Trivia MontageTango Trivia Quiz

Answer: Moby

As Moby himself explains:
I'm related to Herman Melville, who wrote Moby Dick. And my parents before I was born said, OK, if he's a boy, he'll be Richard Melville Hall," explained Moby. "So I was born, 15-minutes-old, lying in my mother's arms. And my mother looks down and says, 'You know, Richard Melville Hall is a very adult name for such a tiny little baby.' So my father had a sense of humor, apparently, said, 'OK, we'll call him Moby."
(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/03/sunday/main535241.shtml)

Answer: Portugal

Other interesting monetary units include the Kwanza (Angola), Kroon (Estonia), Zloty (Poland) and the Metical (Mozambique).

Answer: Pangram

A Pangram is a sentence comprising all 26 letters of the alphabet. Some examples include the obscurely worded, but shortest possible 26-letter compilations such as or "Veldt jynx grimps waqf zho buck" (translated as "a wryneck woodpecker from the grasslands of Africa climbs up the side of a male bovid which is grazing on sacred Muslim-owned land") and "Qursh gowf veldt jynx zimb pack" (describing a scene where some Arabian coins are striking a group of flies gathered on that woodpecker) to the slightly longer (but definetely more amusing) "Wavy Jake's fat zebra had Mexican pig liquor" (Source: http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words9.html)

Answer: South America

Formerly known as Dutch Guiana, Suriname is home to the largest protected tropical forest in the world. Although both it's name and flag design suggest it to be located in Africa, Suriname is bordered by Brazil to the South, Guyana and French Guiana to the West and East respectively and by the Atlantic Ocean to the North.

Answer: First assisted suicide by "Dr. Death", Jack Kevorkian

Janet Adkins decided to commit suicide after learning she had contracted Alzheimer's disease. Kevorkian agreed to assist without ever having spoken to her, only her husband. In all Kevorkian, or his machines had a role in the deaths of 38 patients. His first machine, used by Janet Adkins, released lethal drugs into her body at the press of a button, however later machines used inhalation of Carbon Monoxide through a gas mask (a machine sometimes called "The Mercitron" by Kevorkian). Murder charges were dropped against Kevorkian after the Adkins case as the state where she died, Michigan, had no laws against assisted suicide.

Answer: Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, England in 1890 and has become the best selling novelist in history, with over 2 billion (yes, that's right!) copies of her books sold in over 100 languages, outsold (in English literature) only by the Bible and William Shakespeare.

She wrote over 80 novels and short story collections (some under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott) between 1920 and 1978, in addition to 19 plays including "Alibi" and "The Mousetrap". The play's run stopped in March 2020 due to the COVID pandemic.

Answer: It receives little or no rain each year

Although the Atacama Desert in Chile is located close to the largest ocean in the world (the Pacific), some regions of the desert have not received rain for over 400 years. The town of Calama has an average precipitation of around 5mm a year. The Atacama is a very cold desert, with average temperatures ranging from 0°C to 25°C, due largely to its high elevation above sea level.

(http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa102698.htm)

Answer: Because it had opposite characteristics to another variety, Aaadonta

The genuses aaadonta and zyzzyxdonta were both discovered by a man named Solem (not Zyzzyxis, who as far as I am aware does not exist!), who imprinted his sense of humour on the zoological community in 1976. Alhtough a Zzyxx Rd. does intersect Interstate 15 in California, the name is purely coincidental. Finally, although I am no zoologist, I have never yet heard of a snail to make any sort of noise, no matter how obscure!

Answer: True

A piece of completely irrelevant and useless trivia that no-one is ever likely to use, but hey, that's why we're here!

Answer: Lego

Originally, the Danish words "Leg" and "Godt" were joined to make "LEGO" (literally meaning "good game"), an original, catchy name. By a remarkable coincidence, the term "Lego" translated from Latin as "I put together" or "I assemble"! Amazing!

Answer: A Russian folk dance

The "kazatsky" ( alt. spellings "kazatski" or "kazatska") is the correct name of the vigorous Russian folk dance often known as a "Cossack dance". It is characterized by a step in which, from a squatting position, each leg is alternately kicked out.

Answer: Reginald Foster

Almost half of Reginald Fosters' 601 career Test runs (8 matches, 14 innings) were made in his first ever innings. Don Bradman was omitted from the team after his first test and replaced by Otto Nothling, the only time Bradman was dropped from the Test team in his career. Sri Lankan Brendan Kuruppu is the only other player to score over 200 in his Test debut (201*), although most Australians would best remember him from Billy Birminghams' satirical "The Twelfth Man" comedy album, where his name was corrupted to "Brendan Kangaroopoo"!

Answer: Johansson , Costa, Hewitt, Sampras

The year 2002 saw some major upsets in the Grand Slam events. The ball started rolling when little known Swede Thomas Johansson upset Marat Safin to win the Australian Open title. When Albert Costa triumphed in the French Open against the more highly fancied Juan-Carlos Ferrero, two mid-teen ranked players were proud owners of Grand Slam titles.

Some normality was restored when Australian world number one and top seed Lleyton Hewitt won the Wimbledon title, defeating Argentine David Nalbandian (who apparently had never PLAYED in a grasscourt tournament before, let alone WON one!), although that could have been a huge upset if Nalbandian had won.

The final Grand Slam event of the year (the US Open) saw a flashback to the past when Pete Sampras (the twelfth seed, who many believed to be past his prime) shocked Andre Agassi in the final, to win his fourteenth career Grand Slam singles title, a record in the open era.

Answer: Spanish

The classic Milton Bradley board game "Scrabble" does not allow the use of proper nouns (such as names, places or other words normally capitalised in text). However, 'afghan' is defined as "a woolen blanket or shawl", 'dutch' is defined as "with each person paying for himself", and 'polish' is defined as "to make smooth and lustrous by rubbing".

However "Spanish" has no other definition other than "to be from Spain", making it a proper noun, and therefore not allowed.

Answer: Margaret Thatcher

"Since 1927, TIME Magazine has chosen a man, woman, or idea that "for better or worse, has most influenced events in the preceding year."

(http://history1900s.about.com/library/weekly/aa050400a.htm)

"John F. Kennedy" was Man of the Year for 1961, less than two years before his tragic assassination robbed the world of a truly great leader. "Twenty-Five and Under" in 1966 represented the future generation of Americans, and "The Computer" in 1982, was the first object to be chosen for the award. Contrary to widespread and popular belief, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has never been selected as Man of the Year, although several women (such as Wallis Simpson [1936], Queen Elizabeth II [1952], "American women" [1975] and Corazon Aquino [1986]) have been chosen.