Weekend Trivia ~ Saturday

9 years ago

Good Saturday Morning, Cottagers!! It is clear and cold, with the sun trying to come out - minus 2 celsius, mid-to low-30's to you.

Well, it was a sad day in history, one of those days that everyone remembers where they were, as we lost John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States was assassinated this day in 1963. In memorium, here are some trivia questions about his life and legacy.

1. He was the youngest elected president, but not the youngest sitting president. How did that happen?

2.He had another Presidential first, trivia-wise. Any guesses?

3. He held interesting presidential second, exceeded by William Taft. Hmmmmm .......

4. In 1961, he gave a speech, which exceeded a limit - what limit?

5. And finally, after his death, the Canadian Government named our highest unclimbed mountain after his. Who was the first person to climb it?

Interesting guy and these are fun facts. perhaps you already know them? I'll of course be back with clues.

Nancy.

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Comments (28)

aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
9 years ago
Hmmmm I think I know #5 but for the rest I need clues. Our dip into the deep freeze seems to be over for now and it has warmed up a bit, a lot of rain but thankfully too warm for snow.

Annette
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
Hard to believe how little this anniversary means to so many here-doesn't seem as long ago as it was. Sigh. I was in 6th grade.

Anyway, I know #1 because I am a fan of the youngest, too. I need to think about the others though. I thought I knew just about everything about Kennedy, but obviously not! :) Or maybe I know it, but not in terms of firsts, seconds, etc. Putting on my thinking cap. Being totally lazy today, so plenty of time to think.

Cynthia
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Well, good for you all!! It is the cross-word puzzle. Not as ancient as I thought!! The title for the world's first crossword puzzle is disputed based on whom you ask. The first puzzle that was called a "cross word puzzle" was written in 1862 by Our Young Folks in the United States. The first "cross word" was "dream". Crossword puzzles are said to be the most popular and widespread word game in the world, yet have a short history. The first crosswords appeared in England during the 19th century. They were of an elementary kind, apparently derived from the word square, a group of words arranged so the letters read alike vertically and horizontally, and printed in children's puzzle books and various periodicals. Although Maleska is usually credited with the first crossword phrase in The New York Times, an 1862 puzzle in the Lady's Book had phrases that are considered modern such as the expression "I did it". Crossword-like puzzles, for example Double Diamond Puzzles, appeared in the magazine St. Nicholas, published since 1873. Another crossword puzzle appeared on September 14, 1890, in the Italian magazine Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenica. It was designed by Giuseppe Airoldi and titled "Per passare il tempo" ("To pass the time"). Airoldi's puzzle was a four-by-four grid with no shaded squares; it included horizontal and vertical clues. On December 21, 1913, Arthur Wynne, a journalist from Liverpool, England, published a "word-cross" puzzle in the New York World that embodied most of the features of the genre as we know it. This puzzle is frequently cited as the first crossword puzzle, and Wynne as the inventor. Later, the name of the puzzle was changed to "crossword". In 1925, the New York Public Library reported that "The latest craze to strike libraries is the crossword puzzle," and complained that when "the puzzle 'fans' swarm to the dictionaries and encyclopedias so as to drive away readers and students who need these books in their daily work, can there be any doubt of the Library's duty to protect its legitimate readers?" The first book of crossword puzzles appeared in 1924, published by Simon and Schuster. "This odd-looking book with a pencil attached to it" was an instant hit and crossword puzzles became the craze of 1924. So, for Annette, TM, Bobbie, Cynthia and Garden Gal: Thanks to all for playing, see you all next week!! Nancy.
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Well, I believe you have all figured it out - it was to allow the knight/warrior to easily mount his steed. I got the info from a web site called The Straight Dope, which is very cleverly written. I will copy right from them, as I like the way it is written. The fact is that most people don't mount a horse from the left side. Most people call a cab. Those having some acquaintance with horsemanship, however, know that the left side is the horse's "near" side while the right side is the "off" side. This is often explained in terms of swords, but we're then obliged to acknowledge obvious fact #2: While a fair number of people still ride horses, you're living in one tough neighborhood if you need to do so while wearing a sword. About those swords. I'm afraid you've gotten the explanation a little scrambled. As you've observed, swords are traditionally worn on the left, since that makes it easier for a right-handed swordsman to pull the sword from its scabbard. If you're wearing a sword on the left, you'll want to mount your horse on its left, since otherwise the sword will get in the way. The practice goes way back before the medieval heyday of knights. In fact, it most likely originated when sword-toting warriors first began riding horses into battle. Let's start with a fundamental fact, essential to understanding equines: The horse isn't a predator--it's prey. Even after millennia of domestication, the horse is physically and mentally hardwired to detect and elude attackers. Its eyes are set on the sides of its head, giving it almost 360 degrees of vision. It sees two monocular fields at once, one through each eye. The binocular vision we human predators take for granted, the horse has in only a small area directly ahead of it. So what it "knows" on one side, it doesn't "know" on the other, until it's been shown. The horse's instincts dispose it to be suspicious of anything new in its environment. The thing behind that rock that wasn't there yesterday could be a lion! What does this have to do with mounting from the left? It means that a horse who's been taught to accept being mounted only from one side may be perfectly docile when the rider clambers aboard on that side, yet spook and refuse to stand still if approached from the unfamiliar direction. That's why authorities on horse training (including our old friend Xenophon) recommend teaching horses to be mounted from the off side, so that they'll stand still for it if circumstances demand that the rider get on from that side But why prefer the left side when swords are no longer a problem? Partly it's the inertia of tradition--horses and humans are both creatures of habit. But it's also common sense to have a standard approach. If you didn't know which side a particular horse had learned to be mounted from, you could get a nasty surprise if you tried to get on from the "wrong" side. There you have it - tradition again, with a little common sense thrown in. I believe everyone got, though perhaps not the monocular bit - lol, I'll let that pass!! So, for everyone: Thanks for playing, and see you all next week! Nancy.
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Well, yes, I was looking for the Bermuda Triangle, and you all got there - no one lost, I hope? Welcome jackier123 - nice to 'see' you here!! On December 5th, at 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned. Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel. A PBY Catalina left after 18:00 to search for Flight 19 and guide them back if they could be located. After dark, two PBM Mariner seaplanes originally scheduled for their own training flights were diverted to perform square pattern searches in the area west of 29°N 79°W. PBM-5 BuNo 59225 took off at 19:27 from Banana River Naval Air Station (now Patrick Air Force Base), called in a routine radio message at 19:30 and was never heard from again. At 21.15, the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported it had observed flames from an apparent explosion leaping 100 ft (30 m) high and burning for 10 minutes, at position 28.59°N 80.25°W. Captain Shonna Stanley reported unsuccessfully searching for survivors through a pool of oil. The escort carrier USS Solomons also reported losing radar contact with an aircraft at the same position and time. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the area on his first voyage to the New World, he reported that a great flame of fire (probably a meteor) crashed into the sea one night and that a strange light appeared in the distance a few weeks later. He also wrote about erratic compass readings, perhaps because at that time a sliver of the Bermuda Triangle was one of the few places on Earth where true north and magnetic north lined up. After gaining widespread fame as the first person to sail solo around the globe, Joshua Slocum disappeared on a 1909 voyage from Martha’s Vineyard to South America. Though it’s unclear exactly what happened, many sources later attributed his death to the Bermuda Triangle. By the time author Vincent Gaddis coined the phrase “Bermuda Triangle” in a 1964 magazine article, additional mysterious accidents had occurred in the area, including three passenger planes that went down despite having just sent “all’s well” messages. Charles Berlitz, whose grandfather founded the Berlitz language schools, stoked the legend even further in 1974 with a sensational bestseller about the legend. Since then, scores of fellow paranormal writers have blamed the triangle’s supposed lethalness on everything from aliens, Atlantis and sea monsters to time warps and reverse gravity fields, whereas more scientifically minded theorists have pointed to magnetic anomalies, waterspouts or huge eruptions of methane gas from the ocean floor. In all probability, however, there is no single theory that solves the mystery. As one skeptic put it, trying to find a common cause for every Bermuda Triangle disappearance is no more logical than trying to find a common cause for every automobile accident in Arizona. And those navy PBM's? Still missing!! In 1986, the wreckage of an Avenger was found off the Florida coast during the search for the wreckage of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Aviation archaeologist Jon Myhre raised this wreck from the ocean floor in 1990. He mistakenly believed it was one of the missing planes. In 1991, a treasure-hunting expedition led by Graham Hawkes announced that the wreckage of five Avengers had been discovered off the coast of Florida, but that tail numbers revealed they were not Flight 19. In 2004 a BBC documentary showed Hawkes returning with a new submersible 12 years later and identifying one of the planes by its bureau number (a clearly readable 23990) as a flight lost at sea on 9 October 1943, over two years before Flight 19 (its crew all survived), but he was unable to definitively identify the other planes; the documentary concluded that "Despite the odds, they are just a random collection of accidents that came to rest in the same place 12 miles from home." Records showed training accidents between 1942 and 1945 accounted for the loss of 95 aviation personnel from NAS Fort Lauderdale In 1992, another expedition located scattered debris on the ocean floor, but nothing could be identified. In the last decade, searchers have been expanding their area to include farther east, into the Atlantic Ocean, but the remains of Flight 19 have still never been confirmed found. And one weird, supernatural footnote: Those PBM's should have had 14 men on board, not 13 (hmmmm). The airman in question, Marine Corporal Allan Kosnar, had been given special permission not to fly that day because he had had a strong premonition of danger. So, for everyone: Thanks for playing, and see you all next week!! Nancy.
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And there you have it, Cynthia!! Though the book has been characterized in media reports as a sequel to Lee's best-selling novel, Go Set a Watchman was written in the mid-1950s, before she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960. It was set aside when her editor suggested that she write another novel from the young Scout Finch's perspective. The manuscript was then lost for many years, until being rediscovered by her lawyer in the fall of 2014. It will be published as originally written, with no revisions. The phrase is from Isaiah 21: 6, "For thus the Lord said to me: “Go, set a watchman; let him announce what he sees." It is referring to the fall of Babylon. Some publications have called the timing of the book "suspicious", citing Lee's declining health, statements she had made over several decades that she would not write or release another novel, and the death of her sister (and caretaker) just two months before the announcement. NPR reported on the news of her new book release, with circumstances "raising questions about whether she is being taken advantage of in her old age." Some publications have even called for fans to boycott the work. Mainstream news sources, including NPR, BBC News, and Jezebel, have reported that the conditions surrounding the release of the book are unclear and posit that Lee may not have had full control of the decision. However, historian and Lee's longtime friend, Wayne Flynt told the Associated Press that the "narrative of senility, exploitation of this helpless little old lady is just hogwash. It's just complete bunk". Flynt said he found Lee capable of giving consent, and believes no one will ever know for certain the terms of said consent. That having been said, Lee is quite deaf and suffers profound vision loss from macular degeneration. Truman Capote, then Persons, lived next door with his aunts while his mother was in New York. Like Dill, Capote had an impressive imagination and a gift for fascinating stories. Both Lee and Capote were atypical children: both loved to read. Lee was a scrappy tomboy who was quick to fight, but Capote was ridiculed for his advanced vocabulary and lisp. She and Capote made up and acted out stories they wrote on an old Underwood typewriter Lee's father gave them. They became good friends when both felt alienated from their peers; Capote called the two of them "apart people". In 1960, Capote and Lee traveled to Kansas together to investigate the multiple murders that were the basis for Capote's nonfiction novel In Cold Blood. Well, interesting subject, but a weak question. I shall have to do better next week!! For Everyone (I believe?): Thanks for playing. See you all next week. Nancy.
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thinman
9 years ago
I know an answer to 2, but I don't know if it is THE answer. Other than that, I may need a wee hint or two.

TM
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
Well, this might be more minutia than trivia, but fun nevertheless!!

#1 had to do with another death. #2 is happenstance of birth. #3 reminds me of a funny thing my Dad used to say about being in a hurry. Say what you will about Kennedy and his short life, he sure squeezed a lot into it.

Nancy.
mnwsgal
9 years ago
I think I know 1 and 4. Will wait for clues on others.
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
Bobby Kennedy was a hero of mine - he came into his own after the death of his brother, and I was becoming politically aware at that time. John was only 4 years younger than my own father, interestly, but always seemed so youthful. It belied the damage done to his back during the war. Something else I read inferred that Canada was to blame in part for his death. In 1961, Kennedy arrived in Ottawa for a state visit, his first foreign trip following his inauguration. As is the custom, after addressing Parliament, he went to Rideau Hall, the Queen's residence in Canada, for a tree planting ceremony. The youthful President seized the shovel to put a some earth around the oak sapling. In doing so, he re-injured an old back injury, and this required him to wear a back brace again. The theory is that this brace cause him to be unable to duck down and dodge the bullet that hit Texas Governor Connelly. Pure speculation, but a sad idea.
{{gwi:615762}}Kennedy's Oak Tree.
The info about the tree is just a ramble on my part, not a clue. I need to not get a swelled head about all this trivia!!

Nancy.
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
I have a guess for #5, too. At least it is the name that always pops into my mind when I think of Jack Kennedy. To me, the two are inseparable and I can picture him being the one to summit the peak first.

Is #2 connected to his service?

Cynthia
thinman
9 years ago
I think number 2 is often connected to a type of service and the word for that service also describes a physical property of all matter. Of course, if I am all wrong, this is a useless clue. :-)

TM
mnwsgal
9 years ago
OK, got #5.
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
#2 is merely an accident of birth. And you can hang you hat on that!!

Nancy.
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
I love that tree! I never heard that story-how sad. I did know that the back brace may have been partly to blame for his death. So very very sad. He was 11 months older than my dad.

For #2, I was thinking maybe a medal-first President to have one. Oooh...wait! That just gave it to me I think. Not a medal, but an award? Has to be that. I think I will go curl up with a good book. :)

Cynthia
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
No awards or medals in the answers. He really had very little to do with placing here - #2 is more to do with his parents.

Nancy.
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
Oh well, I was thinking he was the only one to get a Purple Heart, but maybe there were others. I then decided that it was probably that he was the only US president to receive a Pulitzer Prize (for Profiles in Courage). Back to thinking.

Cynthia
aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
9 years ago
I have a thought for #2 but probably wrong.

Annette
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
Sometimes your instincts are the best, Annette.

Nancy.
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
okay, I figured out #2 from your clues, I think. So, I have answers for 1,2, and 5.

Cynthia
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
Well, #4 might fit into a Republican kinda view of Democrats - I'm not that savvy on American politics. Actually #3 might too, come to think of it, a fast talker and a swelled head. Oh my!!

Nancy.
thinman
9 years ago
I was thinking that number 2 had to do with his religion.

TM
mnwsgal
9 years ago
If TM is right, I know #2. Think I have them all except #3.
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
Uh oh. Not what I was thinking for #2. Hmmm.

Cynthia
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
Okay, here are the three I think I know since clues are not forthcoming and I am going to bed-ha.

1. TR was the youngest sitting President after McKinley was assassinated.

2. I am thinking Nancy is looking for 1st president born in the 20th century.

3. ????

4. ????

5. Bobby-1968 was a dreadful year for me

Cynthia
aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
9 years ago
#2 first catholic president?
#5 Yes Bobby

Annette
mnwsgal
9 years ago
1. Teddy Roosevelt, remembered reading about this after one of our previous trivia questions.

2. First, and so far only, Catholic president

3.

4. Shortest

5. Bobby Kennedy
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
Cynthia is correct for #2 - didn't want to go for the lowing hanging fruit on religion, but both are correct.

Nancy.
midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
Original Author
9 years ago
OK, so here are the answers - sorry bout that!!

1. JFK was the youngest elected president at the time - Theodore Roosevelt was younger when he assumed office, after the assassination of McKinley.

2. He was the first person born in the 20th-century to serve as President. or he was the first Catholic president.

3. KennedyÃ¢ÂÂs hat size was seven and five-eighths, the largest of any President other than William Taft (seven and three-quarters).

4. In a speech made in 1961, Kennedy was recorded as speaking at 327 words per minute, the fastest rate of public speaking in history.

5. After his death, the Canadian Government named Mount Kennedy after him. It was not only CanadaÃ¢ÂÂs but North America's highest unclimbed mountain. Mount Kennedy is a peak in the Saint Elias Mountains within Kluane National Park, in Yukon, Canada. Its 4250-m to 4300-m (14000-foot) summit lies within 10 km of the Alaska Panhandle. His brother Robert Kennedy with a party of experienced mountaineers sponsored by the National Geographic Society and led by Jim Whittaker conquered it in 1965. Upon reaching the peak of the summit, Kennedy left some of his brother's PT-boat tie clips, a copy of his brother's Inaugural Presidential Address, and a John F. Kennedy medallion.

So there you go - some trivial trivia about what to me is a leading figure in the 20th century.

For everyone:

{{gwi:599464}}

Thanks to all for playing - see you all next week!!

Nancy.
mnwsgal
9 years ago
Thanks, for the smiling stars, Nancy. Definitely didn't know Kennedy's hat size or record speaking speed. Probably read about both of them at one time but they were not placed in my knowledge bank.
thinman
9 years ago
Hey, if the fruit isn't low hanging, I don't get any. :-)

Thanks for the fun questions that I never would have guessed.

TM
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
9 years ago
Thanks for the stars, Nancy. Never would have gotten the hat size or speaking rate. The hat size is surprising!

Cynthia

Weekend Trivia ~ Saturday

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