Monday, December 01, 2008 | 3:49 p.m.

Trivia Bits by Paul Paquet

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Paul Paquet

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  • Trivia Bits, December 1
    Word of the week: "snow," specifically the Eskimo words for "snow." The idea that Eskimos have dozens of words for snow reflects the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language is shaped by our experience of the world. Actually, Eskimo …

  • Trivia Bits, November 29
    STAN'S WEEKLY TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST NO. 113 What legendary figure from American history was once known as "Duck Bill" because of the shape of his nose and mouth? HOW TO WIN: Send your answer, with your full name and address, either by e-…

  • Trivia Bits, November 28
    The related words "denim" and "jeans" both have a geographical ancestry. "Denim" is derived from the French fabric "serge de Nimes," Nimes being the city where it was first made. "Jeans" comes from …

  • Trivia Bits, November 27
    Eponym of the week: Japanese engineer Tadao Kashio, who, with his father and three brothers, founded in 1946 what would become the Casio Computer Company. In 1954, Casio debuted its first calculator — the first with a 10-key number pad and a …

Trivia Bits, September 2

Common Claws: According to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, lobsters were once so plentiful in New England that Native Americans used them as fertilizer for their crops and as bait in their fishing. In early colonial days, lobsters were a staple food of the lower class, often served to prisoners and indentured servants.

Many of Hanna-Barbera's popular cartoon characters, such as Fred Flintstone, Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear, wear a necktie and/or collar. This allows the characters' bodies to remain static when they're speaking -- reducing the number of separate drawings required for a seven-minute cartoon by over 80 percent, from about 14,000 to only 2,000. The very tight TV budgets made this necessary.

Deejay Casey Kasem first went on the air with his American Top 40 broadcasts in 1970. He got started in radio as a result of his massive collection of eight-track tapes.
What was Kasem's day job before American Top 40?
A) Dog catcher
B) Commercial artist
C) Lab technician
D) Barber

Previous answer: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations contains the Churchill quote "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently." Churchill believed that reading good quotes gets people to read more about their authors.

TRIVIA FANS: Send the trivia questions you've always wanted answered, or original TriviaBits ideas of your own, with your full name and hometown, to Stan Newman at StanTrivia@aol.com or on a postcard to P.O. Box 69, Massapequa Park, NY 11762.

Stanley Newman is the editor of the Newsday Crossword and author/editor of more than 125 books on crosswords, word games and trivia, including "15,003 Answers: The Ultimate Trivia Encyclopedia" (Random House). To find out more about Stanley Newman visit StanXwords.com, or e-mail him at StanTrivia@aol.com.
COPYRIGHT 2008 STANLEY NEWMAN
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Originally Published on Tuesday September 02, 2008

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