Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (83 page)

2.
What dish is prepared by frying a breaded, buttered chicken breast?

3.
What chili pepper was believed the hottest in the world until the Naga Jolokia pepper was discovered in India in 2000?

4.
Besides corn, what’s the other principal ingredient in succotash?

5.
In much of Europe, the sausages we call “hot dogs” are named for what city?

MAY 21

1898
T
HE CAR BUMPER IS INVENTED,
when one is mounted onto the front of a prototype Präsident, a Czech car being built in Moravia. Unfortunately, the bumper falls off ten miles into the car’s test run to Vienna, and the design feature is abandoned.

CAR-PE DIEM

Match up these automotive firsts.

1921
C
ARL
W
ICKMAN BEGINS
a bus service transporting iron ore miners around Hibbing, Minnesota. His new company will become Greyhound bus lines.

BUS TA MOVE

1.
In the movie
Speed,
dropping below what speed will blow up the bus?

2.
A statue of what TV character stands outside the Eighth Avenue entrance of New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal?

3.
In what city did Rosa Parks refuse to move to the back of the bus?

4.
What has coast-to-coast commuter John Madden dubbed his famous luxury bus?

5.
What Ken Kesey–led group toured America in a psychedelic school bus called “Furthur”?

1954
T
HE
S
ENATE VOTES
down a proposed constitutional amendment lowering the voting age to eighteen. It will take the Vietnam War to eventually ratify the amendment, in 1971.

THE AMEND CORNER

Which numbered amendment to the Constitution deals with…

Easy

1.
Self-incrimination

2.
Freedom of speech

3.
Searches and seizures

4.
The right to bear arms

Harder

1.
The income tax

2.
Instituting Prohibition

3.
Abolishing slavery

4.
Women’s suffrage

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
Poll taxes

2.
Washington, D.C.

3.
How senators are elected

4.
Presidential succession

MAY 22

1849
A
PATENT FOR LIFTING BOATS
over shoals is issued to a mechanically minded U.S. congressman. Though the device is never built, it makes Abraham Lincoln the only president ever to hold a patent.

PATENTLY RIDICULOUS

Match these celebrity inventors to their unlikely brainstorms.

1995
I
N A NOTORIOUS CLIFFHANGER,
the nutty Kimberly blows up the titular apartment building on TV’s
Melrose Place.
Semirecurring character Tiffany Hart turns out to be the only fatality—even Marcia Cross’s career eventually recovers.

RENT CONTROL

Not every apartment building is as explosive as Melrose Place.

1.
Coincidentally, in what apartment complex was Rose Mary Woods living in the early 1970s?

2.
Since 1961, where have Margo Magee, Tommie Thompson, and Lu Ann Powers lived?

3.
The Apartment
and
Annie Hall
are the only two Oscar-winning Best Pictures to each mention
another
Best Picture winner within the film. What are the two films referenced?

4.
In the 1996 movie, what kind of animal shares
Joe’s Apartment
with him?

5.
What two music stars died in the same London flat, then owned by Harry Nilsson, in 1974 and 1978, respectively?

6.
Orange, green, or purple—what color were the walls in Monica’s apartment, on TV’s
Friends
?

7.
The Broadway hit
Rent
translates what opera to a Greenwich Village apartment?

8.
In 1966, Johnny Cash briefly shared a Nashville apartment with what other country legend?

9.
What 1967 film classic was filmed at the Dakota, the same apartment building where John Lennon was later shot?

10.
According to the title of a 1947 play, how does one get from the New Orleans train station to the apartment at 632 Elysian Fields?