We’re taking off Tuesday—we’ll be back with Trivia Newsletter CCXXIX on Friday, June 21st.
Below are some trivia questions. If you’d like to participate, you can either reply to this e-mail or submit your answers via Google Forms by using the button below. You can find our rules and guidelines by following this link.
]1. A particular corporate mascot shares his first name with the author of the Iliad, shares his last name with the author of “Annabel Lee,” and has the middle initial “D.” That mascot is the mascot of WHAT large retailer that happens to have, as of 2021, nine locations in Delaware and eleven locations in Maine, together with nearly 2,000 other U.S. locations?
2. Though its name is often understood to idiomatically refer to a source of particularly apt examples, so to speak, WHAT company was founded in California in 1925 by Will Hays and the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America? Today the company has offices in Burbank, New York, Atlanta, New Orleans, and definitely not in Alabama.
3. Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world’s first female prime minister when she became prime minister of the Dominion of Ceylon in 1960. Today that country, just about half the size of Louisiana and twenty-one times the size of Rhode Island, is known by WHAT name?
4. King Kong (2005), The Ring (2002), The Impossible (2012), and two films in the Divergent franchise make up the top-five highest-grossing films (worldwide) in the acting career of WHOM? Incidentally, she was attached to the film Holland, Michigan for a time, and she starred in the 2022 film Infinite Storm about a trek up Mount Washington.
5. The sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet ran for fourteen seasons and starred the real-life couple Ozzie and Harriet together with their sons. One son was David; NAME the couple’s other son, whose song “Poor Little Fool” was the first #1 song in the history of the Billboard Hot 100. You can find a version of “Kentucky Means Paradise” by him on Spotify, but not a version of “Nebraska.”
6. NAME the U.S. president who, besides fitting with today’s theme, won Colorado’s six electoral votes and Indiana’s fifteen electoral votes in his winning campaign.
Trivia Newsletter CCXXVII Recap
Thanks to Andrew for writing these questions!
1. In 1968, WHAT man took over command of military operations in Vietnam from William Westmoreland? He is the namesake of the military’s main battle tank—but try not to mix that tank up with other modern tanks named for Generals Sherman, Pershing, and Sheridan.
This is CREIGHTON ABRAMS. “I'm supposed to be the best tank commander in the Army, But I have a peer—Abe Abrams,” General George Patton once said of him.
Here’s an excerpt on some of the action Abrams saw during World War II:
On the chilly afternoon of Tuesday, December 26, 1944, a column of mud-caked Sherman tanks, halftracks, scout cars, and tank destroyers of the U.S. 37th Tank Battalion was drawn up on a roadside in southeastern Belgium. It was ten days into the [REDACTED].
On that December 26, 1944, Abrams was down to 20 tanks, enough for one more assault. Should he take a chance and ask for permission to head straight for Bastogne, regardless of the strength of enemy opposition? Just then, waves of Douglas C-47 transports roared overhead and started parachuting supplies into Bastogne. Abrams’s mind was made up, and he dashed back to his Sherman, nicknamed “Thunderbolt IV,” and radioed Major General Hugh Gaffey, commander of the 4th Armored Division, for permission to move ahead. The word came a few minutes after 3 p.m.
Impassive, but with his eyes glinting, Abrams stuck a large cigar in his mouth, clambered into the turret of his tank, and radioed to his men, “We’re going in to those people now. Let ‘er roll!”
NAME the battle that we’ve replaced with “[REDACTED]” in the above excerpt. The answer’s at the end of the newsletter.1
2. WHAT name is shared by the capitals of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and the country of Antigua and Barbuda? You might be tricked into saying St. George’s (the capital of Grenada) or San José (the capital of Costa Rica), but those aren’t right.
This is ST. JOHN’S.
Guglielmo Marconi, the radio pioneer whose name you should know for trivia purposes, is credited with receiving the first transatlantic wireless message. That event—his reception of the message—occurred in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
3. Louis Jolliet and WHAT other man are known for their 1673 expedition exploring the upper reaches of the Mississippi? Don’t be misled into saying “René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle,” as he explored the lower Mississippi.
[We had a typo here—”1673” was incorrectly listed as “1637.” We regret the error.]
This is JACQUES MARQUETTE. Here’s a bit more on their expedition and the roles of the two men:
Jolliet’s assignment was to “discover new countries” as Marquette wrote. More specifically he was to find out to where the mysterious Mississippi flowed. Did it discharge into the western sea at California, into the Gulf of Mexico, or at Virginia? Another task was to determine if the river known to the Iroquois as Ohio was the same river Algonquian speakers called Mississippi? In addition, Louis was to fund the expedition himself.
Marquette’s role was more nuanced. He would function as a Jesuit scout, a task for which he was well-suited. He was reportedly conversant in several Native American dialects including that of the Miami-Illinois. Marquette also knew cartography. The best evidence indicates that he assisted Allouez to gather information for the now famous 1669 chart titled Lac Tracy ou Superieur avec les dependances de la Mission du Saint Esprit, or map illustrating the dependencies of the Saint Esprit mission. Lac Tracy was the name given to Lake Superior by the French during the 1660s, named for the Lieutenant-General of New France Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy. The missionary planned to seek out Native American villages, record their demographic information, and draw a map that illustrated the location of each village. With these objectives in mind, the crew left Michilimackinac and paddled their canoes to the Mississippi.
4. You may mistakenly think it happened earlier, but the first canonization of a person born in what would become the United States occurred in 1975. WHO was this woman?
This is ELIZABETH SETON. Here’s more on her:
Although she passed away at a young age, Seton’s legacy lived on. She life was declared holy (otherwise known as beatified) by Pope John XXIII on December 18, 1959. She was canonized, or officially made a saint, September 14, 1975, by Pope Paul VI. She was the first native-born saint of the United States.
In order to be canonized, a person must either be a martyr, or perform at least two miracles. For Seton, her miracles occurred through intercession, or prayers asking for help. The first miracle attributed to Seton happened in New Orleans, where Sister Gertrude Korzendorfer made a full recovery from pancreatic cancer in the 1930’s. Four-year-old Ann Theresa O’Neill was also cured of acute, lymphatic leukemia in 1952, after Sister Mary Alice prayed to Seton. Finally, Carl E. Kalin was given a few hours to live in 1963, when he was brought to St. Joseph’s Hospital in New York. He was diagnosed with meningitis of the brain and was in a coma. The Sisters of Charity of the New York chapter visited Kalin, and placed a piece of Seton’s bone, known on a relic, on him and prayed to Seton. Kalin woke a few hours later.
5. NAME the character who speaks the top-ranked quote on the American Film Institute’s “100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes” list of the top quotes in film history, released in 2005. Don't get fooled into saying Vito Corleone or Dorothy Gale.
This is RHETT BUTLER. The quote is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and is spoken by Butler (played by Clark Gable) in Gone with the Wind.
According to this article in Parade, it was unclear whether the filmmakers would be able to use the line in the film, given the heavy censorship common in the film industry at the time. Thus, the filmmakers prepared a list of potential alternate lines:
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a whoop!” is good stuff.
6. The answers above reference five members of an eleven-member group. Of that group’s members, WHICH is the only one that is public?
This is the UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT.
This was a newsletter cluing you into the full members of the Big East conference in collegiate sports. Five of those members are DePaul, Georgetown, Providence, Villanova, and Xavier. Five others are ones we alluded to in this newsletter: Creighton, St. John’s, Marquette, Seton Hall (by way of its namesake, Elizabeth Seton), and Butler. The remaining member is UConn, the only public school in the Big East. Each question described a way that “you” might get fooled or tricked, because we didn’t want you to get conned—get it?
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The redacted WWII battle above is the BATTLE OF THE BULGE.