Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (65 page)

APRIL 20

1862
S
CIENTISTS
L
OUIS
P
ASTEUR
and Claude Bernard first test heating liquids to kill bacteria and prevent fermentation. If Louis hadn’t been on such an ego trip, we might be drinking “bernardized” milk today.

DEAR DAIRY

1.
The most traditional Greek feta cheese is made from what animal’s milk?

2.
What thin cotton fabric used in summer suits takes its name from Persian words for “milk and sugar”?

3.
What 1971 film was partially set in the Korova Milk Bar?

4.
What is the nearest spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way?

5.
What was the answer to the trivia question in the very first “Got Milk?” ad, in 1993?

6.
What 1964 Broadway hit centered on a milkman and his five daughters?

7.
Who invented condensed milk in 1856?

8.
What classic novel ends with Rose of Sharon breast-feeding a starving hobo?

9.
Who ended his Carnegie Hall concert by loading the audience into thirty-five buses and taking them out for milk and cookies?

10.
You’ve seen 1% and 2%, but—to the nearest quarter of a percent—what percentage butterfat is “whole” milk?

1999
S
PANISH-BORN VENTRILOQUIST
Señor Wences dies in New York City at the age of 103. Do you think anyone did the “S’all right!” gag with the casket? Because that would have been awesome
totally
disrespectful.

READ NY LIKS!

Match these ventriloquists to their dummies.

2004
P
RINCE’S COMEBACK ALBUM
Musicology
drops. It will soon go double platinum, partially thanks to Prince’s clever notion to “sell” every concert attendee a copy of the album.

YOU CAN HAVE IT-OLOGY

1.
If semiology is the study of signs, what is sinology the study of?

2.
What organization grew out of the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation?

3.
What pseudoscience is being illustrated in the following drawing?

4.
What branch of philosophy deals with the end of the world?

5.
What of yours would a graphologist analyze?

APRIL 21

1618
A S
PANISH
J
ESUIT MISSIONARY
named Pedro Paéz becomes, as far as we know, the first European to discover the source of the Blue Nile, above Ethiopia’s Lake Tana.

NOT JUST A RIVER IN EGYPT

Answer these questions about serious cases of denial.

1.
Who died of AIDS in 1987, insisting to the end that he wasn’t gay and his obvious weight loss was the result of a “watermelon diet”?

2.
What were the famous last words of General John Sedgwick, the highest-ranking Union officer killed in the Civil War?

3.
What was the only government ever to recognize the “nations” of Bophuthatswana, Transkei, and Venda?

4.
What unorthodox scientific belief was championed by the Universal Zetetic Society?

5.
Who died still believing that his wife, Lynn Fontane, was five years his junior, despite many news reports that she was really a full decade older?

1959
A
USTRALIA’S
A
LFRED
D
EAN
reels in a 2, 600-pound whale shark, the largest fish ever caught.

ANGLER OF REPOSE

1.
Who did fisherman Donato Dalrymple rescue from the water on Thanksgiving Day, 1999?

2.
What bestseller tells the story of the fishing boat
Andrea Gail
?

3.
To what office is Kiril Lakota elected in
The Shoes of the Fisherman
?

4.
Who charms the crabs at Fisherman’s Wharf right out of their shells?

5.
What catch do Ennis and Jack pretend to be after during their “fishing trips” in
Brokeback Mountain
?

6.
What are trammels and seines?

7.
What TV show’s theme song was called “The Fishin’ Hole”?

8.
What were the last names of fishermen David and Ezra, who opened their first sporting goods store in New York?

9.
A River Runs Through It
concerns fly-fishing in what U.S. state?

10.
What kind of animal attacked Jimmy Carter during an April 1979 fishing trip?

1976
T
HE
U.S.
GOVERNMENT BEGINS
administering swine flu shots, in anticipation of a possible pandemic. The vaccination program will end by December, following reports that the vaccine is killing more patients than the flu would have.

TWIST AND SNOUT

1.
What’s the name of Porky Pig’s girlfriend?

2.
What element must be burned out of pig iron to make steel?

3.
What northernmost state capital on the Mississippi River was founded under the name of Pig’s Eye Landing?

4.
What two-word phrase is the first writing to appear in
Charlotte’s Web
?

5.
What part of a pig is eaten as “chitterlings”?