

1.
Clavicle

2.
Tympanum

3.
Umbilicus

4.
Epidermis

Harder

1.
Axilla

2.
Scapula

3.
Laryngeal prominence

4.
Nates

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Naris

2.
Metacarpophalangeal joints

3.
Hallux

4.
Eponychium

AUGUST 28

1207
K
ING
J
OHN SIGNS
the royal charter officially creating the city of Liverpool. The jokey adjective form “Liverpudlian,” however, won’t be coined for another six hundred years. (“Pool” to “puddle,” get it?)

HOMETOWN BUFFET

What city do you hail from if you’re a…

Easy

1.
Cairene

2.
Münchner

3.
Angeleno

4.
Madrilenian

5.
Neapolitan

Harder

1.
Varsovian

2.
Muscovite

3.
Yerushalmi

4.
Capetonian

5.
Novocastrian

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Haligonian

2.
Porteño

3.
Capitalino

4.
Mancunian

5.
Carioca

1963
D
R
. M
ARTIN
L
UTHER
K
ING
, J
R.,
gives his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

DREAM ACADEMY

Other great thinkers have been inspired by dreams as well.

1.
What song, whose melody was born in a 1965 dream in Jane Asher’s London flat, went by the working title “Scrambled Eggs” until the final lyrics were written?

2.
A dream about a snake eating its own tail helped scientist Friedrich Kekulé discover the ring structure of what organic compound?

3.
According to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, what classic dream-inspired poem would have been much longer if a mysterious “person from Porlock” hadn’t interrupted his reverie?

4.
Whose life work was inspired by a dream in which a man named Victoricus appeared, holding a letter titled “The Voice of the Irish”?

5.
Despite resemblances to two Harlan Ellison
Outer Limits
episodes, what movie does James Cameron claim originated in a fever dream he had in a Rome hotel in 1981?

6.
What was the first neurotransmitter ever discovered, thanks to notes that scientist Otto Loewi scribbled to himself after waking from the same dream two nights running?

7.
In 1954, artist Jasper Johns’s career was changed forever when he dreamed that he was painting a large version of what?

8.
An 1816 lecture on evolution inspired young Mary Godwin to dream about a scientist and a “hideous phantasm,” which led her to write what novel?

9.
Who claimed that an 1853 dream of drowning, during an afternoon nap in La Spezia, Italy, inspired the prelude to
Das Rheingold
?

10.
What did Elias Howe invent in 1845 after dreaming of a tribe of cannibals pounding spears that had holes drilled in their tips?

1964
A
T
N
EW
Y
ORK’S
D
ELMONICO
H
OTEL,
Bob Dylan turns the Beatles on to marijuana.

COMFORTABLY NUMB

Who sang these paeans to their drugs of choice?

1.
“Heroin,” 1967

2.
“Cocaine,” 1977

3.
“Caffeine,” 1992

4.
“Amphetamine,” 1997

5.
“Alcohol,” 2005