15. The Bible [Back]
16. Alcohol [Back]
17. Jefferson Davis, president of that other American nation, the Confederacy [Back]
18. Andrew Jackson, who defeated the British in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans [Back]
19. China [Back]
20. Nancy Davis, later Nancy Reagan, wife of Ronald [Back]
21. Theodore Roosevelt [Back]
22. The Civil War [Back]
23. Gerald R. Ford, who graduated from the school in 1935 [Back]
24. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and James Monroe’s Ash Lawn [Back]
25. James Buchanan, who lived in the house from 1848 to 1868 [Back]
26. Martin Van Buren; the home is a National Historic Site. [Back]
27. Abraham Lincoln, who practically knew the Bible by heart [Back]
28. Lyndon Johnson [Back]
29. Harry Truman [Back]
30. William Henry Harrison, whose speech lasted nearly two hours and whose term was thirty-two days [Back]
31. Theodore Roosevelt’s; it’s known as Sagamore Hill. [Back]
32. Adams; because of the closeness, the election went to the House of Representatives, which threw its support to Adams. [Back]
33. John Adams [Back]
34. Gerald Ford, who was appointed by Richard Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew [Back]
35. Ronald Reagan [Back]
36. Franklin D. Roosevelt [Back]
37. Harry Truman [Back]
38. Abraham Lincoln; curiously, at that time Cartwright was a violent opponent of slavery, while Lincoln’s view was fairly moderate. [Back]
39. John F. Kennedy [Back]
40. One [Back]
41. The Confederacy; Tyler was elected in 1861 but died before he ever served. [Back]
42. Theodore Roosevelt [Back]
43. Sam Houston [Back]
The Babe, Billy Sunday, Etc.: The 1910s // Answers
1. The Indianapolis 500 [Back]
2. Coca-Cola [Back]
3. Babe Ruth [Back]
4. The Girl Scouts [Back]
5. Billy Sunday [Back]
6. George S. Patton [Back]
7. Goodyear’s [Back]
8. Greyhound [Back]
9. Dirigible [Back]
10. Reynolds Aluminum, which was founded to supply tinfoil for cigarette wrappers [Back]
11. The Panama Canal [Back]
12. The Virgin Islands—St. Thomas, St. Croix, St. John [Back]
13. The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), outlawing liquor in the U.S.; it was repealed in 1933. [Back]
14. Air-conditioning [Back]
15. Woodrow Wilson [Back]
Art Deco, the Model T, Etc.: The 1920s // Answers
1. Hertz [Back]
2. Bubble gum; Fleer makes the Dubble Bubble brand. [Back]
3. Rudolph Valentino’s [Back]
4. The Model T [Back]
5. The Appalachian Trail (known as the AT to seasoned hikers) [Back]
6. Evolution; the defendant, John Scopes, was a science teacher accused of teaching evolution as fact rather than theory. [Back]
7. Albert Einstein [Back]
8. Richard E. Byrd [Back]
9. Charles Lindbergh, first person to fly solo across the Atlantic [Back]
10. Art Deco [Back]
11. Native Americans [Back]
12. The Great Depression, beginning with the stock market crash [Back]
13. The signing of the Declaration of Independence; the year was the one hundred-fiftieth anniversary, the sesquicentennial. [Back]
14. Aimee Semple McPherson, who claimed she’d been kidnapped [Back]
15. Emily Post [Back]
16. William Howard Taft [Back]
Kingfish, Kodachrome, Knute, Etc.: The 1930s // Answers
1. Batman [Back]
2. Gone with the Wind [Back]
3. George Gallup [Back]
4. Knute Rockne, coach for Notre Dame [Back]
5. The Model A [Back]
6. Kodachrome, the first color film available to the average consumer [Back]
7. The South Pole [Back]
8. Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb, among other things [Back]
9. The Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition), outlawing liquor in the U.S. It had not been effective. [Back]
10. No one knows. They disappeared somewhere in the Pacific. [Back]
11. Aimee Semple McPherson [Back]
12. The Joy of Cooking; its revised version is still selling. [Back]
13. Huey Long, the “Kingfish” [Back]
14. Reno’s, which, beginning in the 1930s, required only a six-week stay to establish the “residency” necessary for divorce [Back]
15. The George Washington Bridge [Back]
16. Alcohol [Back]
CD, Nylons, A-Bombs, Etc.: The 1940s // Answers
1. Honolulu, at Pearl Harbor [Back]
2. The Polaroid [Back]
3. Withholding of federal income tax (Alack the day!) [Back]
4. Carole Lombard [Back]
5. Germany; they were captured and executed. [Back]
6. Hiroshima, Japan [Back]
7. The Pentagon [Back]
8. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization [Back]
9. Holiday Inn [Back]
10. The John Birch Society [Back]
11. Civil Defense [Back]
12. State Farm [Back]
13. Nylon [Back]
14. Dwight Eisenhower [Back]
15. Japanese, including seventy-five thousand who were U.S. citizens [Back]
16. Boston’s Fenway Park [Back]
17. The Navy [Back]
Ike, Bonzo, Interstates, Etc.: The 1950s // Answers
1. Billy Graham; Hearst was more attracted to Graham’s anticommunist stance than to Christianity itself. [Back]
2. H & R Block, the income tax preparers [Back]
3. Bozo [Back]
4. Ronald Reagan [Back]
5. In God We Trust; they had appeared on some earlier coins, but not by federal mandate. [Back]
6. Dwight Eisenhower [Back]
7. The FBI [Back]
8. The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations—now known as AFL-CIO [Back]
9. The National Archives [Back]
10. Scientology; Hubbard’s most famous book is probably his Dianetics. [Back]
11. The St. Lawrence Seaway, a joint U.S.-Canada project that opened up the Great Lakes to ocean shipping [Back]
12. The tubeless tire [Back]
13. Cinerama, which used a wide, curving screen with three projectors and stereophonic sound—all very “high tech” at the time [Back]
14. March 15 [Back]
15. Dwight Eisenhower [Back]
16. Jim Thorpe [Back]
Rockfests, Astronauts, Assassinations, Etc.: The 1960s // Answers
1. The moon [Back]
2. The Instamatic [Back]
3. “Is God Dead?” [Back]
4. Barry Goldwater’s [Back]
5. George Wallace [Back]
6. Ted Kennedy; in the accident his secretary, Mary Jo Kopechne, was killed. [Back]
7. Candlestick Park in San Francisco [Back]
8. Alcatraz, which held many notorious prisoners, including Al Capone [Back]
9. Medicare [Back]
10. Woodstock [Back]
11. Cassettes [Back]
12. Bonanza; Blocker played “Hoss” Cartwright on the long-running series Bonanza. [Back]
13. Orlando [Back]
14. The yellow smiley face [Back]
15. John F. Kennedy [Back]
16. Rachel Carson’s; she also wrote The Sea around Us. [Back]
Watergate, STOP-ERA, Seagulls, Etc.: The 1970s // Answers
1. Richard Nixon [Back]
2. Saturday Night Fever [Back]
3. Alabama governor George Wallace [Back]
4. Jonathan Livingston Seagull; it was the best-selling ficti
on book in those years. [Back]
5. She’s a coal miner’s daughter. [Back]
6. Lyndon Johnson [Back]
7. The ERA, Equal Rights Amendment [Back]
8. Legionnaire’s disease [Back]
9. The Postal Service [Back]
10. The Gray Panthers [Back]
11. Jimmy Hoffa [Back]
12. The Symbionese Liberation Army [Back]
13. David Brinkley [Back]
14. Jimmy Carter [Back]
15. Richard Nixon; CREEP was the Committee to Reelect the President. [Back]
16. The People’s Temple; the group committed mass suicide in 1978. [Back]
LaserJets, Volcanoes, Glasnost, Etc.: The 1980s // Answers
1. Compact discs, better known as CDs [Back]
2. Wal-Mart [Back]
3. Mount St. Helens’s [Back]
4. The World Series [Back]
5. Wendy’s [Back]
6. Grenada [Back]
7. The Taurus [Back]
8. The Air and Space Museum [Back]
9. Hewlett-Packard’s [Back]
10. Montana, which was never happy with the federally imposed 55 mph speed limit [Back]
11. Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party [Back]
12. An elevator [Back]
13. An artificial heart [Back]
14. Madalyn Murray O’Hair [Back]
15. Hurricane Hugo [Back]
16. Mt. McKinley [Back]
Megamalls, Oliver North, Perot, Etc.: The 1990s // Answers
1. Billy Graham; the award was given for “enduring contributions toward faith, morality, and charity.” [Back]
2. Kuwait’s, which had been occupied by Iraq [Back]
3. Ronald Reagan [Back]
4. Warner Brothers, creator of the various Looney Tunes characters [Back]
5. The rattlesnake; many people objected, for obvious reasons. [Back]
6. Ross Perot’s [Back]
7. Oliver North [Back]
8. The Mall of America in Minnesota [Back]
9. Pope John Paul II [Back]
10. The stamps had words on the back describing the person or event portrayed on the front of each stamp. [Back]
11. Montana [Back]
12. Jurassic Park [Back]
13. George Foreman [Back]
14. Rose Kennedy [Back]
15. In space; they were taken aloft by the space shuttle Columbia. [Back]
Facebook, American Idol, Dubya, Etc.: The 2000s // Answers
1. Jack Kevorkian, the infamous “Dr. Death,” who helped people commit suicide [Back]
2. Secretary of State [Back]
3. Spider-Man [Back]
4. Ronald Reagan, in honor of his help in ending the Cold War [Back]
5. Wendy’s [Back]
6. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham [Back]
7. Saturn [Back]
8. Al Gore [Back]
9. Wikipedia [Back]
10. Bob Hope [Back]
11. Winston Churchill’s [Back]
12. Martha Stewart [Back]
13. Secretary of Defense [Back]
14. James Arness, six feet six, who for twenty years played Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke [Back]
15. Rudolph Giuliani, mayor of New York [Back]
16. Michael Jackson [Back]
The American Name // Answers
1. All meals [Back]
2. Cheddar [Back]
3. American ivy [Back]
4. Indiana [Back]
5. Washington, D.C., naturally [Back]
6. A rose [Back]
7. Kentucky [Back]
8. The Great American Pyramid; since Memphis is named for a city in Egypt, they have to have a pyramid. [Back]
9. Six Flags Great America [Back]
10. The American Legion [Back]
11. Amerigo Vespucci, whose name in Latin is Americus Vespucius [Back]
12. The American crocodile (Alligators are also there, but they aren’t rare at all.) [Back]
13. The Art Institute of Chicago [Back]
14. Charles Dickens; the book outraged many Americans and hurt Dickens’s popularity in the U.S. [Back]
15. Irrigation; because its waters turn much of the California desert into fertile farmland, providing food for the whole U.S., the canal deserves its name. [Back]
16. Newport Beach [Back]
The Big Book of American Trivia Page 28