Trivia Quiz

Correct answer: Jack and Jill.

In the rhyme's second verse, Jack runs home to mend his cracked crown with "vinegar and brown paper" — an old folk remedy.

Correct answer: Lawrence of Arabia.

T. E. Lawrence earned the name leading Arab fighters against the Ottoman Empire in World War I; he told the story in his memoir "Seven Pillars of Wisdom."

Correct answer: Mutton chops.

The bushy whiskers flare at the jaw like the cut of meat — and the word "sideburns" itself is a flipped tribute to Civil War general Ambrose Burnside, famous for his face fuzz.

Correct answer: Airplane.

An altimeter reads height above sea level from changes in air pressure — vital in a cockpit, useless on the road.

Correct answer: Fame.

The soaring title song from the 1980 movie "Fame" won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Correct answer: George Stephanopoulos.

A former communications chief for President Clinton, Stephanopoulos took over ABC's "This Week" in 2002 and has co-anchored "Good Morning America" since 2009.

Correct answer: Houston Rockets.

The Rockets made the 7-foot-6 Yao the first overall pick of the 2002 NBA Draft; he became an eight-time All-Star and a Hall of Famer.

Correct answer: Jethro Tull.

At the first-ever hard rock/metal Grammy in 1989, the flute-driven Jethro Tull beat the heavy favorite Metallica — an upset so infamous the category was reworked the next year.

Correct answer: Richard Nixon.

While running for president in 1968, Nixon popped up on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" to deliver the show's catchphrase, "Sock it to me?"

Correct answer: Dutch.

Anne wrote in Dutch; her father Otto had the diary published in the Netherlands in 1947 as "Het Achterhuis" ("The Secret Annex").

Correct answer: 93 million.

That average gap — about 150 million kilometers — is defined as one "astronomical unit," the basic yardstick for distances across the solar system.

Correct answer: Costa Rica.

Every official Major League ball is hand-stitched with 108 double stitches at a Rawlings plant in Turrialba, Costa Rica.

Correct answer: Marcellus.

The line is spoken by the watchman Marcellus in "Hamlet," not by the prince himself — a detail that fools almost everyone.

Correct answer: Moth.

In 1947, engineers traced a glitch in Harvard's Mark II computer to a moth stuck in a relay; they taped it into the logbook as the "first actual case of bug being found."

Correct answer: Two-Cent Piece.

The motto "In God We Trust" first appeared on the two-cent piece in 1864, during the Civil War.

Correct answer: Phil Simms.

Simms was the first athlete in the long-running "I'm going to Disney World!" ad campaign, filmed right after the New York Giants won Super Bowl XXI in 1987.

Correct answer: Medicine.

Chekhov practiced as a doctor throughout his writing life, once joking that medicine was his "lawful wife" and literature his "mistress."

Correct answer: March 25.

Under the old Julian calendar the English year began on March 25, "Lady Day"; the 1752 switch to the Gregorian calendar moved New Year's to January 1.

Correct answer: Isaac Newton.

Einstein, Bohr, and Fermi each have an element — einsteinium, bohrium, fermium — but Newton, for all his fame, has none.

Correct answer: Lesotho.

Lesotho is one of only three nations completely surrounded by a single other country; the other two are San Marino and Vatican City, both ringed by Italy.

Correct answer: Peru.

Paddington stowed away to London from "darkest Peru," which is why his tag reads "Please look after this bear" — and why he adores marmalade.

Correct answer: Anne Rice.

She renamed herself Anne as a child and went on to write "Interview with the Vampire" and the rest of the Vampire Chronicles.

Correct answer: Soundabout.

Sony first sold it in the U.S. as the "Soundabout" and in Britain as the "Stowaway" before the catchier "Walkman" name took over worldwide.

Correct answer: The Greenbrier.

The secret bunker under West Virginia's Greenbrier resort was built to shelter Congress during a nuclear attack; it stayed classified until a 1992 newspaper exposed it.

Correct answer: Poinsettia.

The plant honors Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. minister to Mexico, who shipped cuttings home in the 1820s.

Correct answer: Peter Jennings.

As a boy in Canada, Jennings hosted a children's radio program long before he anchored ABC's "World News Tonight."

Correct answer: Le Duc Tho.

Le Duc Tho shared the 1973 prize with Henry Kissinger for the Vietnam ceasefire but turned it down, saying real peace had not yet come.

Correct answer: Stendhal's Syndrome.

It's named for the French writer Stendhal, who described feeling faint and dizzy after taking in the art of Florence in 1817.

Correct answer: Igor Sikorsky.

Sikorsky flew his VS-300 in 1939 and built the first mass-produced helicopter, the R-4; he had earlier pioneered big multi-engine planes and flying boats.

Correct answer: N.

"N" is the international nationality mark assigned to the United States, so every U.S. civil aircraft's tail number begins with it.

Correct answer: Tyler.

The show never explained what became of Carol's first husband; a later episode quietly gives her maiden name as Tyler.

Correct answer: 354.

The Islamic (Hijri) calendar is purely lunar — twelve months of 29 or 30 days, about 354 in all — so its dates slide about 11 days earlier each year.

Correct answer: Six Iron.

On Apollo 14 in 1971, Shepard fixed a six-iron head to a sample-collecting tool and one-handed two golf balls across the lunar surface.

Correct answer: George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw won the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature and a 1938 Oscar for the screenplay of "Pygmalion" — the only person to claim both.

Correct answer: Rowing.

Before he wrote his landmark baby-care book, Spock rowed in the U.S. eight that took gold at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Correct answer: Insecticide.

The first aerosol "bug bombs" were developed in World War II to shield U.S. troops in the Pacific from insect-borne disease.

Correct answer: Meat Inspector.

Meatpacker Sam Wilson stamped "U.S." on Army beef barrels in the War of 1812; soldiers joked it stood for "Uncle Sam," and the nickname stuck.

Correct answer: Fresca.

Johnson loved the diet citrus soda Fresca so much that he had a fountain dispensing it put into the Oval Office.

Correct answer: His Dentist.

Grant Wood posed his own dentist, Byron McKeeby, as the pitchfork-holding farmer, and his sister Nan as the woman beside him.

Correct answer: Yip, Yip, Yaphank.

Irving Berlin wrote it for his 1918 Army revue "Yip Yip Yaphank" but cut it; he revived it in 1938 for singer Kate Smith, who made it a standard.

Correct answer: Baghdad.

"Tabby" comes from al-Attabiya, a district of Baghdad known for a striped silk — a pattern the cat's coat seemed to share.

Correct answer: William.

Colonists dumped tea from three ships — the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver; there was no ship called the William.

Correct answer: The Philippines.

The 1960 shoe-banging episode at the U.N. came after a delegate from the Philippines accused the Soviet Union of swallowing up Eastern Europe.

Correct answer: Edith Wilson.

Edith Bolling Wilson, Woodrow Wilson's second wife, traced her ancestry back nine generations to Pocahontas; she wielded great influence after his stroke.

Correct answer: Francis Bacon.

Bacon is said to have caught a fatal chill in 1626 while stuffing a hen with snow to test whether cold could preserve meat — an early stab at refrigeration.

Correct answer: 100 Billion.

Demographers at the Population Reference Bureau estimate that more than 100 billion people have ever been born — making the living a small slice of all humanity.

Correct answer: Edward Everett.

Before Lincoln's two-minute address, the celebrated orator Edward Everett spoke for about two hours; Everett later admitted Lincoln had said more in two minutes than he had in two.

Correct answer: The Last Supper.

Leonardo painted it on a convent dining-hall wall in Milan; monks later cut a doorway through the bottom, lopping off Jesus's feet.

Correct answer: Winston Churchill.

The remark "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work" — made by Winston Churchill — is itself now an entry in Bartlett's.

Correct answer: Alice.

The "M*A*S*H" finale on February 28, 1983 drew roughly 106 million U.S. viewers, still the most-watched scripted episode ever; CBS aired it after the sitcom "Alice."

Correct answer: Finding shapes in clouds.

"Nephelococcygia" means spotting shapes in clouds; the word nods to "Cloud-cuckoo-land" from Aristophanes' comedy "The Birds."

Correct answer: Andrew Jackson.

In 1835 a man pointed two pistols at Jackson at point-blank range and both misfired — the first assassination attempt on a sitting U.S. president.

Correct answer: Mountain in Wales.

The Blorenge, a hill above Abergavenny in Wales, is one of the very few words that almost rhyme with "orange."

Correct answer: Making jams and jellies.

His 1555 "Traite des fardements et confitures" was a down-to-earth guide to cosmetics and fruit preserves — jams and jellies.

Correct answer: Pifflicated.

Franklin's 1737 "Drinker's Dictionary" rounded up more than 200 colorful terms for being drunk, from "nimptopsical" to "cherry-merry" — but not "pifflicated."

Correct answer: A Swedish Mining Village.

Yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, and erbium are all named after Ytterby, a tiny village near Stockholm whose mine yielded their ores — the most elements named for one place.

Correct answer: Lime Jell-O.

A famous demonstration found that a bowl of lime Jell-O wired to an EEG traced wiggles like a living brain's — the machine was actually picking up electrical noise from the room.

Correct answer: Big-Hearted Cat.

The "Tiger King" really did put out songs such as "I Saw a Tiger" and "Here Kitty Kitty" — though it later came out that the vocals weren't his own.

Correct answer: Benjamin Harrison.

The Harrisons had electric lighting installed in 1891 but were so wary of a shock that they often left the switches for the staff to flip.

Correct answer: Tool for cutting roofing slates.

A "zax" is a tool for cutting and punching nail holes in roofing slate; worth 19 points, it's a Scrabble windfall for such a short word.

Correct answer: Henry II.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was queen of France and then of England; with Henry II she was mother to two future kings, Richard the Lionheart and John.

Correct answer: Trees.

"Quercus robur" is the botanical name of the English, or pedunculate, oak.

Correct answer: Volt.

The volt honors Alessandro Volta, the Italian count who built the first true battery — the "voltaic pile" — around 1800.

Correct answer: Arlington Million.

America's Triple Crown is the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes; the Arlington Million is a separate race entirely.

Correct answer: Bombardier Billy Wells.

Two strapping men struck the giant gong in the Rank Organisation's film logo; the boxer Bombardier Billy Wells was the best-known "gongman."

Correct answer: Austria.

With roughly eight million native speakers, Austria — where German is the official language — edges out Switzerland for the most outside Germany.

Correct answer: Shoaib Akhtar.

Pakistan's express-paced bowler Shoaib Akhtar earned the nickname for his hometown, Rawalpindi; he was clocked among the first to bowl 100 mph.

Correct answer: Denmark.

Denmark held the Nicobar Islands on and off for over a century before selling its claim to Britain in 1868; Danes had also run the Indian trading post of Tranquebar.

Correct answer: Johannes Kepler.

In his 1604 work on optics, Kepler showed the eye's lens casts an upside-down image onto the retina — explaining where sight actually begins.

Correct answer: Mercury.

Gallium melts in your hand at about 30°C but is solid at room temperature, and bromine is a liquid nonmetal; only mercury stays liquid, freezing near -39°C.

Correct answer: France.

Counting its overseas territories, from French Polynesia to Wallis and Futuna, France spans 12 time zones — one more than Russia's 11.

Correct answer: Gerald Ford.

Ford was appointed vice president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew resigned, then became president in 1974 when Nixon resigned — the only person to hold both offices without winning a national election for either.