Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (44 page)

MARCH 14

1951
A
N ICONIC IMAGE IS BORN
when Albert Einstein sticks out his tongue for UPI photographer Albert Sasse.

LICKER CABINET

1.
What Asian dog breed is notable for its blue tongue?

2.
What bloody Shakespeare play features the stage direction “Enter the empress’ sons with Lavinia, her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravished”?

3.
What movie was partially inspired by Jean Shepherd’s unpublished story “Flick’s Tongue”?

4.
What comic strip introduced the metal band Billy and the Boingers, aka Deathtöngue?

5.
Why do snakes flick their tongues in and out?

6.
According to the popular tongue twister, what problem does the sixth sheik have?

7.
What Christian feast celebrates “tongues of fire” descending on the Apostles?

8.
What are the bumps on the tongue that carry the taste buds called?

9.
Who wrote in his 2001 autobiography, “I was soon to find out that having a long tongue came in handy with the girls”?

10.
According to the ad, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

1968
BIFF! BAM! POW! Plagued by limp ratings that not even the addition of Yvonne Craig in a skintight Batgirl suit could help, er, elevate, TV’s campy
Batman
is KO’d by ABC.

PUNCH LINES

1.
WHAM! What 1984 hit was credited to George Michael in the U.K. but to “Wham! featuring George Michael” when it topped the U.S. charts?

2.
BANG! What two things need to be combined to form an “interrobang”?

3.
SOCK! Who made headlines in 2002 when, after scoring a touchdown in Seattle, he pulled a Sharpie pen from his sock and autographed the football?

4.
CRUNCH! Cap’n Crunch’s flagship is named for what fish?

5.
BOOM! What name, a tribute to an Austrian physicist, is given to the speed at which airplanes produce a sonic boom?

6.
CRASH! 2004’s
Crash
is the only Best Picture Oscar winner to be principally set in what city?

7.
ZAP! What 1970s slogan first appeared in an oft-bootlegged cartoon of a strutting man from the first issue of Robert Crumb’s
Zap Comix
?

8.
BIFF! What’s the last name of Biff, the loutish villain of the
Back to the Future
films?

9.
BAM! In what country is the historic city of Bam, largely destroyed in a catastrophic 2003 earthquake?

10.
POW! Hoa Lo Prison, whose name means “fiery furnace” in Vietnamese, was more commonly called what by American POWs?

MARCH 15

1935
A
LARMED THAT THEIR PARENTS
may be exhibiting and exploiting them for financial gain, the Canadian government passes the “Dionne Quintuplets’ Guardianship Act,” officially making the five sisters “wards of the King.” Canada will, of course, spend the next few decades exhibiting and exploiting them for financial gain.

SISTERS ARE DOIN’ IT FOR THEMSELVES

1.
What Shakespeare play begins with a meeting of the Weird Sisters?

2.
Which two actresses on TV’s
Charlie’s Angels
were meant to be portraying sisters?

3.
Which oldest Gabor sister lied about her birth date, which made her appear to be younger than Eva and Zsa Zsa?

4.
Which of the “Seven Sisters” women’s colleges no longer officially exists?

5.
Who was the only African-American woman to win a Grand Slam tennis singles event before the Williams sisters did?

6.
Which of the Brontë sisters wrote only a single novel?

7.
The world’s first “sister cities” were what Spanish city and its midwestern namesake?

8.
In Greek myth, what nine sisters are the daughters of Mnemosyne?

9.
What Swedish pop group was anchored by sisters Jenny and Linn Berggren?

10.
In 41 b.c., who ordered the death of her sister, Arsino IV?

1990
N
INE-YEAR-OLD
C
HRISTINA
A
GUILERA
loses on
Star Search.
You’re no Sinbad, Xtina!

I STILL HAVEN’T FOUND WHAT I’M LOOKING FOR

Search for these answers related to other kinds of searches.

1.
What do SETI programs search for?

2.
What Internet search engine runs the Babel Fish translation service?

3.
Which of the
Friends
actors’ fathers was a regular on the soap
Search for Tomorrow
for ten years?

4.
In 1998, who was Bud Selig chosen to replace, after a six-year search?

5.
After almost four hundred years of fruitless searching, what was finally navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1906?

6.
In the 1956 western, what actress are
The Searchers
searching for?

7.
At the age of eleven, who accidentally discovered the true identity of his baseball pitcher father while searching his mother’s closet for hidden Christmas presents?

8.
What classic French book has a title that’s more accurately translated as
In Search of Lost Time
?

9.
According to Ted Cassidy’s opening narration, what TV character was “searching for a way to tap into the hidden strengths that all humans have”?

10.
What future congressman cowrote the Searchers’ 1964 hit “Needles and Pins”?