Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (39 page)

MARCH 4

1845
P
RESIDENT
J
OHN
T
YLER LEAVES
office and retires to his Virginia estate. Because, Tyler said, he’d been “outlawed” by the Whig Party, he renamed the plantation “Sherwood Forest.” Interestingly, Sherwood Forest’s owner fifty years previously had been none other than Tyler’s predecessor, William Henry Harrison.

DEAR MR. RESIDENT

Name the presidents who lived in these homes.

Easy

1.
Monticello

2.
Prairie Chapel Ranch

3.
Mount Vernon

4.
The Hermitage

5.
La Casa Pacifica

Harder

1.
Sagamore Hill

2.
Rancho del Cielo

3.
Walker’s Point

4.
Springwood

5.
Montpelier

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Shadow Lawn

2.
Peacefield

3.
Westland Mansion

4.
The Beeches

5.
Ash Lawn–Highland

1912
T
HE GROUNDBREAKING IS HELD
for the Brooklyn Dodgers’ new stadium, Ebbets Field. The ballpark is named for Charles Ebbets, the Dodgers bookkeeper who went heavily into debt in 1905 to buy the team and keep it in Brooklyn.

DOUBLE-DOUBLES

“Bookkeeper” is the only English word with three consecutive double letters. Give these answers with
two
consecutive pairs of double letters.

1.
What future cabinet officer became Stanford University’s youngest provost ever in 1993?

2.
What Beatles song is set “somewhere in the Black Mountain hills of Dakota”?

3.
In 2004, a nine-foot-tall bronze of Bobby Bowden was dedicated in what city?

4.
Petunia, No. 2
was the first of the giant flower canvases painted by what artist?

5.
What is Greenland called by its Inuit native residents?

1956
A N
ORTH
T
EXAS
S
TATE STUDENT
named Roy Orbison records a song some of his classmates wrote in fifteen minutes on a frat-house roof. “Ooby Dooby” becomes his breakout hit.

LYRICIST WANTED

Match these nonsense titles to the artist who performed them.

MARCH 5

1975
T
HE
H
OMEBREW
C
OMPUTER CLUB
holds its first meeting in Gordon French’s Palo Alto garage. Just one month later, the first “Apple I” computer will be demonstrated at one of their meetings.

RISE OF THE MACHINES

1.
What failed IBM computer was advertised by a Charlie Chaplin impersonator?

2.
What restaurant chain was the brainchild of Atari founder Nolan Bushnell?

3.
What was the only place Tandy’s popular TRS-80 computers were sold?

4.
What did Coleco name its 1983 home computer in the hope that it would take a bite out of Apple’s sales?

5.
What 1982 successor to the VIC-20 is still the bestselling computer model of all time?

1998
T
HE
J
ACK
N
ICHOLSON
–H
ELEN
H
UNT
comedy
As Good As It Gets
opens in Hong Kong. Due to some vagary of Chinese wordplay that I’m not even close to understanding, its Cantonese title is
Mr. Cat Poop.

SUB(PAR) TITLES

Can you name these English-language movies from their eccentric overseas titles?

1.
If You Leave Me, I Delete You
(2004, Italian)

2.
Monday the Whole Week
(1993, Swedish)

3.
Zero Zero Seven Dies Twice
(1967, Japanese)

4.
The Knights of the Coconut
(1975, German)

5.
Mysterious Murder in Snowy Cream
(1996, Cantonese)

6.
Going Crazy Wearing Skirts
(1959, Spanish)

7.
The Eighth Passenger of the
Nostromo (1979, Polish)

8.
Six Naked Pigs
(1997, Mandarin)

9.
Alex’s Friends
(1983, Hebrew)

10.
Mom, I Missed the Plane
(1990, French)

2000
A
RURAL
M
EXICAN WOMAN
named Inés Ramírez, experiencing brutal labor pains and fifty miles from the nearest midwife, performs a cesarean section
on herself
with a kitchen knife and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Mother and son are doing fine, but I’d buy a new kitchen knife if I were her.

DO-IT-YOURSELFERS

1.
Who’s the only player ever to coach himself to an NBA title?

2.
Who, with her husband, Leonard, founded the Hogarth Press in 1917 and used it to self-publish most of her work?

3.
After losing his old one when he lost his right hand, what color light saber did Luke Skywalker build for himself in
Return of the Jedi
?

4.
Who took the crown from Pope Pius VII’s hands and physically crowned himself emperor?

5.
What do Steven Soderbergh’s director of photography Peter Andrews and the Coen brothers’ editor Roderick Jaynes have in common?