Double Trouble - Random Trivia Answers

• A1) B.B. King. Although Riley B. King (the B.B. stands not for his first and middle names but "Beale Street Blues Boy") has gone through several guitars since then, he continues to name them Lucille to remind himself that it wasn't worth risking his life to save his instrument.
• A2) D.B. Cooper. The thief actually boarded as Dan Cooper, and the name D.B. was simply an error that occurred during reporting. Some of the money was discovered in 1980, but Cooper was never found.
• A3) T.E. Lawrence. Thomas Edward Lawrence had swerved to avoid two young bicyclists and was tossed over his handlebars, passing away less than a week later at age 46.
• A4) W.C. Fields. William Claude Dukenfield also played on his hatred of women, children, and animals in his act, but he did marry and have two sons (one with a girlfriend after his wife's death).
• A5) E.F. Hutton. Edward Francis Hutton also served as chairman of General Foods Corporation. The former E.F. Hutton company is now split between Citigroup and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.
• A6) P.T. Barnum. Phineas Taylor Barnum is famous for claiming, "There's a sucker born every minute", but the true originator was probably David Hannum, a banker who was referring to Barnum's copying the Cardiff Giant and passing it off as the real thing (ironic, since the original was a hoax as well).
• A7) I.M. Pei. Ieoh Ming Pei also worked on dozens of other buildings, including Boston's John Hancock Tower (although he defers credit to Henry Cobb) and Manhattan's Martha Stewart Center for Living at Mount Sinai Hospital.
• A8) M.C. Escher. Maurits Cornelis Escher mused, "It is, for example, great fun deliberately to confuse two and three dimensions, the plane and space, or to poke fun at gravity".
• A9) W.C. Handy. William Christopher Handy (not B.B. King again, of course) learned to play guitar and secretly joined a band against the wishes of his pastor father in Alabama. Handy has a city park named after him on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee.
• A10) B.F. Skinner. Writer Jon Vitti was President of the Harvard Lampoon, and used the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, as inspiration for Principal W. Seymour Skinner.
• A11) D.W. Griffith. Director David [Llewelyn] Wark Griffith is famous for his camera work but almost equally infamous for denigrating blacks and supporting the Ku Klux Klan.
• A12) L.L. Bean. Leon Leonwood Bean obtained a list of nonresident Maine hunting license holders and mailed sales circulars to all of them.

Double Trouble - Random Trivia Questions

As a follow-up to last week's mystery quiz, can you name the following people who are best known by two initials? Take a bonus point for each initial that you can expand correctly.

Double Trouble Questions

• Q1) What musician named his guitar Lucille in 1949 after rescuing it from a kerosene fire started by two men fighting over a woman named Lucille?
• Q2) What criminal hijacked a Boeing 727 on the day before Thanksgiving in 1971 and parachuted out somewhere over southwest Washington with $200,000 in ransom money that he was given after landing once?
• Q3) What illegitimate son of Thomas Chapman and Sarah Junner survived the Battles of Aqaba and Maysaloun and helped capture Damascus in 1918 but was killed in a motorcycle accident shortly after leaving the service?
• Q4) What comedian remarked, "A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her", "I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food", and "I drink therefore I am"?
• Q5) With his brother Franklyn in San Francisco in 1904, what Wall Street trader founded a brokerage firm that would eventually be acquired by Shearson Lehman Brothers 84 years later for a billion dollars?
• Q6) What showman created the first public aquarium in the U.S. as part of his American Museum three years after the London Zoo opened?
• Q7) What architect's public projects began with East Garden City, New York's Roosevelt Field Mall in 1951 and include Boston's Christian Science Center, JFK Airport's Sundrome, New York City's Javits Convention Center, Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Charlotte's NASCAR Hall of Fame?
• Q8) What artist's reality-bending works include Tower of Babel, Metamorphosis I, Reptiles, Ascending and Descending, and Snakes?
• Q9) What blues musician's songs included "Ole Miss Rag", "Yellow Dog Blues", and "Beale Street Blues"?
• Q10) What Harvard psychology professor's name was given to a character on the Simpsons television show?
• Q11) What director helped usher in the era of feature films with "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915 and "Intolerance" in 1916?
• Q12) Who founded a mail order company in 1912, originally selling waterproof boots to hunters?

Double Duty - Random Trivia Answers

• A1) ARod (Alex Rodriguez and Andy Roddick). The company where I worked for many years time used a similar naming convention for our email addresses long before it became trendy, which is partly why one of my web sites is rjen.com.
• A2) Apple (Apple Corps, the owner of Apple Records, and Apple Computer, now known as Apple Inc.). Despite promising never to enter the music business, the computer company created the iTunes Music Store (now the iTunes Store) and the Garage Band music creation application.
• A3) Bazooka. Bob Burns's unusual 1930s musical instrument sporting two gas pipes and a funnel lent its name to both the gun and the gum.
• A4) Brandy. Brandy Norwood's first album was as surprisingly successful as Manilow's "Mandy", a remake of "Brandy" from only three years earlier.
• A5) Crossfire. The CNN current events debate pitted the liberal left against the conservative right. The action game was revamped and still being sold in the mid 1990s.
• A6) Egghead. Price's "world's smartest criminal" deduced Batman's secret identity but had his memory purged by Robin. The Egghead.com domain still exists but simply redirects to Amazon.com's software department silently.
• A7) Jaguar. The entire Mac OS X line has been named for big cats: Cheetah (10.0), Puma (10.1), Panther (10.3), Tiger (10.4), and Leopard (10.5). The Ford Motor Company acquired Jaguar Cars Ltd. in January 1990 but is currently considering spinning it back out.
• A8) Laser. Jim Starr competed as a gladiator from 1990 to 1996. The Chrysler and Plymouth Lasers were both sold in the U.S., while the Ford Laser was primarily in Australasia.
• A9) Madeleine. 7- or 8-year-old Madeleine Fogg appeared in many sequels during the 1940s and 1950s. The French, shell-shaped, lemon and butter cake is similar to a pound cake.
• A10) Mirage. The pop album was embroiled in a payola controversy, causing it to bounce up and down the charts as a group of independent promoters controlled its radio airplay. The casino, which cost a then-record $630 million to build, was the first to be financed through the sale of junk bonds.
• A11) Mosaic. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina developed the early browser at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, initially running under X-Windows but later on the Amiga, Macintosh, and PC. "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" was kept out of the #1 spot on the Hot 100 by the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian".
• A12) Odyssey. Other abandoned Microsoft OS versions include Nashville ("Windows 96") and Cairo (partially cannibalized for Windows 95 and other products). The original working Magnavox Odyssey prototype from 1968, dubbed the "Brown Box", now lives at the Smithsonian's National Institute of American History.

Double Duty - Random Trivia Questions

Since this is the second random quiz of the second month of the year, I thought I'd double your trivia pleasure by giving you two chances at each answer this week. Each of the dozen questions gives you two clues to the same answer. Enjoy, enjoy!

Double Duty Questions

• Q1) What four-letter nickname is shared by the Major League Baseball player who set a record with a 252-million dollar contract on December 11, 2000 and a tennis player who set a record with a 155-mile-per-hour serve on September 24, 2004?
• Q2) In 1978, 1989, and 2003 what company sued another company with a similar name for trademark infringement, the last case finally being settled on February 5, 2007?
• Q3) What World War II rocket launcher shares its name with a chewing gum named for a musical instrument?
• Q4) What quadruple-platinum self-titled debut album by a 15-year-old in 1994 shares its name with a fast Scott English song that Barry Manilow slowed down in 1974 and took to the top of the Hot 100?
• Q5) What 1982 to 2005 CNN current events show shares its name with a hockey-like 1971 Milton Bradley game using guns to fire ball bearings at and redirect the puck?
• Q6) What Batman television series villain, played by Vincent Price, shares his name with a computer software store that opened in 1984, converted to online-only in 1998, and sold its remains to Amazon in 2001?
• Q7) What codename for the Mac OS X 10.2 operating system is also a British auto maker that began as the Swallow Sidecar Company in 1922?
• Q8) Who is the only American Gladiator to appear in all seven seasons of the original show and shares a name with cars from Chrysler (based on the Dodge Daytona), Ford (based on the Mazda 323), and Plymouth (based on the Misubishi Eclipse)?
• Q9) What title character of Ludwig Bemelmans's famous 1939 children's book shares a name with the French cake that triggers memories in Remembrance of Things Past?
• Q10) What 1982 Fleetwood Mac album, featuring "Hold Me", "Gypsy", "Love in Store", and "Oh Diane", shares its name with the 3,000-room Las Vegas hotel and casino opened by developer Steve Wynn on November 22, 1989?
• Q11) What NCSA web browser was the first to be popularly used in 1993 and shares its name with Wang Chung's 1986 album featuring "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" and "Let's Go"?
• Q12) What codename of the business version of Windows Neptune, a never-released successor to Windows 2000, shares its name with the first video game console released in 1972?