Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (97 page)

JUNE 12

1827
B
OTANIST
R
OBERT
B
ROWN,
looking at pollen grains under a microscope in his London home, is annoyed by their erratic jittering. He doesn’t know it, but he’s just discovered the random movement of liquids that’s today called Brownian motion, in his honor.

RANDOM HOUSE

Try these nonrandom questions about random events.

1.
What West Coast city would have been named for a
different
New England city if an 1845 coin toss had gone the other way?

2.
What Georgetown star was the first player to be chosen by an NBA draft lottery winner?

3.
What Scottish band is named for a Michigan port that its members picked out by randomly sticking a pin into a U.S. map?

4.
What’s the shortest standard reply on a Magic 8-Ball?

5.
According to mathematician Persi Diaconis’s famous paper, how many times must a deck of cards be shuffled in order to be truly random?

1939
T
HE
B
ASEBALL
H
ALL OF
F
AME
is dedicated in Cooperstown, New York. Locals hope for an influx of tourists to a region whose chief industry—hops—was crippled by Prohibition.

KIDS IN THE HALL

Match these sports’ Halls of Fame with their respective cities.

1942
F
OR HER THIRTEENTH BIRTHDAY,
a young Amsterdam girl named Anne Frank receives a red and white autograph book that she decides to use for a diary.

IT’S A GIFT

1.
In 1995, whom did Drew Barrymore flash on air as a forty-eighth birthday present?

2.
Who received a twelve-foot scrub python for his sixth birthday, because his parents ran a Queensland animal park?

3.
What puppy was, ironically, the runt of the litter when Emily Elizabeth chose him as a birthday present in a 1962 book?

4.
In
Toy Story,
who receives Buzz Lightyear for his seventh birthday and a puppy for his eighth?

5.
What play did Agatha Christie write as an eightieth birthday present for Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother, Queen Mary?

JUNE 13

1978
C
OHOSTS
H
AROLD
H
AYES AND
R
OBERT
H
UGHES
have tanked so badly on the first telecast of ABC newsmagazine
20/20
that Hugh Downs is quickly brought out of retirement to host the second show, soon to be joined by Barbara Walters.

VANITY PAIR

Can you match these TV presenters and name the show they cohosted?

1986
M
ARY
-K
ATE AND
A
SHLEY
O
LSEN
are born in Sherman Oaks, California…on Friday the thirteenth. (Cue ominous chords.)

UNLUCKY STRIKES

Thirteen questions about the number thirteen.

1.
What morbid structure traditionally has thirteen steps?

2.
What Hall of Fame quarterback, jersey number 13, threw a touchdown pass in each of his first thirteen playoff games?

3.
What disease grounded astronaut Ken Mattingly from
Apollo 13
?

4.
What novel begins, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”?

5.
John Carpenter’s
Assault on Precinct 13
is an homage to what classic Howard Hawks western?

6.
How many stripes were there on the American flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner”?

7.
What floor number is often skipped in Chinese buildings, as the thirteenth is in the West?

8.
What two border states were the twelfth and thirteenth states admitted to the Confederacy, though the South never controlled them?

9.
Ophiuchus, the thirteenth constellation of the Zodiac, is depicted as a man holding up what—a sword, a snake, or a severed head?

10.
What’s the subject of the 1969 memoir
Thirteen Days
?

11.
A Jewish Bar Mitzvah ceremony is held when a boy turns 13. At what age is a girl’s Bat Mitzvah celebrated?

12.
What sport has thirteen players per team in “league” rules but fifteen in “union” play?

13.
Whose series of thirteen children’s books of thirteen chapters each ended in 2006 with
The End
?