Below are six 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) NAME the phrase, now used as an idiom, that fills in the blank in the following passage from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest describing Prospero’s condition post-shipwreck: “Full fathom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made; / Those are pearls that were his eyes; / Nothing of him that doth fade, / But doth suffer a [BLANK] / Into something rich and strange.”
2) In 2017, Virginia Tech discontinued the playing of WHAT children’s song, spelled differently by the school’s fans, between the third and fourth quarters of its football games?
3) Of the various cards that can be played in a standard game of Uno, NAME the only type of card that has a different function depending on whether the game is played with 3+ players or just two players, as its standard function would not be useful in a two-player Uno game.
4) The Illinois law codified as 625 ILCS 5/11-802 contains limitations on WHAT driving maneuver, also the title of a forgettable 1997 crime thriller that grossed only $6.6 million but that was directed by Oliver Stone with a star-studded cast that included Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, Jon Voight, and Billy Bob Thornton?
5) An advocacy group based in Colorado and made up of U.S. military veterans was formerly known as “Iraq Veterans Against the War”; since then, the group has changed its name to include, appropriately enough, the name of WHAT two-word, two-count military command?
6) The lyrics of a particular 1983 song, the video for which has over one billion views on YouTube, start with two words that fit into the theme of this newsletter. NAME the song, or those two words that are repeated several times in the song’s lyrics.
Trivia Newsletter CLXXIX Recap
1) Little is agreed upon when it comes to the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains (sometimes called the Battle of Châlons)—the battle’s name, where it was fought, why it was fought, and who won the battle are all subject to debate. Two points that are not generally disputed are that the battle was fought in the year 451 AD, and that it entailed the Romans and Visigoths fighting against an invading force led by WHAT king?
This is ATTILA. The Hun, not some other Attila. Let’s turn to the History Channel’s website for the lowdown:
In 451, some 200,000 of Attila’s Hun forces invaded Gaul. As they moved through the countryside, leaving slaughter and devastation in their wake, the Romans (commanded by General Flavius Aetius, previously on good terms with Attila) formed an alliance with King Theodoric I of the Visigoths.
The combined Roman-Goth army confronted Attila in the decisive Battle of Catalaunian Plains, finally defeating the great Hun leader in one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. Theodoric was killed in the clash, while Attila withdrew his forces and subsequently retired from Gaul. Never one to be easily discouraged, he would invade Italy the following year.
2) “Here Odo the bishop holding a club strengthens the boys” is the English translation of a phrase written in Latin on WHAT object, likely commissioned by Odo, that portrays his whereabouts on October 14, 1066?
This is the BAYEUX TAPESTRY. Whenever you see 1066 in any mainstream trivia context, just scream out “the Battle of Hastings” and you’re either going to be correct or on the right track. Jeopardy! loves to ask about the Bayeux Tapestry—you’ll be given some combination of facts about how it is a 231-foot-long strip of linen that is an important source of knowledge about the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings, and be required to give a missing piece of those facts.
Here Odo the bishop holding a club strengthens the boys:
The Trivia Factorial editorial position is that the whole “Barstool Sports” thing is kind of tedious and played out, but we’d need to reconsider that stance if they came out with some “Saturdays Are for Strengthening the Boys” apparel.
3) WHAT is the signature attack of the character Goku from the Dragon Ball manga and its associated media franchise? The attack, a concussive energy beam, takes its name from a person born around 1758 who is one of the 99 individuals today portrayed with a statue in the National Statuary Hall Collection in Washington, D.C.
This is KAMEHAMEHA, named after Kamehameha I of Hawaii, its first ruler.
Why does the collection have 99 statues and not 100? Each state sends two statues, but in 2020, Virginia opted to remove its statue of Robert E. Lee from the collection.
By the way, WHAT individual is honored with Hawaii’s other submission to the National Statuary Hall Collection? He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. The answer is at the end of this newsletter.1
4) NAME the author who passed away on April 21, 1910 and who is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Elmira, New York. His grave is, appropriately enough, marked by a monument that is twelve feet high (or two fathoms).
This is MARK TWAIN. There are probably too many Mark Twain questions in these newsletters, but the man fits into a lot of themes (more on that in a bit). Here, the clue is that “mark twain” is the call that a boat’s leadman made when a boat was in safe water for navigating—i.e., when the water was at least two fathoms, or twelve feet, deep. “Mark one” would mean six feet, and “Mark three” would mean eighteen feet—“twain” is an archaic term for two. This usage is very likely why the author selected Mark Twain as his pen name.
5) NAME the Italian painter from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries who is notable for his frescoes, including those in the Scrovegni Chapel (also called the Arena Chapel) in Padua; he was also the namesake to the European Space Agency’s contribution to a 1986 mission.
This is GIOTTO. The Adoration of the Magi, a fresco often credited to Giotto, looks like this:
First: Those donkeys look so happy! We’re just really into the donkeys. Do you think they’re friends, and go on donkey adventures together when they aren’t busy witnessing the birth of the Christ child? We would like to be friends with the donkeys.
Second: Hey, what’s that thing on top of the fresco? And what’s this thing on top of this portion of the Bayeux Tapestry?
Well…
6) NAME the commonality shared by, among many others, Samuel Barber, Thomas Burberry, Andrew Carnegie, Emilia Clarke, Fanny Eaton, Megan Fox, Kit Harington, John Harvard, Akira Kurosawa, Shia LaBeouf, Leopold II, James Monroe, Mother Teresa, Rafael Nadal, Horatio Nelson, Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Django Reinhardt, and Maximilien Robespierre. (Note: A particular two-word answer is sufficient.)
This was a newsletter about HALLEY’S COMET. Halley’s Comet makes an appearance visible from Earth roughly every 76 years, and each question not only contained one of the years in which Halley’s Comet was visible from Earth (we’re going to call such a year a “Halley year”), each question also dealt with something that has a Halley connection:
The reason that we’re pretty sure the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains happened in the year 451 is that accounts of the battle line up with accounts of what is likely Halley’s Comet from that era. The comet was said to portend poorly for Attila, though no word on whether that opinion came about before or after his setback.
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Halley’s Comet, as 1066 was another Halley year.
Kamehameha I said, potentially falsely, that he was born in 1758, a Halley year, in order to support his legitimacy as ruler.
Mark Twain was born in 1835 and died in 1910, both of which are Halley years. Twain himself said in 1909 that “I came in with Halley’s Comet. It is coming again next year. The Almighty has said, no doubt, ‘Now there are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’”
Giotto portrayed the Star of Bethlehem in The Adoration of the Magi as a comet, likely because he had seen Halley’s Comet in 1301. This connection is why the European Agency named a space probe Giotto and why it was sent, together with the Soviet Vega 1 and Vega 2 and the Japanese Suisei and Sakigake, to examine Halley’s Comet during its 1986 passing. Read more about Giotto’s flyby here.
Thus, once you got to Halley’s Comet, your task was to realize that each person in the list in Question #6 was BORN IN A HALLEY YEAR (though we just accepted “Halley’s Comet” as well). Our newsletter title, “The Sixth Sense: Paramornal Activity,” was meant to give you another path to come up with “Halley” with some soundalikes, as the connection between the film The Sixth Sense and the band Paramore (note that we “misspelled” the word paranormal) is that the former starred Haley Joel Osment and the latter is fronted by Hayley Williams.
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.
The Hawaiian we were asking about is FATHER DAMIEN, a Roman Catholic priest notable for his work caring for those with leprosy on Molokai, a Hawaiian island.