WEEK OF MAY 12, 2008
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 and a reader of nonfiction almost exclusively, your humble trivia author admits to a less-than-deep familiarity with the world of literature. So if you've know some fun facts on the subject, and long to see your name and hometown in newspapers throughout this great land, please let us know.
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 had a completely different melody.
The Curse of Billy Penn: Since the 1987 construction of Philadelphia's One Liberty Place, which exceeded the height of William Penn's statue atop City Hall, none of the city's major sports teams has won a championship. Last June, Philly's new Comcast Center was topped out as the city's tallest building. In an effort to lift the curse, workers attached a small statue of Penn to the building's final beam. Will it help? As they say, it couldn't hurt.
The first sound recording device wasn't Thomas Edison's phonograph of 1877, but the phonautograph, patented by Frenchman Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville in 1857. While the device couldn't play back his recordings, an 1860 10-second phonautogram of a girl singing was rendered playable by scientists earlier this year in Berkeley, Calif. This is now the earliest known recorded human voice.
Cynthia update: Thanks to all who wrote with famous Cynthias that we didn't think of. The three most famous Cynthias, in our humble opinion: actress Cynthia Nixon of "Sex and the City," ABC News anchor Cynthia McFadden (Ms. McFadden is the executor of the estate of Katharine Hepburn), and pop songwriter Cynthia Weil.
Small-town celebrity birthplace of the week: Angola, N.Y. (current population about 2,000), near Lake Erie and Buffalo. Engineer Willis Carrier, known as the father of modern air conditioning, was born there in 1876. Another native is basketballer Christian Laettner, known to sports fans as the only college player on the U.S. gold-medal Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics.
Who was the first actress on a U.S. postage stamp? Strictly speaking, it was Ethel Barrymore, on a 1982 stamp with her brothers Lionel and John. In 1990, Judy Garland appeared on a stamp honoring "The Wizard of Oz" with Toto, as did Vivien Leigh on a "Gone With the Wind" stamp with Clark Gable. The first two "by herself" actresses on U.S. stamps were Fanny Brice in 1991 and Grace Kelly in 1993.
Although the words "minestrone" and "minister" may seem unrelated definition-wise, they share the same pedigree. The name of the soup is derived from the Italian for "something served," and "minister" as a verb means "to serve." Speaking of soup, the Indian mulligatawny (literally "pepper water") has nothing at all to do with Mulligan stew, word-wise or cuisine-wise.
We're just the right age to be fans of the late '60s-early '70s rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival. With all their hit tunes, we were surprised to learn that the group never had a No. 1 Billboard song. But they came tantalizingly close. Five CCR songs reached No. 2: "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," "Green River," "Travelin' Band" and "Lookin' Out My Back Door." (Thanks to Ken Clark of Kent, Wash.)
TRIVIA
1) Mungo Park will be found as an entry in standard reference sources as:
A) A Scottish-born African explorer
B) An Australian soccer arena
C) A Korean-born Nobel Prize winner
D) A Canadian wildlife preserve
2) With three incumbent U.S. senators in the running for the presidency as of this writing, we offer this relevant question: How many incumbent U.S. senators were elected president in the last 100 years, that is, from 1908 until now?
A) None
B) 2
C) 4
D) 7
3) What is the world's smallest mammal? Depending on your definition of "smallest," two species seem to be in contention for the title: the Etruscan shrew and a species of:
A) Mouse
B) Bat
C) Kangaroo
D) Rabbit
4) The 1967 film "The Graduate" stars Dustin Hoffman as recent college graduate Benjamin Braddock and Anne Bancroft as "older woman" Mrs. Robinson. How many years older than Hoffman was Bancroft?
A) 26
B) 16
C) 6
D) Bancroft was younger than Hoffman
5) The world's only diamond mine that is open to the public is located in:
A) South Africa
B) Australia
C) Arkansas
D) Aruba
ANSWERS
1) Scottish-born Mungo Park was an explorer of Africa in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
2) The only two incumbent U.S. senators to be elected president in the last 100 years were Warren Harding in 1920 and John Kennedy in 1960.
3) The world's two smallest mammals are the Etruscan shrew and the bumblebee bat, the latter native to Southeast Asia.
4) Actress Anne Bancroft was only six years older than Dustin Hoffman, her co-star in "The Graduate."
5) The world's only diamond mine that is open to the public is in Arkansas' Crater of Diamonds State Park. Every year, visitors find hundreds of diamonds there, and may keep any gems that they find.
STAN'S WEEKLY TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST NO. 85
Not counting the two blanks, what are the only two U.S. states whose names can't be spelled from a standard set of 98 Scrabble titles?
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. 85, P.O. Box 69, Massapequa Park, NY 11762. Only one submission per person, please. Answers must be received within seven days of publication. One winner will be chosen at random from all correct entries, who will receive a copy of Stan's new book "15,003 Answers: The Ultimate Trivia Encyclopedia," courtesy of Random House. Answer and winner will be announced in a future issue.
ANSWER TO TRIVIA CHALLENGE CONTEST NO. 78
Most American English words differ from their British English counterparts in standard ways, such as color/colour, center/centre and realize/realise. The seven-letter word in American English that becomes its British English equivalent when an A is changed to a Y is "pajamas," which in England is spelled "pyjamas." Winner: Dayle Sternstein of Deerfield Beach, Fla.
