I love trivia. It's one of my absolute favorite things-I cannot get enough of it, and I am a bit of a fountain for it. One of my goals in life is to know at least five minutes worth of conversation about any given topic. As a result of this, I have MANY different trivia questions that I love to whip out to stump people, but here are ten of my favorites:
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| Gov. Samuel J. Tilden (D-NY) |
1. Which Men Lost the Presidency by One Vote?
These are not in order of personal preference, except for this one, as this is one that I came up with myself and it's my favorite stumper. Three men have lost the presidency by one vote. The first was in 1868. President Andrew Johnson was on trial at the time and was impeached by Congress. As a result, his removal from office was put to a vote and 36 "guilty" votes were required to remove him as president. Only 35 were cast, however, so he stayed as president by one vote. Had one more vote been cast, Senate President Pro Tempore Benjamin Wade of Ohio would have assumed the presidency. Wade would have a rough year in 1868: he lost the presidency by one vote, was denied the vice presidency when Ulysses S. Grant refused to give in to party pressure and nominate him, and then would lose reelection to his Senate seat later that year. Were it not for one vote, he would have become our nation's 18th president for about ten months in 1868.
The second man was eight years later, and his name is Samuel J. Tilden, at the time a New York governor who was running for the presidency. Tilden actually won the popular vote by a healthy three-points in 1876, but the electoral college was basically a tie against Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Several states (Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Oregon) had electors that were disputed whether or not the Republican or the Democrat had won. Since Tilden had 184 electors already locked up, had he taken just one of the twenty electoral votes these states had, he would have won the election. Since no one could properly decide who won the states, Congress decided a commission of seven Republicans, seven Democrats, and one Supreme Court justice would decide on the victors. Justice David Davis, famously independent, was to be that justice, but the Illinois State Senate, in hopes of bribing Davis to pick Tilden, offered him a Senate seat, which he took, but as a result had to resign his position on the Court. As a result, there were only Republicans left on the court and the commission voted 8-7 on all twenty electoral college votes, effectively handing the election to Hayes.
The final instance happened relatively recently, with Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush. With the election being hauntingly close (though Gore won the popular vote), everything came down to Florida. The recounts intricacies were so minute (this was the closest statewide election in the history of the Republic, so pretty much any nuance you could find in election law could result in a switch of the victor) that the Supreme Court's decision may well have cost Vice President Gore the election (the media in subsequent analysis decided that a victory for Gore at the high court would have resulted in anything from a win for Governor Bush by 496 votes to a victory for the Vice President by 161 votes). The Supreme Court denied Gore's recount in select counties in Florida by a 5-4 decision, effectively handing the White House to Governor Bush.
It should be noted that we actually know who cast these three deciding votes: Sen. Edmund Ross of Kansas was the final Republican defector in 1868, denying Wade the presidency, Justice Joseph Bradley was the Supreme Court justice who got Republicans their eighth vote in the Tilden/Hayes elections, and based on the order in which the Supreme Court votes, Justice Clarence Thomas (who was appointed by George W. Bush's father, coincidentally enough) would have been the fifth vote in 2000. It's also worth noting that Wade, Tilden, and (so far) Gore never ran for the White House again.
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| Emil Jannings |
2. What Oscar Winner used his Oscar statue to prove to Allied troops he was from Hollywood?
Emil Jannings was a German actor who won the first Best Actor Oscar (I believe it was actually the first award of the night, so he won the first Oscar, period) for his performances in
The Last Command and
The Way of All Flesh. Later in his career, the man with a thick German accent couldn't transition into talkies, but did find his way into Nazi propaganda films, many under the supervision of Joseph Goebbels. As a result of this, when the Allied troops came to Germany in the Spring of 1945, he was potentially in danger, and as a result, reportedly came out into the streets waving his Oscar over his head in hopes of them recognizing his association with Hollywood. Jannings was subject to denazification, and as a result never made another motion picture after the war.
It's worth noting that Jannings is associated with two other pieces of Oscar trivia, both also quite sad. His performance in
The Way of All Flesh is the only Oscar-winning performance to currently be considered "lost," while his performance in
The Patriot is also lost.
The Patriot is the only Best Picture nominee to have that designation. In fact, only one of Jannings' five Hollywood films (
The Last Command) is fully-intact. Jannings played a role in a later Best Picture, however, as he was a character (played by Hilmar Eichhorn) in Quentin Tarantino's
Inglourious Basterds.
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| Park Young-Seok |
3. What is a True Explorers' Grand Slam, and who was the first person to complete it?
If there is a Mount Everest of adventuring, it oddly enough doesn't end with Mount Everest. It's the True Explorers' Grand Slam, which is topping all of the Seven Summits (the seven highest mountains on each continent), as well all of the 8000-meter mountains in the word (there are 14 of them, all in the Himalayas), and also reaching the North and South Pole. This feat was first accomplished in 2005 by Park Young-Seok, who reached the North Pole in 2005 after completing all of the other mountains and expeditions. Young-Seok went missing six years later while mounting Annapurna (one of the more treacherous eight-thousanders), and is considered dead, but lives on in adventuring legend for this accomplishment.
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| Gabriel in Da Vinci's Annunciation |
4. How many angels are there in the Bible?
The answer is roughly 2.5, cheekily enough. Two full-on angels are named in the Bible: Gabriel, who is the most mentioned angel in the Bible by name, who appears in the Book of Daniel as well as is the angel who announces the births of John the Baptist and Jesus, and then there's Michael, the archangel who appears in the Books of Daniel and Jude.
However, there are two angels that appear in the Bible that are "fallen angels," so 2.5 seems like a more appropriate answer. The first of these is Lucifer, who is mentioned in the Books of Isaiah and Luke, and was considered the "most beautiful and powerful" angel until his fall, and he is generally associated with Satan. Then there is Abaddon, who is briefly mentioned in Revelation 9:11 as the king of an army of locusts.
It's worth noting that there are two other angels that feature prominently in sects of the Christian faith, though are not mentioned in all different versions of the Bible. Raphael, for example, features prominently in the Book of Tobit, which is part of the Catholic Bible but not part of the Protestant or Jewish Bibles, while the Book of Enoch (which is part of some Orthodox liturgy) features the angel Uriel.
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| Gen. Galusha Pennypacker |
5. What General Couldn't Vote for His President?
Galusha Pennypacker is not just a man with the greatest name you've ever heard, he's also a famous overachiever. During the Civil War, Pennypacker was in the Second Battle of Fort Fisher and fought valiantly, though received what at the time was thought to be a fatal wound, and was promised by General Alfred Terry that he would receive a brevet promotion for his bravery that day. As a result, he was promoted to brigadier general on January 15, 1865.
However, Pennypacker actually survived this incident, and won a full promotion on February 18th, just four months shy of his 21st birthday. As the voting age at the time was 21, Pennypacker became the first and so far only man to hold the office of general while not being able to legally vote for his president (he also received the Medal of Honor). Considering that the voting age and the age for admission into the Army are now the same, it seems extremely likely that this is a distinction that Pennypacker will hold forever. Pennypacker did eventually die of his Civil War injuries, but not until fifty years later, and is buried at Philadelphia National Cemetary
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| Queen Elizabeth II |
6. What is the Royal Family's Last Name?
The (as of today) still unnamed princess born to William and Kate may not have a first name yet, but she does have a last name, even if it isn't widely-known by the public. The last name of members of the Royal Family is either Mountbatten-Windsor or just Windsor.
The distinction is between those who have their "royal family" status as a result of Queen Elizabeth II and those that have it as a result of George V. The former were given their last name as a result of an Order in Council issued by the Queen in 1960, which combined the royal names of Prince Philip's family and her majesty's family. Prince Philip's family (he was a Greek prince) actually assumed Mountbatten during the war after a request from Prince Louis to King George V to move from Battenberg to Mountbatten. Prince Louis of Battenberg was the grandfather of Prince Philip.
The House of Windsor started in 1917. At the time, anti-German sentiment was high in England and there was an emerging anti-monarchy sentiment across the continent (resulting in the assassinations of Emperor Nicholas II and his family in Russia). As Nicholas II was a cousin of King George V, the monarch was convinced to change the family's name, which was the extremely German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to something a bit more British. They chose Windsor since it was the name of a well-known castle, and declared it by royal proclamation in 1917.
As a result of this, any member of the royal family who derives their royal status from Queen Elizabeth II (such as her children and male-line grandchildren) have the last name of Mountbatten-Windsor, while any members of the royal family who derive their royal status from King George V (these would be the Queen's cousins, such as the Duke of Gloucester and Prince Michael of Kent) have the last name Windsor.
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| Eva, Zsa Zsa, and Magda Gabor |
7. How many times did the Gabor sisters get married?
Long before the Kardashians became the fodder of every tabloid story known to man, there was another trio of sisters whose every move and romance was chronicled by the press: the Gabors. Extremely glamorous, the sisters were famed occasionally for their acting but mostly for their gossip-ready marriages. Throughout their lives, the sisters married a combined total of twenty men (so far-Zsa Zsa is still kicking at age 98, though is reportedly in extremely bad health, so this number will probably remain concrete). Amongst their conquests were plastic surgeons, stock brokers, millionaires, playwrights, hotel magnates, a count, a prince (Zsa Zsa's current husband) and most famously an Oscar-winning actor, George Sanders. Sanders has the distinction of being married to both Magda and Zsa Zsa.
It's worth noting that in twenty marriages, only one of them resulted in one of the women having a child (Zsa Zsa and Conrad Hilton had a daughter in 1947...Zsa Zsa also famously slept with her stepson Nicky Hilton during the marriage, and Nicky went on to marry Elizabeth Taylor, another serial bride). Only two of the marriages didn't end in divorce: Magda's first marriage to Jan Bychowsky ended when Bychowsky died and Zsa Zsa's present marriage to Frederic Prinz von Anhalt is still valid (yes, this is the guy who was one of the men that could have been the father to Anna Nicole Smith's daughter...it's a fine line of millions of dollars and a royal title that distinguishes "trash" from "socialite").
8. What are the only states never to have elected a woman to Congress?
This used to be four states, but with the election of Joni Ernst In Iowa this past fall the list is down to three. The states are Delaware, Vermont, and Mississippi. It's worth noting that women have run for Congress in all three of these states, but none have emerged victorious. Of the three, Mississippi comes across the worst of the trio: not only has no woman won a congressional seat in the state, but the state has never elected a woman as their governor (this isn't the case for Delaware or Vermont, where Ruth Ann Minner and Madeline Kunin have served, respectively). It's also worth noting that as-of-today, Mississippi has six congressional seats representing it while the other two states only have three. Mississippi does have a prominent state senator running in the special election to succeed Alan Nunnelee, but it looks to be a very competitive primary so we shall see if this finally removes this distinction.
If you want to expand this a bit, six states have never had a woman serve in the House (in addition to the above three, there's Iowa, North Dakota, and Alaska), but all three of those states have had female senators. 22 states have not had female senators as of today-looking ahead to the upcoming elections the most likely contenders to rectify this (should candidates run and win) are Colorado (where Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is considering a Senate bid) and Nevada (where Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Rep. Dina Titus are both looking at running or are already in the race).
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| Georges Braque's The Birds |
9. Who was the first living person to be displayed at the Louvre?
Georges Braque was the first living artist to have his work displayed at the Louvre. I cannot find the specific piece that it was (a little help in the comments?), but I do know that he had an installation piece called "The Birds" that was put into the Louvre in the 1950's, an extremely high honor for any artist. Braque's career was significantly overshadowed by his friend and professional rival Pablo Picasso. Picasso is frequently cited with being the creator of Cubism, but he actually did this in conjunction with Braque. The two worked together for several years leading up to World War I (when Braque would serve in the French Army), and their art during this period is extremely similar. Braque never really strayed from Cubism (while Picasso was constantly trying a new artistic style), and therefore has been relegated to more of a footnote status in art history than Picasso, who enjoys a position as one of the "greats."
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| Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep |
10. What roles was Meryl Streep turned down for?
Like all things behind-the-scenes in Hollywood, there is some different interpretation for this question, but there are three roles that definitely Streep was turned down for: Miss Kenton in
The Remains of the Day, Queen Elizabeth in
Elizabeth, and Patsy Cline in
Sweet Dreams. It's worth noting that all three of these parts (which went to Emma Thompson, Cate Blanchett, and Jessica Lange, respectively) won Oscar nominations, which means that Streep's awards count could, staggeringly enough could be even higher by now. There's also rumors that she was turned down for the part of Michelle Straton in
American Gigolo, while other sources state that she was offered the role (which eventually went to Lauren Hutton) but turned it down because she didn't like the direction of the script. She also was brought in to read for the part of Dwan in
King Kong, but was thought to be "too ugly" by Dino de Laurentiis (this part also went to Jessica Lange).
Streep was also considered for two other Oscar-nominated roles. She was originally going to star in
Thelma and Louise with her pal Goldie Hawn but had to drop out when she got pregnant (not sure who was playing which role, but both parts won Oscar nominations, the same of which can't be said for Hawn/Streep's eventual pairing in the cult classic
Death Becomes Her). She was also considered for the part of Ripley in the
Alien films, which won Sigourney Weaver an Oscar nomination in 1986 for
Aliens. Weaver and Streep were classmates at Yale together, and were constantly fighting over parts, with Meryl usually winning the leads (also, if you trade in celebrity gossip, Weaver purportedly dated Don Gummer before Meryl ended up marrying him), so this is probably a nice vindication for Weaver.
And there you have it-ten of my favorite pieces of trivia! If you like this article, please re-tweet it or share in the comments, and I'll do another one soon! If any of these trivia pieces surprised you or you have additional shares, put them there as well!
