7. What much-criticized announcement was made on October 3, 2005, involving Harriet Miers? [Answer]
8. Congress passed the Copyright Extension Act in October 1998. What singer-songwriter-congressman is it named for? [Answer]
9. What movie about the origins of Facebook was released in October 2010? [Answer]
10. The best-selling book Culture Warrior, published in October 2007, is by what TV political commentator? (Hint: No spin) [Answer]
11. Tom Bosley, who died in October 2010, played the lovable dad in what sitcom set in the 1950s? [Answer]
12. The popular book Your Best Life Now, published in October 2004, is by Joel Osteen, pastor of what huge church in Houston? [Answer]
13. Steve Allen, who died October 31, 2000, was the first host of what late-night show? [Answer]
14. What Internet money transfer Web site was purchased by eBay in October 2002? [Answer]
15. Operation Enduring Freedom, launched in October 2001, refers to America’s military involvement in what country? [Answer]
16. What uniquely designed church in the Los Angeles area filed for bankruptcy in October 2010? [Answer]
November
1. What notorious sniper was executed in November 2009? [Answer]
2. In November 2004, Ken Jennings ended his amazing winning streak on what TV game show? [Answer]
3. What Texas army base was the site of a shooting spree on November 5, 2009? [Answer]
4. What state became notorious for its “hanging chads” in November 2000? [Answer]
5. On a November 1998 60 Minutes segment, who ran a videotape of himself giving a man a lethal injection? [Answer]
6. According to a November 2008 poll, what radio talk show host was said to be the most trusted news personality in America? [Answer]
7. What political figure said, in a November 1995 press conference, “We all know the leopard can’t change his stripes”? [Answer]
8. The best-selling book Decision Points, published in November 2010, was by what ex-president? [Answer]
9. What did Bobbi McCaughey of Iowa produce on November 19, 1997? [Answer]
10. Who was Barack Obama addressing in November 2009 when he said, “I urge you to choose Chicago”? [Answer]
11. What action movie legend said in November 2007, “War is natural. Peace is an accident”? [Answer]
12. What Chicago Bears Hall of Famer died at age forty-five in November 1999? [Answer]
13. What Bush Cabinet member stepped down in November 2006, saying, “I have benefitted greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack”? [Answer]
14. What forty-five-year-old, in November 1994, became the oldest man to win a boxing title? [Answer]
15. What best-selling autobiography, published in November 2010, was written by an author who died in 1910? (Hint: bushy mustache) [Answer]
16. In November 2002, Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to hold what federal office? [Answer]
17. What Green Party presidential candidate drew 2.7 percent of the popular vote in November 2000? [Answer]
December
1. What former football player and actor was sent to Nevada’s Lovelock prison in December 2008? [Answer]
2. What TV evangelist (and university founder) died in December 2009? [Answer]
3. What venerable department store chain announced its closing in December 2000? [Answer]
4. What territory did the United States relinquish control of on December 31, 1999? [Answer]
5. Umar Abdulmutallab was arrested on December 25, 2009, for concealing explosives in what location? [Answer]
6. What movie comedy, set in the Depression South and based on Homer’s Odyssey, premiered in December 2000? [Answer]
7. What sports legend took a leave from his game in December 2009 in the wake of extramarital scandals? [Answer]
8. What longtime enemy of the United States was executed by hanging on December 30, 2006? [Answer]
9. Rod Blagojevich, arrested for federal corruption charges in December 2008, was governor of what state? [Answer]
10. What baby-faced Internet millionaire was Time magazine’s Person of the Year in December 2010? [Answer]
11. What sobering but inspiring Steven Spielberg movie was released in December 1993? [Answer]
12. Who shared with Bill Clinton the title “Men of the Year” on the December 28, 1998, cover of Time? [Answer]
13. What foreign automaker’s name was added to the Sun Bowl in December 2010? [Answer]
14. What soul singer died on Christmas Day 2006? (Hint: Godfather) [Answer]
15. What Western movie, a remake of a John Wayne classic, opened in December 2010? [Answer]
16. Clayton Moore, who died in December 1999, was remembered for playing what masked Western hero? [Answer]
17. What zany comic strip with a biblical name was launched in December 2001? [Answer]
18. What movie director famous for his Pink Panther movies died in December 2010? [Answer]
Biggest, Widest, Mostest: U.S. Records // Answers
1. The Statue of Liberty [Back]
2. Michigan; it’s Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor. [Back]
3. Mississippi (Must be all that good southern cooking . . .) [Back]
4. UPS, United Parcel Service [Back]
5. The Navajo; the reservation covers more than twenty-five thousand square miles in three states. [Back]
6. Colorado; found in the Great Sand Dunes National Monument; some are seven hundred feet high. [Back]
7. It is the highest golf course in the country, at an elevation of over eight thousand feet. [Back]
8. Atlanta; it’s called the Georgia Aquarium. [Back]
9. Connecticut [Back]
10. Maryland; it is home to the Washington Redskins. [Back]
11. The Southern Baptist, which has churches in all fifty states [Back]
12. The marines [Back]
13. Utah, with its Great Salt Lake [Back]
14. It’s the largest city park in the U.S. [Back]
15. Honolulu, Hawaii [Back]
16. New York County, which is Manhattan Island, with twenty-two square miles (and a lot of people) [Back]
17. The graduate with the lowest grades [Back]
18. Oklahoma—not surprising, since it was originally called the Indian Territory [Back]
19. Texas, where else? It’s the famous King ranch, near Kingsville. [Back]
20. Maine; Alaska has more, but then, Alaska is slightly larger than Maine. [Back]
21. California, in Yosemite National Park; Ribbon Falls drops 1,612 feet. [Back]
22. Fort Worth, Texas [Back]
23. Vermont [Back]
24. Billy Graham [Back]
25. Bobby Fischer [Back]
26. Alaska [Back]
27. March; having the inauguration in January is a fairly recent practice. [Back]
28. Jim Thorpe [Back]
29. Georgia [Back]
30. North Carolina [Back]
31. Hawaii—about 38 percent Asian in the 2010 census [Back]
32. Vicodin (generic name: hydrocodone) [Back]
A World Record for . . . // Answers
1. Levi Strauss, maker of Levi’s, Dockers, etc. [Back]
2. The Indianapolis 500 [Back]
3. Sears; the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower) was the world’s tallest building at the time it opened. [Back]
4. The Washington Monument [Back]
5. Chicago [Back]
6. Lake Superior [Back]
7. Boeing (“If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.”) [Back]
8. Miami [Back]
9. Brigham Young University, with more than twenty-seven thousand students; it is Provo’s largest employer. [Back]
10. Alabama [Back]
11. The Guinness World of Records Exhibition, naturally [Back]
12. The blind [Back]
13. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory—better known as Fermilab, named for Enrico Fermi [Back]
14. Telescopes [Back]
15. A giant sequoia tree in California, over 275 feet tall [Back]
16. Utah; it is Rainbow Bridge, spanning over 275 feet. [Back]
17. Oregon; it spouts every ninety seconds, sometimes as high as seventy feet. [Back]
18. Minnesota; it’s twenty feet long, ten feet high, made of fiberglass, and swimming in Silver Lake in the town of Virginia. [Back]
19. The world’s first oil well, in Titusville, Pennsylvania [Back]
20. Macy’s [Back]
21. Colorado; it is five miles long. [Back]
22. New Mexico, in the city of Las Cruces [Back]
23. Iron ore; Hibbing has the world’s largest open-pit iron mine. [Back]
24. Connecticut; it’s at Groton, a major submarine base. [Back]
25. The world’s largest mineral hot springs, now in the town of Thermopolis [Back]
26. Stone Mountain, carved with images of Confederate heroes Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and “Stonewall” Jackson [Back]
27. Jim Thorpe, who had won several medals at the 1912 Olympics (in Sweden, which is why the king was addressing him) [Back]
28. The USS Constitution, also called “Old Ironsides”; it was built in 1797. [Back]
29. New York [Back]
30. California; the bristlecone pine is said to be 4,600 years old. [Back]
31. Woolworth’s; it is still the Woolworth Building. [Back]
The Oldest . . . // Answers
1. Florida; it is St. Augustine, founded by the Spanish in 1565. [Back]
2. Santa Fe, capital of New Mexico [Back]
3. Massachusetts’s [Back]
4. The Marine Band [Back]
5. Jamestown, settled in 1607 [Back]
6. Cape May [Back]
7. Connecticut; it’s Lake Compounce Festival Park. [Back]
8. Staten Island [Back]
9. Tennessee and Georgia; it is Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, with over eight thousand acres. [Back]
10. Annapolis, Maryland; the State House was begun in 1772. [Back]
11. New Mexico; it has been inhabited continuously since 1100. [Back]
12. None; the eight-hundred-year-old house was built by Native Americans before the Spanish settled Santa Fe. [Back]
13. Massachusetts [Back]
14. New Orleans, whose streetcar line has been operating since 1835 [Back]
15. Santa Fe, New Mexico [Back]
The One and Only . . . // Answers
1. Maine [Back]
2. John F. Kennedy [Back]
3. Texas; considering how much Texans love bigness, this will never happen. [Back]
4. Rhode Island; many states have counties bigger than Rhode Island. [Back]
5. New Mexico, of course [Back]
6. Enterprise, Alabama, which has a very dignified Greek-style monument to . . . the boll weevil, a cotton-crop-destroying bug from Mexico [Back]
7. Detroit [Back]
8. Theodore Roosevelt; the park, in North Dakota, is a scenic “badlands” area containing part of Roosevelt’s ranch. [Back]
9. Pierre, South Dakota; Pierre is pronounced as only one syllable (PEER), as any South Dakota native will quickly tell you. [Back]
10. The Boston terrier [Back]
11. Ronald Reagan [Back]
12. Rutgers [Back]
13. Arkansas, which has the Craters of Diamonds State Park [Back]
14. Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller; Ford was appointed by Nixon; Rockefeller was appointed by Ford. [Back]
15. Maine, which borders only New Hampshire; Alaska and Hawaii border no states. [Back]
16. Louisiana, which (being French in heritage) has laws based on the Code Napoleon [Back]
17. Huntsville, Alabama; its Von Braun Civic Center is named for NASA scientist Wernher von Braun. [Back]
18. Grover Cleveland; this fact was used against him by political opponents. [Back]
19. The state of Franklin—the name taken by Tennessee before it formally became a state in 1796 [Back]
20. Clowns; the town is the winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. [Back]
21. West Virginia, made up of the twenty-six Virginia counties that voted to leave Virginia when Virginia joined the Confederacy [Back]
22. O. Henry; the novel was published in 1899. [Back]
23. The Declaration of Independence [Back]
24. Woodrow Wilson [Back]
25. The Monitor-Merrimack Memorial Bridge-Tunnel at Newport News, Virginia; it is named for the naval battle between the Confederacy’s Merrimack and the Union’s Monitor. [Back]
26. Wolf Trap Farm, which offers opera, symphony, folk, jazz, and many other performances [Back]
27. Acadia, in Maine [Back]
28. New Hampshire [Back]
29. New Mexico, the U.S.’s chief supplier of uranium [Back]
30. Jim Thorpe, the 1912 Olympic medalist [Back]
31. Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease [Back]
The Tube: TV in America // Answers
1. CMT (Country Music Television) [Back]
2. Frasier, a spinoff of Cheers [Back]
3. Carol Burnett [Back]
4. Captain Kangaroo [Back]
5. Jack LaLanne [Back]
6. The American Museum of the Moving Image, devoted to film, TV, and video [Back]
7. The VCR [Back]
8. Jackie Gleason’s [Back]
9. Shari Lewis [Back]
10. Tom Selleck, also known as Magnum [Back]
11. Art Fleming, who died in 1995 [Back]
12. Cigarette ads [Back]
13. Hollywood Squares [Back]
14. TV commercials [Back]
15. The Waltons [Back]
16. Ed Sullivan [Back]
17. All in the Family [Back]
18. Family Guy [Back]
19. M*A*S*H [Back]
20. The Beverly Hillbillies—as well as Green Acres and Petticoat Junction; Henning also composed the Hillbillies theme song, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett.” [Back]
21. Steve Allen [Back]
22. Star Trek, with more than six hundred chapters [Back]
23. Infomercial (mixing information and commercial) [Back]
24. CNN, the Cable News Network [Back]
25. Rodgers and Hammerstein, famous for Oklahoma! The King and I, and other classic musicals [Back]
The Big Book of American Trivia Page 19