Learned something new today.......

Twist ties have meaning.  Who knew?   Back story here

via

Feeling failureish.........................?

......................................................................................Nope.

Mark Perry offers another one of his current event quizzes.  In the spirit of full confession, your faithful blogger only got 4 out of ten correct.  Since they were multiple-choice questions with four choices each,  and since most of the questions had a vaguely trivial feel to them, and since I guessed at all ten questions;  getting four correct actually doesn't feel all that bad.  I won't be studying any harder for the next quiz.

Here is somethig............................

.....................................I'll bet you didn't know:

On July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong, another American born and raised in western Ohio, stepped onto the moon, he carried with him, in tribute to the Wright Brothers, a small swatch of the muslin from a wing of their 1903 Flyer.

-David McCullough,  The Wright Brothers

trivia hypnosis......................

25.   Keep in mind what is really important:  don't get trivia hypnosis.

-Nicholas Bate, as culled from here

Insatiable curiosity..................

What made him special was his insatiable curiosity about inventions.  He began to read every new patent issued.  "You read everything - that's part of the job," he said.  "You accumulate all this trivia, and you hope that someday maybe a millionth of it will be useful."
-as written about Jack Kilby (who won a Nobel Prize in physics in 2000) in Walter Isaacson's The Innovators:  How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution

Huxleyan................................

Spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate.  In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice.  We watch him, by ours.  There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth.   When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public talk becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk.
-Neil Postman,  Amusing Ourselves to Death

On the importance of knowing things......

via

Important questions........................

1.  Who wrote most of the Rolling Stones songs?

2,  What is the plural of faux pas?

3.  Are concrete and cement the same thing?

4.  Is the plural of radius radii or radiuses?

5.  Suffering from coulrophobia, you are afraid of what?

6.  What word becomes shorter by adding two letters?

7.  How many square are on a chessboard?

8.  How many spices make up allspice?

9.  How many of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World remain?

10. Without looking:  on the standard keyboard what number
       shares the same key as the asterisk?

you may find the answers below

Spoiler alert........................

Answers to the above posted trivia question are here:

1.  Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

2.  Faux pas

3.  No.  Cement added to sand, gravel and water makes concrete

4.  Yes

5.  Clowns

6.  Short

7.  64

8.  One

9.  One,  The Great Pyramid of Khofu at Giza

10.  8

Today's quiz...................................

When all frozen pies had 12 inch diameters, apple was the most popular flavor - but when 7 inch pies came on the market, apple immediately fell to something like fifth place.  Why?

(And it is not because they ran out of Cinnamon ice cream.  Scroll down for the answer)

picture via
thanks mark

Just in case you were curious.................

In 1659, the Massachusetts General Court ordered a "hefty 5 shilling fine" to be paid by anyone caught celebrating Christmas.  The ban was revoked in 1681.  (A fine ought to be re-instated for celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving Day.  Just saying.)

Christmas became an official federal holiday in 1870.

A wee slice of American history...............

The trivia buffs amongst us may choose to remember the answer to this little quiz:  Name, and rank, the shortest-serving Presidents of the United States.

1.  William Henry Harrison (1771-1841).  The eighth president, elected in 1841, he died after serving only 31 days.

2.  James A. Garfield (1831-1851).  The twentieth president, elected in 1881, he was assassinated after serving for only 199 days.

3.  Zachary Taylor (1784-1850).  The twelfth president, elected in 1849, he died after serving 491 days in office.

4.  Warren G. Harding (1865-1923).  The twenty-ninth president, elected in 1921, he died after serving 881 days in office.

5.  Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006).  The thirty-eighth president, Ford was serving in the U. S. House of Representative when he was named Vice President upon the resignation of Spiro Agnew in October of 1973.  When Richard Nixon resigned the presidency in August of 1974, Ford became president.  He was defeated in the next election by Jimmy Carter, who took office in 1977.  Ford served for 895 days.

6.  Millard Fillmore (1800-1874).  The thirteenth president, Fillmore took office upon the death of Zachary Taylor in 1850.  He completed that term, but was not re-nominated to a run at a term of his own.  He served for 969 days.

7.  John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963).  The thirty-sixth president, Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in the election of 1960 and took office in 1961.  Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 after serving 1,036 days in office.

For what it is worth, eleven presidents were in office for 2,922 days (two full terms).  Franklin Delano Roosevelt served the longest term, 4,422 days.  George Washington served two full terms, but his first term was shorted by 57 days, as Congress had not yet reached quorum status.  Now you know.

Trivia question of the day...............

Where, and what, is the Sargasso Sea?

Those of you who followed the link now know that the question was one of those posed by Thomas Edison to "test the mental mettle of incoming job seekers."   Seems Edison was dissatisfied with the knowledge base of college graduates of his day, so he created his own 150 question pop quiz to probe the breadth and depth of their learning.  Out of more than 500 testees only some 35 answered nine out of ten questions correctly.

Here of late, I've come across several accounts of how the brilliant inventor Edison conspired with the brilliant investor J. P. Morgan against the brilliant inventor Nikola Tesla.  Not a very pretty picture.  Thinking of demoting Edison from "Hero" to merely "an amazing human being."

Trivia question of the day................

Who, or what, is Charybdis........................................?

Trivia question of the day.............................

What is a dodecagon................................?

Trivia question of the day...................

What was Gulliver's first name?

Important things you should know...................

TASER is an acronym.   What do the letters stand for?

Answer is here (#25).  Back story is here.

Give yourself a gold star if you already knew the answer.

Christmas trivia.....................Part 10

Saint Nicholas, the fourth century bishop whose life may have served as the inspiration for the personhood of Santa Claus, hailed from where?

Yesterday's answer:  Egypt

Christmas trivia......................Part 9

After leaving Bethlehem, to where did Joseph, Mary, and Jesus travel?

Yesterdays answer:  Donner and Blitzen  (thunder and lightning in German)