Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (21 page)

FEBRUARY 3

1870
A
MERICANS OF ALL RACES
now have the right to vote, as long as they have a penis. Iowa votes to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, giving the amendment the required three-fourths majority.

³
/
₄
TIME

1.
In what lunar phase is the moon when it’s three-quarters full?

2.
In the “Great Upheaval,” three quarters of what people were forcibly removed from Nova Scotia?

3.
Three fourths of Western Australia’s population lives in what city?

4.
Three quarters of the cadmium mined annually is used, with nickel, to make what household items?

5.
Who is credited with writing three quarters of the Federalist Papers?

1902
S
HEP
F
RIEDMAN,
in the
Morning Telegraph,
coins the nickname “the Great White Way” for New York’s Broadway. But Shep wasn’t referring to the lights—a snowstorm that day had turned the street into, quite literally, a slippery “white way.”

THOROUGH, BUT FAIR

In what city would you find the most famous street named…

Easy

1.
Rodeo Drive

2.
Bourbon Street

3.
The Champs-Élysées

4.
Haight Street

5.
Peachtree Street

Harder

1.
Beale Street

2.
Nevsky Prospekt

3.
Carnaby Street

4.
Biscayne Boulevard

5.
Lake Shore Drive

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
La Rambla

2.
Nathan Road

3.
Yonge Street

4.
Paseo de la Reforma

5.
Reeperbahn

1956
T
HE VERY FIRST MEMBERS
are elected into the National Sporting Goods Hall of Fame. It’s now official: there’s a Hall of Fame for
everything.

THEY’VE GOT A LOT OF BALLS

Name these proud National Sporting Goods Hall of Fame members.

1.
Who went into the Hall for founding the motor company whose slogan was “Throw the oars away”?

2.
What Converse salesman is the only person in both the Basketball Hall of Fame and the Sporting Goods Hall of Fame?

3.
Pitching for the White Stockings in 1877, what sporting goods store owner became the first baseball star to use a glove?

4.
In the nineteenth century, what Swiss-born carriagemaker switched over to making bowling balls and billiard tables?

5.
In 1964, who founded Blue Ribbon Sports, which later went on to become Nike?

FEBRUARY 4

1938
T
HORNTON
W
ILDER’S PLAY
Our Town,
set in fictional Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, opens in New York.

HOUR TOWNS

What TV shows have been set in these fictional burgs?

Easy

1.
Sunnydale, CA

2.
Bedrock

3.
Cabot Cove, ME

4.
Cicely, AK

5.
Orbit City

Harder

1.
Dillon, TX

2.
Quahog, RI

3.
Capeside, ME

4.
Norwich, VT

5.
Mockingbird Heights

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Stuckeyville, OH

2.
Rome, WI

3.
Melonville

4.
Raytown

5.
Collinsport, ME

1968
N
EAL
C
ASSADY
—the model for Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road
—dies after passing out while wandering along a Mexican railroad track.

CHEAP NOVEL TEASE

Who was the real-life model for these thinly veiled literary characters?

1.
Doris Mann in
Postcards from the Edge

2.
Jack Stanton in
Primary Colors

3.
Dill in
To Kill a Mockingbird

4.
Abe Ravelstein in
Ravelstein

5.
Matthew Harrison Brady in
Inherit the Wind

1991
T
HE
B
ASEBALL
H
ALL OF
F
AME
votes to ban Pete Rose for gambling. Rose is shocked—he had $200 on the ruling going the other way!

I’M WITH THE BANNED

1.
Chicago banned the sale of what gourmet food staple in 2006?

2.
Kirk Douglas helped end the Hollywood blacklist by getting writer Dalton Trumbo screen credit on what film?

3.
Who was banned from
Saturday Night Live
by viewer phone vote in 1982?

4.
What Asian country bans the importation and sale of chewing gum?

5.
What wasn’t banned in the U.S. until 1972, a full decade after Rachel Carson wrote
Silent Spring
?

6.
The 2007 rule banning suspended NFL players from signing with the CFL was named for what player?

7.
What appeared on the cover of the Jane’s Addiction album
Ritual de lo Habitual
after retailers banned the original art?

8.
Laytonville, California, parents tried to ban what Dr. Seuss book from schools for “criminaliz[ing] the forest industry”?

9.
What Nicole Kidman film is banned in Zimbabwe, which resembles the movie’s fictional “Republic of Matobo” a bit too much?

10.
In 2005, Bhutan became the first country to entirely ban what?