Wednesday Night Trivia

1. In 1979, what electronics company invented the first portable stereo cassette player, and called it TPS-L2?

2. In 1920, what country became the first to formally legalize abortion?

3. Rock n’ roll is said to have begun with the 1955 release of what group’s smash hit, Rock Around the Clock?

4. In 1930, who became the first American to receive a Nobel Prize for literature, after previously refusing the Pulitzer Prize in 1926?

5. In 1962, what city became the first in the world to have a population of over 10 million?

1. What type of fish, often over 13 feet long and nearly 2000 pounds when harvested at maturity, does beluga caviar come from?

2. What is the world’s most expensive mushroom? Be specific.

3. What is the name for the pancreas or thymus of a calf, lamb, or other young animal soaked, fried, and served as food?

4. What type of pate is made by force feeding ducks or geese until their livers become grossly enlarged?

5. A well-known novelty dish in parts of the American West and the Canadian Prairies, what is the culinary name given to calf or bull testicles that are peeled, coated in flour, salt and pepper and then fried?

1. What American dramatist won Tony Awards for the plays Death of a Salesman and The Crucible?

2. What provocative French-born author and cult figure of the early feminist movement authored House of Incest and Delta of Venus before dying in 1977?

3. What British spy novelist wrote the children’s story Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

4. What bestselling Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist, who wrote a nationally syndicated column for the Miami Herald from 1983 – 2005, has a sewage pump substation named after him in Grand Forks, North Dakota and documented that event in his 2003 book Boogers Are My Beat?

5. Who was the best selling female author of the 1990s?

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1. You are in Africa, in the Serengeti National Park enjoying seeing all the animals: zebra, giraffe, elephants and even the black rhinoceros. Not too far away is the mountain that inspired one of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories. What is this mountain?

2. You are in a city that stands at the entrance to the St. Lawrence Seaway. This is a French-speaking city, but you may spot some English signs. Expo 67 was held here and it is home to McGill University. Where are you?

3. You are beside the highest navigable lake in the world, watching the reed boats sailing on the water. It lies between Bolivia and Peru. What lake is it?

4. You are in San Simeon, California visiting the home of a late newspaper magnate. It is built in Italian, French, Spanish and Moorish styles. Much of the building material and many of the home’s contents were imported from Europe, including one of the two swimming pools. By what name is it commonly known?

5. You are on a triangular-shaped Pacific Island looking at some gigantic statues called megaliths, or Moai. These statues have very large heads. In fact the head is the only part visible in many of them. Where are you?

1. What Oscar-winning director of The Silence of the Lambs also directed 1993’s Philadelphia and the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate?

2. What influential director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Full Metal Jacket said, “If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed”?

3. What director lent his warped vision to such features as Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Edward Scissorhands, and the short film Frankenweenie?

4. What director of 2001’s Bandits also directed such 80’s classics as The Natural, Good Morning, Vietnam and Rain Man?

5. What brilliant brothers are responsible for writing and directing such films as Raising Arizona, Fargo, and O Brother Where Art Thou?

1. Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill. She was born by springing forth, fully grown, from what?

2. Which Roman god is the equivalent to the Greek god Zeus?

3. In Egyptian mythology, what god of the sky, usually depicted as a falcon or falcon-headed man, was the son of Isis and Osiris?

4. Who had “the face that launched a thousand ships”?

5. What mountain did the Greeks believe was built up with crystal mansions wherein the principal gods in the Greek pantheon dwelt?

1. #24 from 1985 – Sara

2. #5 from 1984 – Hard Habit To Break

3. #20 from 2001 – When It’s Over

4. #10 from 1984 – Missing You

5. #19 from 1985 – Broken Wings