Trivia & Strange but true - Aug. 6, 2009

Fifi Rodriguez | Aug 06, 20090

TRIVIA TEST

1. GEOGRAPHY: What two bodies of water does the Strait of Hormuz link?

2. GEOLOGY: What kind of land form is described as a flat-topped hill with steep sides?

3. LITERATURE: The term Bildungsroman is used to describe what kind of novel?

4. SPORTS: What is the lightest weight classification in boxing?

5. AD SLOGANS: What company introduced the slogan, “We answer to a higher authority”?

6. TELEVISION: What phrase was on the UFO poster in Agent Mulder’s office in “The X-Files”?

7. MOVIES: In which movie was the following line uttered, “Take a chance. Hire the smart, fat girl”?

8. LANGUAGE: “Jarhead” is slang for what kind of military personnel?

9. MUSIC: What kind of musical instrument is a sitar?

10. MEDICINE: What would a patient with “ankylosis” be suffering from?

Answers

1. Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman

2. A butte

3. A novel that deals with the growth of the main character

4. Straw weight (maximum 105 pounds)

5. Hebrew National

6. I Want to Believe

7. “The Devil Wears Prada”

8. A U.S. Marine

9. Indian lute

10. A stiff joint

STRANGE BUT TRUE

By Samantha Weaver

• It was American humorist, writer and television host Sam Levenson who related the following remembrance: “It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.’”

• The Associated Press recently reported on a kind act gone terribly awry. An Israeli woman surprised her mother by having her old mattress hauled away and replacing it with a brand-new one. When the mother returned home and discovered what had happened, she was terribly distraught. It seems the woman had been hiding money in the old mattress for years — about $1 million.

• According to a survey conducted in 2008, 15 percent of American men spend more than an hour in the bathroom every day. Unsurprisingly, the number of women who spend that long in the bathroom is much higher, at 38 percent.

• It’s been reported that whenever he traveled, French philosopher, mathematician, scientist and writer Rene Descartes brought with him a doll named after his daughter, Francine.

• The most common surname in the United States is Smith, followed, in order, by Johnson, Williams and Jones.

• A man in Sandusky, Ohio, evidently had a rat problem in his home — and had a novel way of dealing with it. It seems that whenever he saw — or thought he saw — a rat, he would shoot it. This method didn’t always work the way he planned, however. He once shot himself in the foot. On another occasion, he mistook his wife’s hat for one of the pesky rodents and shot it. Unfortunately, the hat was on her head at the time, and the man was charged with negligent assault.

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Thought for the Day: “Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to to hide them.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld