Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Ken Jennings Tuesday Trivia - October 23
THIS WEEK'S QUIZ
1. In 2000, who became the only two-time Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year? Eldrick "Tiger" Woods
2. What two U.S. states have capitals named for people who were executed?
3. What did the Electro String Instrument Corporation change its name to, to capitalize on a distant relationship between its founders and a World War I hero?
4. Which knight of King Arthur's Round Table is Sir Lancelot's son?
5. Who appears, in front of a landscape of a different nation entirely, on New Zealand's five-dollar note?
6. What's the only city to twice host a season of MTV's The Real World?
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these actors? Alan Arkin, Emilio Estevez, Henry Fonda, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Peter Ustinov, and John Wayne.
LAST WEEK'S ANSWERS
1. At what city's university, in 1745, did Pieter van Musschenbroek invent the world's first capacitor by coating a glass jar with metal foil? At the University of Leyden, which is why we still call this invention the "Leyden jar."
2. What musician was born in 1965 as Richard Melville Hall? Moby came by his middle name honestly: he's actually the great-great-great-great-nephew of Moby-Dick author Herman Melville.
3. What's the only former Soviet republic that still calls its secret police the KGB? Only totalitarian Belarus still misses the good old days. Ah, yes. The other totalitarian former republic besides Uzbekistan.
4. What NHL team's theme music is an Aram Khachaturian composition? No, you weren't really supposed to know this. But you might know from cartoon-watching that Khachaturian wrote the "Sabre Dance," which might make you think of the Buffalo Sabres. yea! I got one correct (with a little help)
5. What's the most common color of Reese's Pieces, almost two-thirds again as numerous as the other shades? Most Reese's Pieces are orange--much fewer are yellow and brown. I'll give myself credit for this since I only knew of those orange, peanut-butter colored pieces
6. What was studied by Project Blue Book? This was the Air Force's look at UFOs, finally shut down for lack of evidence. Or so they *expect* you to believe. Nothing intutive about that. Why "Blue Book"?
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these TV series? Cagney & Lacey, Columbo, James at 15, Kojak, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Love Boat, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Waltons? Each originated as a TV movie--and not just those 90-minute pilots that passed for TV movies in the 1970s, but a real standalone TV movie that was such a hit that it got a spin-off series greenlit.
