Archive for the ‘trivia’ Tag
I’m a big fan of movies and I find nothing more enjoyable than throwing in a DVD, popping some popcorn, and relaxing with a good film. My preferences are varied but what I really enjoy most are the movies normally shown on TCM. I’ve spent hundreds of hours watching those films and without hesitation would do it again.
One thing above all that interests me are the anomalies made during filming that are missed by the editors and end up in the final version. I’m sure some of them are done purposely but many are just screw-ups that were missed. I stumbled on this information concerning a few movie foul-ups that aren’t all that well known (at least not to me). The next time you happen to be watching any of these films with a friend of family member you can dazzle them with your superior knowledge of movie trivia. Enjoy.
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In 1982 during the filming of Raiders of the Lost Ark a great blooper can be found in the scene where German soldiers and Gestapo agents were lifting the Ark. If you look closely as the camera pans along the hieroglyphics on the wall you’ll see paintings of C3PO and R2D2, the robots from the Star Wars classic (another George Lucas film).
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This tidbit is from the movie Fortune Cookie made in 1966. The blooper scene shows Walter Matthau leaving one room and entering another and he appears to have lost a great deal of weight in the process. Matthau suffered a heart attack while this scene was being filmed; only half of the scene was completed before he entered the hospital. He returned five months later to finish the job almost 40 pounds lighter than he was in the first part of the filming.
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In 1971 during the filming of Diamonds are Forever, James Bond tips his Ford Mustang up on two wheels and drives through a narrow alley to escape from the bad guys. Unfortunately in the final version the Mustang enters the alley on its two right wheels and leaves the alley on its two left wheels.
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind filmed in 1977 also had a blooper worth mentioning. Towards the end of the movie Richard Dreyfus and Terry Garner smashed through several roadblocks as they neared the Devil’s Tower. The license plate on their station wagon kept changing.
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Now let’s go back to 1954 to the filming of Rear Window. The star Jimmy Stewart, in a cast and sitting in a wheelchair, is arguing with Grace Kelly. His cast magically switches from his left leg to his right during the scene.
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1967 during the filming of Camelot, King Richard (Richard Harris) praises his medieval kingdom while speaking to some of his subjects. Someone dropped the ball because in that scene Harris is wearing a Band-Aid on his neck.
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And last but not least one small blooper from one of my all-time favorite movies, Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953). In the movie they actually go to Venus.
I hope to discover more of these little miscues in other films and if I do I’ll be sure to pass them along.
I think it’s a good day for another trivia quiz with questions about something of which I’m not all that familiar. As I’ve said many times before I’m not a huge sports fan but I do know that many of the readers of this blog are. With that in mind here are 10 fairly difficult sports trivia questions which should challenge even the best sports trivia fanatics.
As always I’ll list the correct answers tomorrow and you can see just how good you really are. I scored a big fat zero on this one. I hope you sports people can at least do better than that. Have fun.
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1. What souvenir did New York Giant linebacker Lawrence Taylor request from a referee after he played his last game in January 1994?
2. What was the first sport in which women were invited to compete at the Olympics?
3. What Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher hit a home run in his first major league at-bat and never hit another?
4. Who was the first athlete to hit a major league home run and make a professional football touchdown in the same week?
5. What basketball player racked up the greatest number of personal fouls during his professional career?
6. Who was the first professional football player to run for more than 2000 yards in a season?
7. How many baseball gloves can be made from one cow?
8. Why did the Cincinnati Reds baseball team send an autographed second-base bag to cowboy movie star Roy Rogers?
9. Who was scheduled to be the next batter when Bobby Thomson hit his famous home run in the 1951 National League playoffs, winning the pennant for the New York Giants?
10. What is the meaning of basketball great Shaquille Rashaun O’Neal’s given Islamic name?
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As you can see I wasn’t kidding, they are tough questions. Check back tomorrow.
I guess it’s time for another trivia challenge for all of you trivia maniacs out there. Today’s 10 questions should be categorized as miscellaneous. They are a mixed bag of facts that might just interest you a little. I took this quiz myself as I put it together but I’m not admitting how badly I did. Let’s just say I scored higher than one and less than four. I’m so ashamed.
As always the correct answers will be posted tomorrow. If you score anything higher than a four your doing really well and should be proud. Good luck!
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1. What was the original name of the Girl Scouts?
2. In 1937, sewing machine heiress Daisy singer Alexander put her will in a model and tossed it into the Thames River near London. Where and when did it wash up?
3. What day is the middle day of the year in a non-leap year?
4. For what magazine did Hugh Hefner serve as circulation manager while he was raising money to launch Playboy?
5. What did Lizzie Borden, Napoleon, and Titian have in common?
6. By what name was Nobel Peace Prize winner Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu better known?
7. What do the letters stand for in the acronym CARE, the name of the relief organization established in 1945?
8. What is the telephone area code for a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean?
9. What unusual twosome spoke at ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s funeral in 1979?
10. Why is the phrase "the quick brown fox jumps over lazy dog" used to check typewriters?
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There you have it. Now before I finish this posting I’ll throw in another filthy yet funny limerick. You can never ever have enough limericks, dirty or otherwise. If you’re offended by this off-color humor, too bad.
There once was a woman named Jill
Who swallowed an exploding pill
They found her vagina
In North Carolina
And her tits in a tree in Brazil.
I’ve always been intrigued by strange and unusual facts, synchronicity, and coincidences. Common sense tells me that they’re just random happenstances that mean nothing and have not been caused by anything paranormal or magical. If you research as many of them as I have it can easily seem that something unearthly is causing the occurrences.
I’ve collected reference material from wherever I could find it and I’m still occasionally stunned and amazed by what I’ve found. Let me pass on to you a few facts that are true and bizarre. Feel free to make your own decision as to what causes things like this to happen. I certainly have no answers. Maybe it’s just luck, if you believe in that.
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Angel Santana, of New York City, escaped unharmed when a robber’s bullet bounced off his pants zipper.
In 1942, Lieut. I. M. Chisov, a Russian pilot, fell 21,980 feet from his fighter plane and survived (his chute failed to open).
Sgt. Joseph Charles was in a fox hole in New Guinea during World War II when the mail boys called him to come out for a letter from home. He crawled out approximately 10 feet when a Japanese plane flew over and dropped a bomb that completely destroyed the foxhole he’d just left.
Lieut. Cmdr. Robert W. Goehring was swept off the Coast Guard cutter U.S.S. Duane by a gigantic wave during a storm. The ship then turned around to rescue him, when suddenly another huge wave tossed him back on board to safety.
An ambulance in Nykroppa, Sweden, sent to pick up Lars Elam, a patient with a high fever, returned to the hospital with the patient driving it and the regular driver lying dead in the back from a heart attack.
Actor Sean Connery, who played the film character James Bond was once stopped for a traffic offense by a policeman named Sgt. James Bond.
Two automobiles that collided in Ajax, Ontario, on a slippery winter day were owned by motorists named Snow and Blizzard.
A bottle of prescription pills was swept out of the bedroom of Mrs. Lena McCovey when a flood destroyed her home on the Klamath River. It was found 200 miles away at Coos Bay, Oregon, by Mrs. McCovey’s sister.
Abraham Lincoln was the second member of his family to die by an assassin’s bullet. The other was his grandfather. Both victims were named Abraham, both had wives named Mary, and both had a son named Thomas. The name Abraham has never again been given to any member of the family.
In Bermuda, brothers Erskin L. Ebbin and Neville Ebbin both died one year apart after being struck by the same taxi, driven by the same driver, and carrying the same passenger.
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What do you think now? As I read through these kinds of facts there are just times when I can’t wrap my head around what I’m reading. Does it mean I believe there’s more at work here than meets the eye? There are times when I do think that but then the cynic and pragmatic part of me began screaming, “Are you effing crazy?”. Maybe I am.
I’m a huge fan of both the Cooking and Food channels. Being a huge fan of food makes it almost a requirement. Without a large assortment of food the human race would cease to exist in short order (no pun intended).
I’ve been a cook for most of my life and to this day maintain a large handwritten recipe book with family recipes and many of my own that I use on a regular basis. Nothing fascinates me more than finding a new dish that I’ve never experienced and attempting to remake it “my way” and then share it with friends.
Needless to say everyone who enjoys cooking thinks their family recipes are the best and that their mothers and grandmothers are the final word on anything food related. I fall into that category myself not so much with my mother’s cooking which was only so-so but with my grandmothers which was sooooo good.
I thought today I’d present you with a short trivia challenge on food and cooking related items. As with any other subject there’s thousands of trivia items available to stump and puzzles us all when it comes to food. Here are 10 that I found somewhat interesting and I hope you do as well. The answers will be posted tomorrow so you can check and see how you’ve done. Have fun with it and then go eat a sandwich.
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1. In which American city is the greatest amount of ketchup consumed?
2. Who said: “Never eat more than you can lift”?
3. What was the first commercially manufactured breakfast cereal?
4. How many pounds of dry saffron does an acre of crocus plants yield?
5. Under federal food labeling regulations, how much caffeine must be removed from coffee for it to be called decaffeinated?
6. What are the five most frequently consumed fruits in the United States?
7. What snack food commercial was pulled off the air in 1970 because of complaints from an outraged ethnic group?
8. What popular lunch and snack food did an unidentified St. Louis doctor develop in 1890 for patients requiring an easily digested form of protein?
9. What do Eskimos use to prevent their food from freezing?
10. What eating utensil was first brought to America in 1630 by Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop, who carried it around with him in a specially made, velvet-lined leather case?
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I selected these questions because I felt they could be answered easily if you just think about them for a moment. I could be wrong so check back tomorrow.
I spend a lot of time on the Net these days and have done so for many years. It’s become an integral part of my life and indispensible in a number of other ways. It’s hard to believe than just over thirty years ago I was a subscriber to the Genie Electric Network and received text-only Internet on a 300 baud modem. The changes have been huge and relatively fast and I’m glad to have experienced the Net in all of it’s changing incarnations.
I decided to do a little surfing today and to collect a few facts about the all-seeing Internet in it’s current form. I was more than a little shocked at what I found because some of the numbers were almost impossible to wrap my head around. Here is a short list of some amazing stats. Unbelievable is probably more accurate.
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Google estimates the Internet at about 5 million terabytes of data, or 5 trillion megabytes.
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The human brain can hold between 1 and 10 terabytes.
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Using an average of 5 terabytes per human brain, it would take a million human brains to hold the entire Internet.
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212 DVD’s will hold one terabyte or 1,000,000,000 to hold the Internet.
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40 Blue-ray discs will hold a terabyte and it would take 200,000,000 to store the Internet.
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American makes up 76.2% of the Internet population but only 5% of the worlds population.
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There are 247 billion emails sent every day and 81% (200,000,000) are spam.
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There are 90 trillion emails sent each year.
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Teenagers spend an average of 31 hours per week on the Internet and only four hours doing homework.
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There are 234,000,000 web sites and 126,000,000 blogs.
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Every second 28,258 Internet users are watching pornography.
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There are 600 tweets a second.
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924 videos are watched on Hulu each month in the US.
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Twenty hours of videos are loaded onto YouTube every minute.
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Facebook has 6,000,000 page viewers a minute.
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2,500,000 images are loaded onto Facebook each month.
Some of these facts are mind-blowing but a number of others are more than a little scary. I’m not sure I could survive my raging paranoia if I had teenage children to raise now. I can’t imagine the difficulties there must be when in most cases the kids are more knowledgeable about the Net than most of their parents. What will this all become in another thirty years?
I think I’ll start your week with a few items of truly useless information. You can never have enough of this wonderful stuff and I intend to keep shoveling it your way until I run out. So sit back in your seat and enjoy.
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Mr. Potato Head was the first toy advertised on TV.
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Malaria mosquitoes are attracted to ripe Limburger cheese and smelly feet.
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A fetus acquires fingerprints by the end of the first trimester.
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Every 20 minutes the world population increases by 3500.
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Toilet paper was invented by the Chinese in 1391 for the exclusive use by the emperor.
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The two robbers crucified next to Jesus were Dismas and Gestas.
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Disney World in Orlando, Florida, covers 30,500 acres (46 square miles).
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Butterflies are cannibals.
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Tigers have striped skin under their hair but zebra’s don’t.
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Monkeys have no feet, they are classified as four-handed.
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Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, leeches and maggots are categorized as medical devices.
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You can in fact get cooties. Cooties are lice.
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Poison Ivy is a member of the Cashew family.
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In late 1600’s Puritan society, a child over 16 years old convicted of cursing at a parent was sentenced to death.
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E T A O I N S H R D L U C M F G Y P W B V K X J Q Z: The alphabet in order of its frequency of use in written English
Well, there you have it. See just how many useless facts you were unaware of. As a reminder, I get a ten percent of all bar bet winnings. Just so you know.
Before I hop on my newly purchased torture device I thought I’d get these answers from yesterdays quiz on their way to you. I tried the quiz on a few others yesterday and they had some difficulties to be sure. I threw two current events questions in just for the hell of it and I’m sorry I did. How can a person living in this country where we’re up to our ass in media not know anything about the Boston Marathon bombing case. I’m sorry to say this was someone in their fifties who just isn’t paying attention. Unbelievable is the word I’m looking for. Here are your answers.
1. Jordin Sparks
2. Chemical weapons
3. Trapt
4. 27
5. Miriam Makeba
6. Lego
7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
8. Weezer
9. One was shot and killed by police, and the other was captured in a massive manhunt.
10. Destiny Hope Cyrus
Before I step onto this treadmill for my daily workout I’m sitting here lining up the music I’ll be listening to. Today will be Beatles day. I’ve loved them for years and their music still holds up even to our current Hip Hop generation. In memory of the Fab Four here are a few facts about them that fans will appreciate.
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John Lennon had dyslexia.
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Paul McCartney and Pete Best were once arrested in Hamburg because they stuck a condom to a wall and set it on fire.
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In the 60’s Paul McCartney had three cats named Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
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Only 6% of Beatles autographs currently in circulation are estimated to be real.
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John Lennon’s favorite food was cornflakes.
Enough of this nonsense. I’ve got a date to sweat through my clothing and I need to get started. Tomorrow is another day.
Last week I offered up a trivia quiz which was more than a little difficult. So after being prompted by a younger reader I decided to do a quiz that is a little more up to date. Although I’m forced to admit this quiz seems more like a current events test than trivia.
So lets get started. I took this quiz myself and scored a measly six points. That’s same mediocre results as the last quiz which really irritates the hell out of me. Oh yes, one more thing, good luck Lily, let me know how you do.
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1. Who won the 6th season of American Idol?
2. What type of forbidden weapons were Syria accused of using against its people?
3. What band, formerly fronted by Adam Gontier, released their album "Reborn" in 2013?
4. Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain all died at what age??
5. Who released the song Pata Pata with a non-English title?
6. What kind of house did Ed Sheeran sing about in his 2012-2013 hit?
7. What was the complete name of the most recent Indiana Jones film?
8. Which band’s 1994 self titled debut is commonly referred to as “The Blue Album?”
9. What happened to the two terrorists that instigated the Boston Marathon tragedy?
10. What is Miley Cyrus’s real name?
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As usual the answers will be posted tomorrow. Good luck to you folks over thirty. Here’s a little joke to start your day.
Two old drunks in a bar. The first one says, "Ya know, when I was 30 and got a hard-on, I couldn’t bend it with either of my hands. By the time I was 40, I could bend it about 10 degrees if I tried really hard. "By the time I was 50, I could bend it about 20 degrees, no problem. I’m gonna be 60 next week, and now I can almost bend it in half with just one hand" "So," says the second drunk, "what’s your point?" "Well," says the first, "I’m just wondering how much stronger I’m gonna get!"
Well, how did you do on yesterdays trivia challenge? I told you it was difficult so don’t be too disappointed that you didn’t score higher. I’ll be sending an assortment of those quiz’s your way over the next few months and some will be easier and others even harder. It’s just a little something to get you thinking and if some day you happen to win a bar bet or two, your welcome. Here are the answers you’ve been waiting for.
1. Peter Lorre
2. William Bendix
3. Johnny Mathis
4. The Return of Dr. X (He was a zombie.)
5. Andy Robinson (Son of Edward G. Robinson)
6. Superman
7. A teenage Andy Williams.
8. Frank Sinatra
9. It had no name, she called it “cat”.
10. Frank
Onward with other business. Normally on days like this I’ll try and offer you a little humor to start your day or end it depending on when you read this. Here’s a little joke for ya.
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A policeman was patrolling a local parking spot overlooking a golf course. He drove by a car and saw a couple inside with the dome light on. There was a young man in the driver’s seat reading a computer magazine and a young lady in the back seat knitting. He stopped to investigate. He walked up to the driver’s window and knocked. The young man looked up, cranked the window down, and said, "Yes Officer?"
"What are you doing?" the policeman asked. "What does it look like?" answered the young man. "I’m reading this magazine." Pointing towards the young lady in the back seat, the officer then asked, "And what is she doing?" The young man looked over his shoulder and replied, "What does it look like? She’s knitting."
"And how old are you?" the officer then asked the young man. "I’m nineteen," he replied. "And how old is she?" asked the officer. The young man looked at his watch and said, "Well, in about twelve minutes she’ll be sixteen."
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Now that you have that small smile on your face I’ll move onto my next subject. I’d like to thank these folks for visiting this blog and then deciding to stick around for a while. New followers are always a pleasant surprise and I recommend you visit them and give their sites a look. Welcome aboard and thank you!
Joe Seeber, sfoxwriting, jangawol, Jordan Latour, funoften, ThePeopleIHaveSleptWith, Kylie Bannink, linzelite, miraclesworldrecords
everyuselessthing.com 