Because Trivia Newsletter C is a special edition of the newsletter, this recap has been decoupled from it.
1) On January 3, 1993, for the first time in American history, a state was represented in the United States Senate by two women. One of those women continues to serve as a senator, and the other is now a private citizen. NAME the state.
This is CALIFORNIA. On that date, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer were sworn in. Boxer served until 2016 (at which time her seat was taken by Kamala Harris), and Feinstein continues to serve as a senator.
Barbara Boxer has done SOMETHING multiple times, together with Joe Biden, Michelle Obama, John McCain, and many non-politicians, including Tatiana Maslany, Heidi Klum, Keegan-Michael Key, Henry Winkler, Louis C.K., Paul Rudd, Sam Elliott, Kristen Bell, Ginuwine, Andrew Luck, Jim Irsay, Roy Hibbert, and Reggie Wayne. What is it? Just about two hundred people have done this thing multiple times. The answer’s at the end of this recap.1
2) The fictional bar Molly’s, based upon a real bar in the Bucktown neighborhood of a certain city, regularly appears in three different current primetime network television shows. WHAT word appears in the title of all three television shows?
This is “CHICAGO”—the shows are Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med, which are all Dick Wolf shows. He’s responsible for nine hours of primetime TV weekly, with those shows, the FBI shows, and of course his Law & Order shows. There’s a great BoJack Horseman bit about how a major TV network bought the rights to his Milwaukee shows (Milwaukee Waste Management and Milwaukee Postal are the two named shows), but “[t]urns out audiences aren't interested in a whole night of Milwaukee.”
3) Mia Farrow, Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges and Christopher Lee are all part of the improbably star-studded voice cast of WHAT 1982 animated film, based upon a 1968 fantasy novel? The film grossed only a few million dollars at the time of its release but has since maintained a cult following.
This is THE LAST UNICORN. Quoting, uh, myself:
The Last Unicorn is a strange fantasy novel. It lacks many of the hallmarks of the genre: There are no maps, there are no invented languages, and there’s no spinoff television show you can watch on HBO Max or Amazon Prime. The villains are not particularly villainous and the heroes are only occasionally heroic. And yet, the book’s legacy is undeniable, as evidenced by its regular appearances on lists of the greatest fantasy novels of all time. Jeff Bridges offered to be in the film for free, due to his love of the book, and Christopher Lee once named The Last Unicorn as one of his two desert-island picks (the other is The Lord of the Rings).
To quote Patrick Rothfuss, author of the fantasy novel The Name of the Wind: “Simply said, The Last Unicorn is the best book I have ever read. The language is gorgeous without being arty or pretentious. The story is smooth and perfect as a pearl. The characters will ride close to my heart until the day I die. I allow myself to re-read it once a year. Every year, I’m worried it won’t live up to my expectations. Every year it’s even better than I remember. You need to read it. If you’ve already read it, you need to read it again.”
4) NAME the Italian saint who was canonized in 1681 who is famous for founding a Swiss hospice and hostel equipped for mountain rescues. He is the patron saint of the Alps, skiing, snowboarding, hiking, backpacking, and mountaineering.
This is SAINT BERNARD. Here’s an awesome flag of a detachment of the Tyrolean Mountain Guards that depicts him:
Tyrol, the area in question, is in western Austria—its largest city is Innsbruck, and Innsbruck’s claim to fame is hosting the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics.
5) In a national television broadcast on February 6, 1971, the following was said:
Houston, while you're looking that up, you might recognize what I have in my hand as the handle for the contingency sample return. … In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that's familiar to millions of Americans. I'll drop it down.
WHAT was the “little white pellet” described in the broadcast?
This is a GOLF BALL. During the Apollo 14 mission, Alan Shepard famously brought along a six-iron golf club head, attached it to a “sample tool” (we’re just going to assume this is a stick), and hit two golf balls. One geologist wrote that, given the apparently poor samples the astronauts brought home, “[t]he golf game did not set well with most geologists in light of the results at Cone crater.”
6) What is the theme of this newsletter?
The connection here is DOGS/CANINES:
Question #1: Barbara BOXER is one of the two senators in question.
Question #2: The television shows needed for the answer are Dick WOLF shows.
Question #3: The Last Unicorn was written by Peter S. BEAGLE.
Question #4: The answer was SAINT BERNARD.
Question #5: The spelling may be different, but the quote in question was by Alan SHEPARD.
Newsletter Title: “St. Johns” is the capital of the Canadian province NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
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