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?