Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (70 page)

APRIL 30

1494
C
HRISTOPHER
C
OLUMBUS SAILS
into a Caribbean bay he calls “Puerto Grande.” Today, it’s called Guantánamo Bay, aka “Human Rights Violation Grande.”

ACE OF BAYS

1.
James Bay forms the southern end of what larger bay?

2.
What bay is Otis Redding serenading in “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay”?

3.
Who was the first coach of the Green Bay Packers?

4.
Who lived in Seattle’s fictional Elliott Bay Towers?

5.
What Pacific inlet was called “Stingray Bay” until Captain Cook renamed it for “the great quantity of plants” his scientists had discovered?

6.
What island in Manila Bay was the site of a famous 1942 siege?

7.
Who solves crimes in Bayport, located on Barmet Bay?

8.
In what bay would you find the Andaman and Nicobar islands?

9.
What ship’s destination is the sunny beach of Peppermint Bay?

10.
What bay is actually the United States’s largest tidal estuary?

1894
“C
OXEY’S
A
RMY” OF
unemployed workers arrives in Washington, D.C., to protest the joblessness caused by the Panic of 1893…and its leaders are immediately arrested, for ignoring the “Keep Off the Grass” signs on the U.S. Capitol lawn.

OUT OF POSITION

Commemorate Coxey’s Army with this quiz on unemployment.

1.
What city, Pennsylvania’s third largest, was the subject of a 1982 Billy Joel song about layoffs?

2.
What Japanese word for “wave person” refers to a masterless samurai?

3.
Whose first book was
Down and Out in Paris and London,
about his year among the poverty-stricken underclass of those cities?

4.
What 1993 movie’s title character is actually out-of-work voice actor Daniel Hillard?

5.
What term derived from Seattle’s down-at-the-heels Yesler Avenue, used by the lumber industry to slide felled trees toward Puget Sound?

1907
B
RITISH MATHEMATICIAN
C
HARLES
H
OWARD
H
INTON
dies in the middle of an after-dinner toast. Hinton’s accomplishments include inventing the first baseball pitching machine and coining the word “tesseract” to refer to a four-dimensional hypercube.

SMALL PACKAGES

Fiction is full of apparent tesseracts—that is, spaces that must extend into the fourth dimension, since they seem to be bigger on the inside than they are on the outside.

1.
What does Doctor Who’s vast spacecraft, the TARDIS, look like from the outside?

2.
Whose doghouse apparently contains a basement, a pool table, an Andrew Wyeth painting, and a Jacuzzi?

3.
What object on the
Sesame Street
set somehow contains a swimming pool and an elephant named Fluffy?

4.
What event does Harry Potter attend while staying in a three-room apartment that looks, from the outside, like a tiny camping tent?

5.
Who pulls a potted plant and hat stand out of her bottomless carpetbag?

April Answers

APRIL 1

BAR SCENE

1.
F

2.
A

3.
C

4.
J

5.
I

6.
H

7.
E

8.
D

9.
G

10.
B

A LEAD PIPE CINCH

1.
Plumbing (
plumbum
is lead)

2.
“Eleanor Rigby”

3.
The Allen Manufacturing Company (inventors of the Allen wrench)

4.
Hume Cronyn

5.
An earthquake

6.
The circumcision at a bris

GROWING PAINS

1.
The barrel of a gun

2.
Thomas Malthus

3.
The pituitary

4.
Columbines

5.
Peter Pan

APRIL 2

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

1.
Michael Dell

2.
thirtysomething

3.
Joeys

4.
Stephen Colbert

5.
Freddy Adu

6.
Physics

7.
The Orchestra

8.
Maria Montessori

9.
Yahoo! (by Yahoo Serious)

10.
Jason Lee

“
BEAT” GENERATION

1.
Minnesota

2.
Timbaland

3.
Quidditch

4.
Florida

5.
Meringue

6.
Stu Sutcliffe

7.
Cabdriver

8.
Checkers

9.
A heartbeat

10.
Eddie Van Halen

APRIL 3

COMMA SUTRA

1.
Roger Maris’s

2.
Copenhagen

3.
Oliver!

4.
Semicolons

5.
@

6.
The tilde

7.
? and the Mysterians’ (“96 Tears”)

8.
!

9.
A panda

10.
The ampersand, & (
et
means “and” in French)

STRIP SEARCH

1.
Treasure Island

2.
Tropicana

3.
Excalibur

4.
Sahara

5.
“New York, New York” (because of its opening line: “Start spreading the news”)

6.
Luxor

7.
Flamingo

8.
Casino Royale

9.
Mirage

10.
Stratosphere

APRIL 4

PLAN BEE

1.
Sacramento