Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac (98 page)

JUNE 14

1777
T
HE
C
ONTINENTAL
C
ONGRESS
adopts the Stars and Stripes as the flag of the United States.

FLAG DAY

1.
How many soldiers are shown raising the flag over Iwo Jima in the famous photograph and statue?

2.
What does Bruce Springsteen have tucked in his back pocket on the cover of
Born in the U.S.A.
?

3.
According to Betsy Ross’s family, what was the first American flag made from?

4.
What’s the only place on U.S. soil where another flag is allowed to be hung above the Stars and Stripes?

5.
During one of his famous freedom-of-speech cases, who wore an American flag to court as a diaper?

1798
C
OTTON GIN INVENTOR
Eli Whitney contracts with the U.S. government to produce ten thousand muskets. This sparks his interest in the new idea of machinery with interchangeable parts, and Whitney will become an evangelist for interchangeability for the rest of his life.

THE SOME OF ITS PARTS

What has these parts?

1.
Barbican, bailey, bastion, bulwark

2.
Cytoplasm, lysosomes, centriole, Golgi body

3.
Fetlock, pastern, flank, muzzle

4.
Bowsprit, spreader, shroud, taffrail

5.
Newel, riser, tread, baluster

6.
Foible, forte, pommel, ricasso

7.
Serif, beak, descender, counter

8.
Dado, echinus, fluting, scotia

9.
Scend, spindrift, trough, curl

10.
Peduncle, tepal, perianth, pistil

1937
T
HE
M
ARIHUANA
T
AX
A
CT
of 1937 regulates legal marijuana use out of existence.

CHRONIC TOWN

A quiz that may give you the munchies.

1.
What political party was led until 1985 by the brutal Pol Pot?

2.
In the video for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” who plays Mary Jane?

3.
Who was fired from the Interior Department in 1865 for having written
Leaves of Grass
?

4.
What African region has been ravaged by a militia called the Janjaweed?

5.
Who invented the method he called “rope-a-dope”?

JUNE 15

1667
K
ING
L
OUIS
XIV’S personal physician, Jean-Baptiste Denys, administers medicine’s first documented blood transfusion when he gives a 15-year-old boy an infusion of sheep’s blood. Do not try this at home.

IN A LIGHTER VEIN

A bloody hard quiz.

1.
The “K” in vitamin K stands for the Danish spelling of what eleven-letter word?

2.
What country’s civil war is the setting for the film
Blood Diamond
?

3.
Who used hypnotism to treat the hemophilia of Tsarevich Alexei?

4.
What’s the stage name of rapper Jayceon Taylor, a onetime member of L.A. gang the Bloods?

5.
In Shaw’s
Pygmalion,
Eliza Doolittle offends the society types by saying the word “bloody.” What word serves the same purpose in
My Fair Lady
?

6.
Shechita is the method of producing meat that is what?

7.
Who was hunted by Dutch physician Abraham van Helsing?

8.
What’s the largest artery in the human body?

9.
What kind of blood is dumped on Stephen King’s
Carrie
?

10.
What Burlingame, California, company was founded in 1984 to provide blood and urine analysis to athletes?

11.
What Sam Peckinpah western did Roger Ebert describe as “200 simultaneous blood transfusions with no recipients”?

12.
What was misspelled in blood on Leno and Rosemary LaBianca’s refrigerator on August 10, 1969?

13.
A cake, a steak, or a shake—what edible item is depicted on the cover of the Rolling Stones’
Let It Bleed
?

14.
What two kinds of pressure are represented by the two figures in a blood pressure measurement?

15.
What state was “Bleeding” in the 1850s, in the words of Horace Greeley?

1859
A U.S.-C
ANADA BORDER
skirmish erupts on San Juan Island, between Washington state and British Columbia. Today the crisis is called the Pig War, since the only casualty was a black Canadian boar that was shot while eating an American farmer’s potatoes.

RUN FOR THE BORDER

What’s the only nation that shares a land border with these countries (like Canada vis-à-vis the United States)?

Harder

1.
Denmark

2.
Qatar

3.
Monaco

4.
San Marino

Easy

1.
United Kingdom

2.
Haiti

3.
Vatican City

4.
Portugal

Yeah, Good Luck

1.
East Timor

2.
The Gambia

3.
Brunei

4.
Lesotho