Trivia Bits from Creators Syndicate

Trivia Bits, April 19 for 04/19/2008

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

STAN'S WEEKLY TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST NO. 81
What American presidential library is the repository for the archives of two Pulitzer Prize-winning authors?

HOW TO WIN: Send your answer, with your full name and address, either by e-mail to TriviaBits@gmail.com, or on a postcard to Stan Newman's Trivia Challenge No. 81, P.O. Box 69, Massapequa Park, NY 11762. Only one submission pe ...

Updated: Sat Apr 19, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 21 for 04/21/2008

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Word of the week: "quadrumanous," pronounced "qua-DROO-ma-nuss." From the Latin for "four" and "hand," it means "four-handed." For example, a monkey's four feet are all adapted for use as hands. The word was used in the final rounds of the 2007 AARP National Senior Spelling Bee. This year's bee will be held June 13-14 in Cheyenne, Wyo. More info ca ...

Updated: Mon Apr 21, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 22 for 04/22/2008

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Bad day for Adrian: At the Academy Awards ceremony in 1977, Best Actress nominee Talia Shire (for "Rocky") lost to Faye Dunaway (for "Network"). According to the book "Inside Oscar," Shire and her husband were left standing outside in the freezing cold afterward because their chauffeur couldn't find his way from the underground garage up to the front door.

Updated: Tue Apr 22, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 23 for 04/23/2008

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The ice-cream brand known as Dreyer's in the Western United States and Texas is called Edy's elsewhere in the U.S. Wordplay detectives might suspect that "Edy's" is derived from "Dreyer's," since all of the letters of the former are found in the latter. But that's just a coincidence. The company was founded by Joseph Edy and William Dreyer in the 1920s.

An article ...

Updated: Wed Apr 23, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 24 for 04/24/2008

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Small-town celebrity birthplace of the week: Green Cove Springs, in northeast Florida (current population about 6,000). Charles Merrill, who with Edmund Lynch founded Merrill Lynch in 1914, was born there in 1885. Merrill's grandson Peter Magowan is the managing general partner of the San Francisco Giants.

The island of Surtsey, located just off the southwest coast of Iceland, has bee ...

Updated: Thu Apr 24, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 25 for 04/25/2008

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

There's neither a "star" nor a "board" in the ancestry of the word "starboard." It's derived from German, where the word's literal meaning was "side on which a vessel is steered." Early Germanic people propelled and steered their crafts with paddles on the right side. The rhyming "larboard" is seldom used today but refers to the left or "port& ...

Updated: Fri Apr 25, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 28 for 04/28/2008

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Word of the week: "zucchetto," pronounced "zoo-KETT-oh." Derived from the Italian for "little head," it is the small, round skullcap worn by Roman Catholic officials. The word was used in the final rounds of the 2007 AARP National Senior Spelling Bee. This year's bee will be held June 13-14 in Cheyenne, Wyo. More info can be found at www.seniorspellingbee.com.
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Updated: Mon Apr 28, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 29 for 04/29/2008

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Our industrious Oscar researcher, Lance Richmond of Seattle, has returned with a brand-new chart of films that have featured the most Academy Award performers. Not counting documentaries and films where the stars portrayed themselves, the two films with the most Oscar actors are the first "Around the World in 80 Days" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told," both with eight. More go ...

Updated: Tue Apr 29, 2008

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Trivia Bits, April 30 for 04/30/2008

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Australia follows British rather than American spelling conventions, with only one exception that we know of: The Labor Party, the current governing party of Australia. Why not "Labour?" In an effort to "modernise" the name, it was changed from Labour to Labor in 1912, influenced by the American labor movement. (Thanks to Byron Walden of Santa Clara, Calif.)

The bo ...

Updated: Wed Apr 30, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 1 for 05/01/2008

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Small-town celebrity birthplace of the week: Colwyn Bay, Wales (current population about 10,000). Former James Bond portrayer Timothy Dalton was born there in 1946, and Monty Python member Terry Jones was born in the neighboring Old Colwyn (current population about 8,000) in 1942.

Hello/goodbye update: Thanks to Billie Shaffer of Clarendon, Texas, who let us know about the Navajo wor ...

Updated: Thu May 01, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 2 for 05/02/2008

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

You probably learned some tongue twisters like "six thick thistle sticks" in elementary school. Did you know virtually every world language has its own tongue twisters? One example: The French "Un chasseur sachant chasser chassait sans son chien de chasse" means "A hunter who knows how to hunt knows how to hunt without his hunting dog." (Thanks to Roger Lucas of Seatt ...

Updated: Fri May 02, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 3 for 05/03/2008

Sat, 03 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

STAN'S WEEKLY TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST NO. 83
One of the stone steps outside a certain U.S. state's Capitol building features a five-word engraved message, the first word of which is "ONE" In what city is this building?

HOW TO WIN: Send your answer, with your full name and address, either by e-mail to TriviaBits@gmail.com, or on a postcard to Stan Newman's Trivia Chall ...

Updated: Sat May 03, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 5 for 05/05/2008

Mon, 05 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Word of the week: "fax potato." A first cousin to "couch potato," it is a term for an office worker who sends a fax from one floor of a building to another, to avoid the effort involved in delivering the document in person.

Trivia Detective Alert: The trio of Bette Davis, Claude Rains and Paul Henreid appeared in the films "Now, Voyager" and "Decept ...

Updated: Mon May 05, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 6 for 05/06/2008

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Many trivia fans will recognize the name of actress Jean Vander Pyl, best known as the voice of Fred's wife Wilma on the '60s animated sitcom "The Flintstones." She recounted in a 1995 interview that she received $250 for each "Flintstones" episode, and enthusiastically (but unfortunately) accepted a $15,000 payment at the series' end, in lieu of future residual payments from s ...

Updated: Tue May 06, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 7 for 05/07/2008

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Charles Van Doren speaks! According to a July 2006 article in Connecticut's Litchfield County Times, Mr. Van Doren has completed a memoir entitled "Second Chance," covering the quiz-show period in his life and beyond. He talks a bit about the game-show scandal in the article, the first time we know of that he has spoken publicly about it since the 1950s. The article can be found online a ...

Updated: Wed May 07, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 8 for 05/08/2008

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Small-town celebrity birthplace of the week: Byron, in northern Illinois (current population about 4,000). Baseball Hall of Famer and sporting-goods entrepreneur Albert Goodwill Spalding was born there in 1850. Impressionist painter Wilson Irvine was also born in Byron in 1869.

You may have noticed Easter Sunday was unusually early this year -- March 23, to be exact. That's unusual, a ...

Updated: Thu May 08, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 9 for 05/09/2008

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The word "fiasco," as in "spectacular failure," means "flask" in Italian. Specifically, the flask commonly used for Chianti that is enclosed in a straw basket. The word took on its unpleasant connotation as an Italian theatrical term, as part of the Italian phrase literally meaning "make a bottle," in the mid-19th century, but word-history experts aren't exa ...

Updated: Fri May 09, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 10 for 05/10/2008

Sat, 10 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

STAN'S WEEKLY TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST NO. 84
What famous name from 19th-century world history was once the president of three countries simultaneously?

HOW TO WIN: Send your answer, with your full name and address, either by e-mail to TriviaBits@gmail.com, or on a postcard to Stan Newman's Trivia Challenge No. 84, P.O. Box 69, Massapequa Park, NY 11762. Only one submission per ...

Updated: Sat May 10, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 12 for 05/12/2008

Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Word of the week: "paraph." It is a handwritten flourish made under a person's signature, once popularly used as a forgery deterrent. Some famous Americans whose autograph often included a paraph: John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Houston and Samuel Morse.

"Trivia Wanted" Category of the Month: Literature. Being a mathematician/statistician by academic training ...

Updated: Mon May 12, 2008

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Trivia Bits, May 13 for 05/13/2008

Tue, 13 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Frank Nieman of Pleasant Hill, Calif., thought he remembered hearing the 1961 Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer tune "Moon River" on a 1940s radio show in Cincinnati and asked us to check into it. Our research revealed that Cincinnati's WLW had a poetry-reading program called "Moon River" back then, but its theme song started with, "Moon River, a lazy stream of dreams," and ...

Updated: Tue May 13, 2008

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