Here’s another opportunity for you to demonstrate your tremendous trivia knowledge. Try this quiz on a potpourri of trivia and then dazzle all you friends with your unbelievable grasp of mundane information. Just insert one of these facts into any conversation and watch your friends gasp in awe and wonder, and/or choke in appalled embarrassment. It’s all relative.
So, let's begin (answers at the end of the column):
1. What does the Latin term ad hoc mean?
2. What was the theme song from the movie Dr. Zhivago?
3. How many dice do you use in the game Yahtzee?
4. What was the first poll ever taken by pollster George Gallup.
5. What does a camel store in its hump?
6. What was Amos’ and Andy’s taxi company called on the old radio show and then later on TV?
7. What James Bond movie is known in Hong Kong as, The Indestructible Man Fights Against the Electronic Gang?
8. What useful tool did Norman Breakey invent in Toronto in 1940?
9. If you were exceedingly bored and decided to list countries alphabetically, which one would come first?
10. Do you remember the name of the whale that swallowed Pinocchio?
No lying, please, as technically, you could be correct by saying, “No.”
11. Who was known as the “Clown Prince of Basketball?”
12. Radish and turnip are members of what plant family?
13. Bibliophobia is the fear of what?
14. For what “police and bad guys” movie did Sean Connery win an Oscar?
15. What Heisman Trophy winner once struck out 21 times in a row while playing baseball for Auburn University?
16. In the old cartoon series, who was the arch-enemy of Dudley Do-Right?
17. Which U.S. president had the most children (that we know of officially)?
18. Where did the Trail of ’98 lead? That’s 1898, by the way.
Answers
1. This is embarrassing. I wasted three years taking Latin (the dead language) in school and I haven’t a clue what ad hoc means. Oh, wait a minute. Here it is in my Grade 10 textbook. It means, “for this,” as in “for this task only.”
2. That beautiful theme song in Dr. Zhivago was Lara’s Theme, which is also known as Somewhere My Love.
3. Well, of course, you can use as many dice (or die) as you like, but officially five are used in Yahtzee.
4. Gallup’s first poll was taken way back in the 1920s when he was editor of the student newspaper at the University of Iowa. He conducted a survey to find the prettiest girl on campus. He later married her.
5. I always thought a camel stored water in its hump. Wrong. Camels actually store Smarties in there. Well, if not that, then we would also accept the real answer which is fat.
6. According to Calhoun and the Kingfish, Amos’ and Andy’s taxi company was called, Fresh Air Taxi.
7. That title is fine for them, but over here we call that 007 flick, A View to a Kill.
8. Mr. Breakey invented the paint roller. Thank goodness!
9. Afghanistan.
10. Pinocchio ended up in the cavernous stomach of Monstro, the whale.
11. Meadowlark Lemon of the Harlem Globetrotters.
12. Radish and turnip are brother and sister in the mustard plant family. Surprise, surprise.
13. Bibliophobia is the fear of the Bible? No, not exactly. But it is the fear of books.
14. Sean got the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Untouchables.15. It was Bo Jackson who fell victim to the 21-game hitting slump.
16. The evil doer was Snidely Whiplash. Who could forget him?
17. This will be a hard record to beat. John Tyler, who was U.S. President in 1841, had two wives. Each of them had seven children for a whopping total of 14 kids.
18. The trail of ’98 led to the Klondike.