Ken Jennings's Trivia Almanac by Ken Jennings

Rauschenberg
    D. Diego Rivera
    E. Alfred Stieglitz
----

FEBRUARY 6
----
    1672 I N A LETTER TO the Royal Society, Isaac Newton reveals his new discovery about light. White light, he has found, is actually composed of every other color of light—he calls it a “spectrum.”
----
    I GOT HUE, BABE
    Some colorful trivia to brighten up your day.
----
    1. What’s the most common color of Reese’s Pieces, almost two thirds again as numerous as the other shades?
    2. Who’s the only sportcaster who’s done both play-by-play and color commentary for
Monday Night Football
?
    3. What political figure is married to former
In Living Color
star Alexandra Wentworth?
    4. The Apgar score is used to measure the color and condition of what?
    5. What color is the one-ball in a traditional billiards set?
    6. Whose paintings include
The Red Room, The Green Stripe, The Blue Nudes,
and
The Yellow Odalisque
?
    7. What
Sesame Street
Muppet was bright orange during the show’s first season?
    8. What’s the “safest” color on the Homeland Security Advisory System’s color scale?
    9. What genus of vines has lent its name to: a Crayola color, in 1993; a Sherlock Holmes “Lodge,” in 1908; and a TV “Lane,” in 2004?
    10. In what city do all three of the pro sports franchises use the same two main team colors?

----
    1968 T HE W INTER O LYMPICS open in Grenoble, France, featuring the first unofficial Olympic mascot ever—“Schuss the Skier”—and the debut of the Games’ unofficial theme song, a little trumpet piece that its composer, Leo Artaud, originally called “Bugler’s Dream.”
----
    THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG
----
    1. What “broke down,” according to the lyrics of the
Looney Tunes
theme song?
    2. What NHL team’s theme music is Aram Khachaturian’s most famous composition?
    3. What signature tune of Glenn Miller’s orchestra was originally called “Now I Lay Me Down to Weep”?
    4. What musical feat has been accomplished by only four artists: Jan Hammer, the Heights, Rhythm Heritage, and John Sebastian?
    5. According to his theme song, what is the
most
wonderful thing about Tiggers?
    6. Who’s the only character in
Peter and the Wolf
represented by a brass instrument?
    7. Mets closer Billy Wagner earned jeers in New York for adopting what metal anthem as his entrance music, since it has long been used by the Yankees’ Mariano Rivera?
    8. What 1986 Europe hit was GOB’s magic-act theme song on TV’s
Arrested Development
?
    9. What movie’s theme is called “Gonna Fly Now”?
    10. What New Age musician composed “Roundball Rock,” the ubiquitous
NBA on NBC
theme of the 1990s?

----

FEBRUARY 7
----
    1960 F RANK S INATRA INTRODUCES his paramour Judith Campbell to Senator John F. Kennedy. She will become JFK’s mistress and the “close friend” with Mob ties discreetly referred to in a 1975 Senate investigation.
----
    TRAIL TO THE CHIEF
    Which U.S. president was (or is) a personal friend of these famous names?
----
    1. John Kenneth Galbraith
    2. Nathaniel Hawthorne
    3. Sam Houston
    4. Rock Hudson
    5. Bat Masterson
    6. Jim Nantz
    7. Thomas Nast
    8. Willie Nelson
    9. Joseph Priestley
    10. Kevin Spacey

----
    1974 T HE S YMBIONESE L IBERATION A RMY announces that they’ve kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst. How come none of
today’s
really annoying heiresses becomes a political prisoner?
----
    ARMY OF DORKNESS
----
    1. What army was founded by “General” William Booth?
    2. What man, golf’s first millionaire, was followed by an eponymous Army of fans?
    3. A Chinese man digging a well in March 1979 discovered an 8,000-man “army” made of what?
    4. What singer’s “Army of Me” video was the first ever to use the “bullet-time” special effect later made famous by
The Matrix
?
    5. What must be manufactured by Victorinox or Wenger to be official?

----
    1984
C HALLENGER
ASTRONAUT Bruce McCandless II becomes the earth’s first human satellite, as he’s the first person ever to go for an untethered space