Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (76 page)

MAY 7

1429
A
T THE BATTLES OF
L
ES
T
OURELLES,
Joan of Arc takes an arrow in the shoulder, as she predicted. “The witch is dead!” crow the English archers, but Joan returns dramatically to lead the final charge.

AN ARROW ESCAPE

1.
What group’s honor society is the Order of the Arrow?

2.
For an
SNL
monologue, who once played the banjo with an arrow through his head?

3.
What are the arrowlike projectiles fired by a crossbow called?

4.
What company’s world-famous logo has, since 1994, contained a subliminal “white arrow” hidden between the last two letters?

5.
What slot on the back of an arrow’s shaft keeps it on the bowstring?

6.
In what fictional midwestern city did Sinclair Lewis set
Babbitt
and
Arrowsmith
?

7.
What popular movie website took its name from a John Travolta line in
Broken Arrow
?

8.
What third-century martyr was ordered shot full of arrows by Diocletian?

9.
Whose emblem, a white arrowhead, came from a sketch Lamar Hunt drew on a napkin in 1963?

10.
The constellation Sagittarius is usually depicted as aiming its arrow at what fierce neighbor?

1925
F
OOTBALL COACH AND SUBSTITUTE TEACHER
John Scopes is arrested for having taught evolution to high schoolers. The arrest has been cooked up by the ACLU, looking for a case to test Tennessee’s antievolution “Butler Act,” and by the town of Dayton, which is looking for some free publicity.

A BARREL OF MONKEYS

1.
Who first appeared in the 1939 children’s book
Cecily G and the Nine Monkeys
?

2.
What team’s fans were inspired by the Rally Monkey?

3.
Europe’s only free-range monkeys are the Barbary apes, which live where?

4.
Which character is most seriously injured by the winged monkeys in the film
The Wizard of Oz
?

5.
What did Pipsqueak the marmoset captivate America by doing on November 2, 1979?

6.
What two people appear in the famous photo taken aboard the yacht
Monkey Business
in May 1987?

7.
What brightly colored monkey is the world’s largest?

8.
What power does “The Monkey’s Paw” possess in the 1902 short story?

9.
What South American monkey took its name from the order of Catholic friars its fur was thought to resemble?

10.
What apparatus do monkeys use in the “infinite monkey theorem” thought experiment?

MAY 8

1877
T
HE FIRST
W
ESTMINSTER
K
ENNEL
C
LUB
dog show is held in New York’s Gilmore Gardens, making it the second oldest continuously held American sporting event, after the Kentucky Derby.

UNLEASHED

Take good care of these questions about pets.

1.
What kind of “pet sounds” are actually heard at the end of the Beach Boys album of that name?

2.
Who’s the most famous resident of Mr. Peebles’ pet shop?

3.
What pet bird takes its name from Australian Aborigine words for “good eating”?

4.
What baseball team plays its home games at Petco Park?

5.
What common aquarium fish is named for the naturalist who discovered it in Trinidad in 1876?

6.
According to the American Kennel Club, the United States’ two most popular dog breeds for most of the last decade both had what word in their breed name?

7.
The Clintons’ White House cat, Socks, now lives with what woman, Clinton’s personal secretary, who became famous during the Monica Lewinsky hearings?

8.
Nepetalactone is the active ingredient in what pet product?

9.
What kind of dinosaur is the Flintstones’ Dino?

10.
What imports from a Baja California beach made Gary Drahl a millionaire in late 1975?

11.
The title character of what 2000 film is a Norwich terrier named Winky?

12.
Los Angeles, Berlin, or Paris—what city is home to the world’s very first pet cemetery, in which Rin Tin Tin is buried?

13.
Paris Hilton’s chihuahua is named for what character from a 1928 play?

14.
In what country did the domesticated “potbellied pig” originate?

15.
What physical condition, with which Dan Aykroyd, Alexander the Great, and Kate Bosworth were all born, is much more common in dogs and cats than humans?

1914
W. W. H
ODKINSON CREATES
the modern movie industry when he founds Paramount Pictures. The mountain logo he doodles on a napkin is based on Ben Lomond, near his hometown of Ogden, Utah.

MEN OF LETTERS

Give these other famous names with a doubled first initial like W. W. Hodkinson’s.

1.
What author set his most famous works near his Ashdown Forest home in Sussex, the same home where Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones drowned in 1969?

2.
Who shares lead vocals with Bono on the U2 song “When Loves Comes to Town”?

3.
Who invented a waterproof boot that he began selling to his fellow Maine hunters in 1912?

4.
After a locomotive struck his parents’ car in 1926, who eulogized his father in “my father moved through dooms of love”?

5.
Who based his hit comic book character “Dyno Woman” on his own sister Thelma?