Trivia test / Strange but true

TRIVIA TEST

1. MOVIES: Who played the male lead in the movie musical “Grease”?

2. GEOGRAPHY: Luzon is the main island of which nation?

3. HISTORY: When was the Sherman Antitrust Act approved?

4. TELEVISION: Which 1980s comedy show featured a character named “Reverend Jim”?

5. FAMOUS QUOTATIONS: What 20th-century American writer and monk said, “Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul”?

6. MUSIC: What was the nationality of composer Franz Liszt?

7. U.S. STATES: Which state’s nickname is “The North Star State”?

8. THEATER: Which play featured the song “Food, Glorious Food”?

9. MONEY: What is the basic currency of Albania?

10. U.S. PRESIDENTS: Which president once said that the United States “never had to put up a wall to keep our people in”?

Answers

1. John Travolta

2. Philippines

3. 1890

4. “Taxi”

5. Thomas Merton

6. Hungarian

7. Minnesota

8. “Oliver!”

9. The lek

10. John F. Kennedy

STRANGE BUT TRUE

by Samantha Weaver

• It was beloved American actress Katharine Hepburn who made the following sage observation: “If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.”

• Half of the Earth’s surface is covered by the Pacific Ocean.

• Need more evidence that portion sizes in America are getting larger? In the 1964 edition of the iconic “Joy of Cooking,” a recipe for chocolate chip cookies was said to yield 45 servings. When the cookbook’s 1997 edition was published, the same recipe was said to yield 36 servings.

• The original name of the city of Melbourne, Australia, was Batmania.

• In the original calculations made by NASA experts, a landing on the moon was thought to have only a 5 percent chance of success.

• In rural Wisconsin in 1921, two third-grade students in a one-room schoolhouse became sweethearts. At the end of the school year, Lorraine Beatty and Mac McKitrick lost touch with each other. This story would be unremarkable, except for what happened 87 years later. In 2009, their brothers, who had become friends, brought the couple back together again. Shortly thereafter, the couple married and moved in with each other in a retirement home.

• The 12th president of the United States, Zachary Taylor, let his horse graze on the White House lawn.

• The oldest government building in the country actually predates the nation: The Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe, N.M., was built in 1610.

***Thought for the Day: “Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don’t. They just want the fun of eating it all over again.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

(c) 2012 King Features Synd., Inc.