Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (40 page)

MARCH 6

1890
W
EALTHY THEATER BUFF
Eugene Schieffelin releases eighty European starlings in Central Park. (Schieffelin is on a quixotic quest to introduce into America every bird in Shakespeare, and, unfortunately, starlings are mentioned in
Henry IV, Part I.
) The 200 million starlings decimating American ecosystems today are all descended from Schieffelin’s first breeding pairs.

FIVE MORE THINGS THAT ARE SHAKESPEARE’S FAULT

1.
By including cannon fire in his play
Henry VIII,
Shakespeare caused the 1613 fire that destroyed what building?

2.
What king probably never had the limp and hunchback Shakespeare maligned him with in a 1592 tragedy?

3.
By giving Franco Zeffirelli a film career, Shakespeare is also responsible for what unwatchable 1981 teen romance film, Tom Cruise’s film debut?

4.
Shakespeare mentioned his wife only once in his will, making her the odd bequest of his “second best” what?

5.
In
The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Shakespeare coined what word for “passionate,” cursing us with a terrible Foreigner song and thus the guitar riff from “Funky Cold Medina”?

1912
O
REO COOKIES GO ON SALE
for the first time. Hydrox cookies, despite their reputation as a knockoff, have actually been on sale for almost four years.

IN PLAIN BLACK AND WHITE

Can you provide these monochromatic answers?

1.
Who is Penelope Pussycat’s would-be seducer?

2.
What tinting process for black-and-white photography was named for the genus of cuttlefish that originally provided the pigment?

3.
What extinct subspecies of zebra had stripes in front but a plain brown hindquarters?

4.
What’s the only movie principally in black and white to win a Best Picture Oscar since
The Apartment
in 1960?

5.
What did Edward Teach modify by adding an hourglass and a spear?

6.
In what modern-day country was Dalmatia located?

7.
Who was the last white president of South Africa?

8.
How many squares on a side is a daily
New York Times
crossword puzzle?

9.
Francis, Benedict, or Augustine—what sixth-century saint formulated the namesake Rule listing the vows taken by most Catholic nuns?

10.
What common item is usually made up of twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons?

11.
What was the French film
The Emperor’s March
renamed for U.S. audiences?

12.
Who plays the guitar introduction to Michael Jackson’s hit “Black or White”?

13.
What does a football referee signal by putting both hands high above his head with the palms together and facing upward?

14.
Who is the wife in Shakespeare’s only interracial married couple?

15.
In chess notation, what move is indicated by “O-O”?

MARCH 7

1822
A
RMY CAPTAIN JOHN CLEVES SYMMES
petitions Congress to mount an unusual polar expedition. Symmes has been traveling the country for years, lecturing on his pet theory: that there’s a 1,400-mile-wide hole at the North Pole through which ships might enter and explore the hollow earth. Congress, sadly, turns him down.

WE ARE THE HOLLOW MEN

In what “Hollow” did these people reside?

1.
Ichabod Crane

2.
Todd Rundgren

3.
The
Gilmore Girls

4.
Loretta Lynn

5.
Lily, James, and Harry Potter

1839
E
DWARD
B
ULWER
-L
YTTON’S PLAY
Richelieu
opens at Covent Garden. The play is mostly forgotten today, except for one now-famous line in Act II: “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

SWORD PLAY

1.
What’s the only NBA team to have a sword in its logo?

2.
According to the Bible, what is now guarded by an angel holding a flaming sword?

3.
In what movie is the Okinawan swordmaker Hattori Hanzo a character?

4.
Which is the lightest of the three kinds of fencing sword?

5.
Of whom did Dustin Hoffman say “He has no genitalia and he’s holding a sword”?

6.
Tizona, on display in a Madrid museum, was the sword belonging to what national hero?

7.
What kind of sword probably takes its name from a Persian word for “lion’s tail,” because of its curved shape?

8.
What unflattering nickname does the future King Arthur go by in T. H. White’s
The Sword in the Stone
?

9.
Whose “sword” is made up of a namesake nebula and the Trapezium cluster?

10.
In poetry, what creature is killed with a “vorpal blade”?

1994
T
HE
S
UPREME
C
OURT RULES,
in
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music,
that commercial parody may be allowable as “fair use”—in this case, that 2 Live Crew can use the tune to “Oh, Pretty Woman.”

AND NOTHING BUT THE SPOOF

What artists’ hits were parodied by “Weird Al” Yankovic as…

Easy

1.
“Like a Surgeon”

2.
“Another One Rides the Bus”

3.
“Canadian Idiot”

4.
“Living with a Hernia”

5.
“It’s All About the Pentiums”

Harder

1.
“Lasagna”

2.
“Gump”

3.
“Couch Potato”

4.
“My Bologna”

5.
“Do I Creep You Out”

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
“eBay”

2.
“Headline News”

3.
“Yoda”

4.
“Cavity Search”

5.
“The Brady Bunch”