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Trivia Bits Saturday, July 4
Little Letters: Kathryn Dawn Lang likes to spell her name with lower-case letters. Lang is also notable for appearing on the cover of the debut issue of two magazines. One of them was Entertainment Weekly, which was dated Feb. 16, 1990. The other …
Trivia Bits Friday, July 3
Keep Quiet: To hide his Jewish origins, Marcel Mangel changed his name to that of a French Revolution general, François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers. He became Marcel Marceau, the French mime who came to define the art form. His father, a kosher …
Trivia Bits Thursday, July 2
The Ebola virus is named for the Ebola River, in the D.R. Congo, where the virus spread to more than 55 villages in 1976. This probably ruined any tourism industry along the Ebola River. In fact, the Ebola virus is a lot like the Marburg virus, …
Trivia Bits Wednesday, July 1
Happy Canada Day: Our Canadian readers are celebrating Canada Day and probably not reading this column in their papers. Originally, it was called Dominion Day, because Britain promoted some of its colonies to a semi-independent status called …
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Trivia Bits, May 1Small-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 word "yatahey," which can mean "hello" or "goodbye." Don Hansen of Issaquah, Wash., told us about the Danish oddity of "hej" (pronounced "hi") meaning "hello" and "hej-hej" meaning "goodbye." A recent Bit mentioned that a resident of Sydney, Australia, is called a Sydneysider. A) Left-hander B) Comedian C) Clumsy sailor D) Rickety building Previous answer: The "ruth" in "ruthless" is a word meaning "pity." 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.
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