Recently
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 …
more articles
|
Trivia Bits, October 30Eponym of the week: Oregonian Henry F. Phillips, for whom the Phillips-head screw and screwdriver were named. The self-centering design became especially useful on automated assembly lines that used electric-powered screwdrivers. Though Phillips received three U.S. patents for his design in 1936, it was so widely copied that by 1946 he had lost his patent protection.
Of Coarse: The next time you're in northeastern Minnesota, visit the Sandpaper Museum in Two Harbors, on the shores of Lake Superior. It's located in the building where 3M was founded in 1902. You knew that 3M's first product was sandpaper, right? Well, the "Mining" M in 3M's name represents the mining of corundum, which is used to make sandpaper. You may be familiar with the sign "The buck stops here" that sat on the White House desk of Harry Truman. But there was a different message on the sign's other side, which was: A) "Call me Harry" B) "I'm from Missouri" C) "What'll it cost?" D) "This meeting is over" Previous answer: A resident of Cape Cod, Mass., is called a Cape Codder. 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 DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
