Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (78 page)

MAY 11

1897
N
APOLEON
D
YNAMITE
FANS
rejoice: naturalist Carl Hagenbeck successfully breeds “a rare alliance between those two great and formidable felidae, the lion and the tiger.” Eye of the liger, baby!

ALL-TIME HYBRID

What different animals are mingled to produce these mythical creatures?

Easy

1.
Mermaid

2.
Centaur

3.
Faun

4.
Minotaur

Harder

1.
Sphinx

2.
Harpy

3.
Griffin

4.
Cockatrice

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Hippocamp

2.
Lamia

3.
Chimera

4.
Manticore

1963
E
IGHT THOUSAND REVELERS
get up off their sackbuts and attend the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in North Hollywood, marking the beginning of the Renaissance festival fad in America. Huzzah!

AL FRESCO

Some questions on the
real
Renaissance.

1.
Venetian painter Jacopo Robusti was better known by what name, because he was the son of a cloth dyer?

2.
In Botticelli’s
The Birth of Venus,
what is Venus standing on as she rides to shore?

3.
What was named for Pope Sixtus IV when it was consecrated in a 1483 Mass?

4.
What’s the center of the inscribed circle in which Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” stands?

5.
What is the only signed work of Michelangelo?

1991
T
HE
N
ATIONAL
S
TUTTERING
P
ROJECT
pickets Warner Bros., demanding that Porky Pig lose his offensive stutter. (His stutter? Where’s the League of Decency demanding that he finally put on some damn pants?)

TH-TH-TH-THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!

1.
Which
Alice in Wonderland
character is a reference to its author, Lewis Carroll, who used to stutter when saying his own name?

2.
The stutter on the chorus of what 1974 hit was a joke aimed at the singer’s stuttering brother, George Bachman?

3.
What British actor, fittingly, founded the London Centre for Stammering Children?

4.
Because of her stammer, whose wife, Annie, shunned the spotlight following her husband’s sudden 1962 fame?

5.
What rapper, currently prisoner 00469659 at Louisiana’s Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, raps on the hit 2001 remix of Joe’s song “Stutter”?

MAY 12

1593
P
LAYWRIGHT
T
HOMAS
K
YD,
whose
Spanish Tragedy
inspired Shakespeare’s
Hamlet,
is arrested by the Crown when a “heretical” pamphlet is found in his lodgings. Kyd protests that the tract actually belongs to his famous roommate, fellow playwright Christopher Marlowe.

CHRONIC ROOMMATE-ISM

1.
What director was the college roommate of J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf, until, ironically, he kicked Wolf out for being “too weird”?

2.
What Canadian rocker was, briefly, Rick James’s roommate, while they were playing together in a band called the Mynah Birds?

3.
Erich Segal has said that he based Oliver Barrett IV, the protagonist of his novel
Love Story,
on what Harvard roommates of his acquaintance, a future actor and a future politician?

4.
Mousy actor Wally Cox once formed a real-life
Odd Couple

with what manly actor, though Cox hated his pet raccoon so much he finally moved out?

5.
What Big Ten coach with four Final Fours under his belt was the college roommate, at Northern Michigan, of future NFL coach Steve Mariucci?

6.
What comedian, Christopher Reeve’s Juilliard roommate, was, Reeve said, the first person to make him laugh following his 1995 accident?

7.
Some Washington eyebrows raised when U.S. vice president William R. King and what future president lived together in the capital for sixteen years?

8.
What actor got his unusual nickname from his college roommate Stanley Tucci, who didn’t like calling him “Irving”?

9.
Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis used to play pranks on what Hall of Fame quarterback while they bunked together in college?

10.
What two acting legends, Pasadena Playhouse friends and New York roomies back in the day, never worked on screen together until 2002’s
Runaway Jury
?

1974
T
HE
C
INCINNATI
C
ITY
C
OUNCIL
accepts the resignation of the city’s mayor-elect after he admitted patronizing a prostitute. The disgraced pol is no less than future talk-show host Jerry Springer.

HOSTS WITH THE MOST

1.
Except during World War II, what team has hosted an NFL game every Thanksgiving Day since 1934?

2.
What game show host took his stage name from the college in his West Virginia hometown?

3.
What detective novel begins with a dinner hosted by the mysteriously absent “Mr. U. N. Owen”?

4.
The Egyptian plover is a bird best known for its symbiotic relationship with what host animal?

5.
Who hosted the “Mad Tea-Party” in
Alice in Wonderland
?

6.
What are the only two ingredients allowed in the “host,” the Catholic Communion wafer?

7.
What food item shares its name with Brad and Janet’s hospitable host in
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
?

8.
The host country’s flag typically arrives last in the Parade of Nations that opens each Olympic Games. What was the only Games where this didn’t happen?

9.
What actor has guest-hosted
Saturday Night Live
thirteen times, more than anyone but Steve Martin?

10.
What Ukrainian city hosted the last World War II summit of the “Big Three”?