Sunday, February 4, 2007

False Trivia - Random Trivia Answers

  • A1) Nothing. The answer given on many trivia lists is the Great Wall of China, but despite its great length, its narrow 20-foot width renders it invisible from the moon.
  • A2) Cream. The given answer is usually pink. Perhaps if it were mixed with some blood. In addition, technically it's nak's milk, as yak is to bull as nak is to cow.
  • A3) None. He disliked raw carrots, but eating them caused him no harm. He needed to spit out the carrots mainly because swallowing them took too long.
  • A4) None. Trivia lists claim that Susan Lucci is Diller's daughter, perhaps because they resemble each other a little bit. Robin Strasser isn't Diller's daughter either.
  • A5) None. Peter Pan popularized the name in 1904, but it definitely existed earlier.
  • A6) Nobody. Scissors have been around since 1500 B.C. in ancient Egypt, and even the current cross-blade design dates back to A.D. 100 in Rome. Leonardo da Vinci may have designed some improvement for the cutting devices.
  • A7) None. The given answer is sometimes 8, sometimes another number. The beauty of this question is only that a journalist intentionally spread the falsehood, successfully.
  • A8) None. Betty Rubble had been missing since the children's vitamins debuted in 1968, but a groundswell of support, aided by Rosie O'Donnell, who played her in the 1994 movie The Flintstones, led Bayer to conduct a poll and replace the Flintmobile with Betty the following year.
  • A9) Go. Actually, there are several commands that are complete sentences. Perhaps the original intention was the shortest declarative sentence, such as "I am" (the given answer), but "I do" and "I go" are just as short.
  • A10) 26. The intended answer of 50 is impossible because Hawaii and Alaska weren't states yet when the memorial was constructed. Many of the states' names are hidden from view anyway.
  • A11) Nobody. But Isaac Asimov had one in nine of the ten categories, missing only Philosophy and Psychology.
  • A12) None. Texas has no special privileges just because it is the land of six flags, having been part of Spain, France, Mexico, an independent republic, the Confederacy, and the United States of America.

In addition, a duck's quack does echo; the plane that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper was not called American Pie; a regulation golf ball can have a wide range of dimples on it, not just 336; Niagara Falls did not freeze over in 1932, women don't blink twice as often as men; turkeys won't drown by looking up at the rain, and although Mark Twain was the first author to write a novel on a typewriter, the story was Life on the Mississippi, not Tom Sawyer.

To see more fast facts confirmed or debunked, try this Google Answers thread, Jeff Lewis's factoids, or the Media Desk's explanations (note that they all started with the same basic list).

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