Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (73 page)

2.
Juan Carlos I of Spain

3.
Princess Anne

4.
Louis XIII

5.
The shah of Iran

APRIL 29

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

1.
The World Almanac and Book of Facts

2.
Merriam

3.
A wiki

4.
John Bartlett (
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
)

5.
Who Was Who

CAMELCASE

1.
TiVo

2.
OutKast

3.
AstroTurf

4.
MySpace

5.
SportsCenter

ALL GONE TO LOOK FOR AMERICA

1.
I

2.
C

3.
D

4.
H

5.
B

6.
J

7.
F

8.
E

9.
G

10.
A

APRIL 30

ACE OF BAYS

1.
Hudson Bay

2.
San Francisco Bay

3.
Curly Lambeau

4.
Frasier Crane (and Martin and Daphne and Eddie)

5.
Botany Bay

6.
Corregidor

7.
The Hardy Boys

8.
The Bay of Bengal

9.
The good ship
Lollipop

10.
Chesapeake Bay

OUT OF POSITION

1.
Allentown

2.
Ronin

3.
George Orwell

4.
Mrs. Doubtfire

5.
Skid Row

SMALL PACKAGES

1.
A police box

2.
Snoopy’s

3.
Oscar the Grouch’s trash can

4.
The Quidditch World Cup

5.
Mary Poppins

MAY 1

1006
S
URPRISED
C
HINESE AND
E
GYPTIAN
astronomers spot a new star in the constellation Lupus, which we now know to be the brightest supernova in recorded history.

STAR-SPANGLED

1.
What New York banker did bridezilla Star Jones marry in a 2004 extravaganza?

2.
James I, Charles I, or George I—what king was executed, in part, for the excesses of his inquisitional “Star Chamber”?

3.
Many Bothan spies died to ensure the destruction of what?

4.
What 1984 hit repeatedly asks, “Come on, shine your heavenly body tonight”?

5.
What future secretary of state became America’s first five-star general in December 1944?

6.
The United States has more stars on its flag than any other country, with fifty. What nation is in second place, with twenty-seven?

7.
In 3000 b.c., it was Thuban. In 12,000 years, it will be Vega. What is it today?

8.
Starfish belong to what animal phylum, whose name means “spiny skin”?

9.
Who merged with the struggling Cleveland Barons in 1978?

10.
The Don McLean song that begins “Starry starry night” is actually named for what painter?

11.
According to the prologue to
Romeo and Juliet,
in what city do the “pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life”?

12.
What other late-night veteran succeeded Ed McMahon as the host of
Star Search
in a 2003 revival?

13.
Bart Starr was, of course, the winning quarterback of the famous 1967 “Ice Bowl” NFL championship. Who was the losing quarterback?

14.
What kind of enormous, cool star will our own sun become in five billion years?

15.
Complete this analogy: Judy Garland: James Mason:: Barbra Streisand:______.

1966
A
GRADUATION BARBECUE
in the backyard of Berkeley history major Diana Paxson becomes a full-fledged medieval costume party, and the “Society for Creative Anachronism,” now boasting 30,000 codpiece-wearing members, is born.

LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN

Answer these trapped-in-the-past questions.

1.
Not until 2002 did Sony end production of its recorders using what doomed video standard?

2.
What hit 2004 film, though set in the present day, features a high school dance where Alphaville’s “Forever Young” and a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” play?

3.
A California Chumash Indian woman, who appears to have been killed by a blow to the head 9,000 years ago, is the only human ever to be found where?

4.
The time-traveling scientist in TV’s
Quantum Leap
shares his name with what absurdist playwright?

5.
Because it’s been retired to honor Jackie Robinson, what New York Yankee is the last baseball player allowed to wear uniform number 42?

6.
What does Miss Havisham constantly wear in Dickens’s
Great Expectations
?

7.
Thimpu, the world’s only capital city with no traffic lights, is the capital of what tiny kingdom?

8.
What shell-shaped French cake leads the narrator into his 1.5-million-word flashback in Proust’s
Remembrance of Things Past
?

9.
Who shocked Pittsburgh fans in the summer of 1999 when he returned home from Italy finally shorn of his trademark mullet?

10.
What was the first decade revisited by VH-1’s
I Love the…
series?

MAY 2

1899
B
EFORE ENTERING AN INSANE ASYLUM,
Vincent van Gogh sends his painting
Sunflowers
to his brother Theo. This is the painting that a Japanese bidder will buy for a record $ 40 million in 1987.

POSING POSIES

Who painted these famous flowery works?

1972
J. E
DGAR HOOVER
is found dead of heart disease at his Washington home.

WHAT A DRAG!

Let’s take a quiet moment to remember Hoover the way he would have wanted: with some transvestite trivia.

1.
Who draft-dodged the Trojan War by dressing as a woman in the court of King Lycomedes?

2.
What 1993 film’s title character has the first name Euphegenia?

3.
Who often performed as falsetto-voiced middle-aged housewives called “pepperpots” in their sketches?

4.
The United States’ first law school for women was named for what cross-dressing Shakespearean character?

5.
The protagonists of
Some Like It Hot
dress as women because they’re in hiding, having witnessed what real-life event?

6.
What was the pseudonym of famous cross-dresser Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin?

7.
What British comedian refers to himself as an “executive transvestite”?

8.
Who won an Oscar for playing a cross-dresser going by the name of “Thomas Kent”?

9.
The injunction against cross-dressing in Deuteronomy 22:5 was the reason given for whose execution?

10.
Heinrich, Hermann, or Hansel—in
Hedwig and the Angry Inch,
what was Hedwig’s (male) birth name?

1999
A
FTER THREE BOTTLES OF RUM
and a bout of arm wrestling with Royal Navy sailors, hard-partying actor Oliver Reed suffers a fatal heart attack in Malta during the filming of
Gladiator.
Today the tavern where he died has been renamed “Ollie’s Last Pub.”

PUB QUIZ

1.
What kind of dark beer comes in “dry,” “Irish,” and “Imperial Russian” varieties?

2.
What’s the claim to fame of Beacon Hill’s Bull & Finch Pub?

3.
How many points is the red inner circle on a dartboard bull’s-eye worth?

4.
What kind of “lunch” is the common British pub meal of a piece of Cheddar, crusty bread, and a pickle?

5.
On what island is Paddy’s Pub, the site of a 2002 terrorist bombing?