Tuesday Trivia

1. Which author is sports a black eye in the dust jacket photo of his 1967 novel?
2. Poet named Ernest Dowson wrote “To Cynara,” a work that contains a line which was used as the title of which world famous novel?
3. Which famous author held the position of Governor General of Canada in 1935?
4. The epitaph 'Blest be the man that spares these stones, and curst be he that moves my bones,' was written by whom?
5. Which English Romantic poet was born with a clubfoot?

Last Week's Answers



Which was the first novel ever sold through a vending machine?



Murder on the Orient Express was sold from a vending machine for the first time in 1989 at the Paris Metro. Interestingly enough, the first vending machine was invented in Alexandria, Egypt around 215 BC. When a coin was dropped into a slot, its weight would pull a cork out of a spigot and the machine would dispense a trickle of water.



The oldest surviving daily newspaper is the Wiener Zeitung of Austria. When was it first printed?



It was first printed in 1703.




Where does the “Hey Diddle Diddle” nursery rhyme come from?



This Nursery Rhyme originated in the court of Queen Elizabeth I. The queen is said to have teased her courtiers (not unlike a cat teases mice) and was very fond of dancing to fiddle music. One of her courtiers was called "Moon" and another "Dog," and there was also a gentleman of the court called "Dish" who eloped with Mistress “Spoon.”

And thus the rhyme was born: “Hey diddle, diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon, The little dog laughed to see such sport, And the dish ran away with the spoon.”




There are 10 million books in the Russian Public Library in Leningrad — enough to supply every person in the city with two books. If the books housed in the United States Library of Congress were doled out to those living in the city of Washington, D.C., how many books would each person receive?



If the 72,466,926 books housed in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. were doled out to the 591,833 people living in the city, there would be approximately 122 volumes for each person.




Why was part of Lewis Carroll's classic, "Through the Looking Glass," featuring a giant wasp wearing a wig omitted from the original publication and only made known to the general public 107 years later?



The section, which featured a giant wasp wearing a wig, was left out because Carroll's illustrator, John Tenniel, refused to illustrate it. "A wasp in a wig," said Tenniel, "is altogether beyond the appliances of art."