SAME NAME
The singer of “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You” and the frustrated software engineer in Office Space
A) Michael McDonald
B) Michael Bolton
C) Michael Bublé
D) Michael Jackson
B) Michael Bolton
Fun fact: In Office Space, the character hates sharing a name with the singer. When a coworker asks why he doesn’t just go by Mike, he answers: “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”
“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
A) John F. Kennedy
B) Franklin D. Roosevelt
C) Abraham Lincoln
D) Ronald Reagan
A) John F. Kennedy
Fun fact: It’s from his 1961 inaugural address, which ran only about 14 minutes and is one of the shortest in modern history. His speechwriter, Ted Sorensen, helped him write it.
In Cast Away, which company does Hanks’s character, Chuck Noland, work for?
A) FedEx
B) UPS
C) DHL
D) U.S. Postal Service
A) FedEx
Fun fact: Hanks put on weight for the first part of the film, and then production stopped for about a year so he could lose it and grow out his hair and beard for the island scenes. Director Robert Zemeckis used the break to make another movie, What Lies Beneath, with mostly the same crew.
Which river flows through more countries than any other in the world?
A) Nile
B) Rhine
C) Danube
D) Amazon
C) Danube
Fun fact: The Danube passes through 10 countries. It also flows through four capital cities: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade.
Goldfish have a memory span of only about three seconds.
False
Fun fact: In studies, goldfish have learned to respond to sounds, push levers for food, and get through simple mazes, and they remembered what they learned for months.
The actor who played Captain America and the British radio DJ who hosted Top Gear
A) Chris Pratt
B) Chris Hemsworth
C) Chris Evans
D) Chris Pine
C) Chris Evans
Fun fact: The British Chris Evans took over Top Gear in 2016 after Jeremy Clarkson left, and he quit after only one season.
“I think, therefore I am.”
A) Socrates
B) Aristotle
C) René Descartes
D) Plato
C) René Descartes
Fun fact: Descartes first wrote it in French in 1637: “Je pense, donc je suis.” The famous Latin version, “Cogito, ergo sum,” appeared in a later book.
Hanks won back-to-back Best Actor Oscars for Philadelphia and which other film?
A) Cast Away
B) Saving Private Ryan
C) Forrest Gump
D) Apollo 13
C) Forrest Gump (1994)
Fun fact: Only one actor had won the Oscar for Best Actor two years in a row before Hanks: Spencer Tracy, in 1937 and 1938.
Which country has the most natural lakes in the world?
A) Finland
B) Canada
C) Russia
D) United States
B) Canada
Fun fact: Canada has more lakes than every other country combined. Finland is the trick: it’s nicknamed “the land of a thousand lakes” and really has close to 200,000, but Canada still has far more.
A group of flamingos is called a “flamboyance.”
True
Fun fact: Flamingos aren’t born pink. Their chicks are gray or white, and they turn pink from pigments in the algae and tiny shrimp they eat.
The composer of the Star Wars score and a famous Australian classical guitarist
A) John Barry
B) John Williams
C) John Powell
D) John Debney
B) John Williams
Fun fact: The composer has more than 50 Oscar nominations, more than any other living person. The guitarist is known for bringing classical guitar to big audiences and recorded with his band, Sky, in the 1980s.
Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
A) Eleanor Roosevelt
B) Marilyn Monroe
C) Gloria Steinem
D) Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
D) Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Fun fact: It’s usually credited to Eleanor Roosevelt or Marilyn Monroe, but Ulrich, a historian, wrote it in a 1976 academic article about Puritan funeral sermons. She later won a Pulitzer Prize and used the line as the title of a 2007 book.
What was Hanks’s first movie role, in 1980?
A) Splash
B) He Knows You’re Alone
C) Mazes and Monsters
D) Bachelor Party
B) He Knows You’re Alone
Fun fact: It was a low-budget slasher movie, and Hanks had a small part as a college student. Mazes and Monsters is the trick: it’s another early Hanks role, but it was a 1982 TV movie.
What is the driest non-polar desert on Earth?
A) Sahara
B) Gobi
C) Namib
D) Atacama
D) Atacama
Fun fact: Some weather stations in Chile’s Atacama Desert have never recorded any rain. It’s so dry and Mars-like that NASA tests Mars rovers there.
Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.
True
Fun fact: Teaching at Oxford was already happening by 1096. The Aztecs founded their capital, Tenochtitlan, in 1325, more than 200 years later.
The director of Clerks and the New Zealand actor who played Ares, the god of war, on Xena: Warrior Princess
A) Kevin James
B) Kevin Hart
C) Kevin Bacon
D) Kevin Smith
D) Kevin Smith
Fun fact: The New Zealand actor played Ares on both Xena and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. He died in 2002 after a fall on a film set in China.
“Religion is the opium of the people.”
A) Friedrich Nietzsche
B) Karl Marx
C) Voltaire
D) Vladimir Lenin
B) Karl Marx
Fun fact: Marx wrote it in 1843. Opium was a common painkiller back then, and in the same passage he called religion “the sigh of the oppressed creature” and “the heart of a heartless world.” Nietzsche is the trick: he’s famous for “God is dead,” not this line.
Who usually voices Woody in Toy Story video games, toys, and other spin-offs?
A) Colin Hanks
B) Bill Hader
C) Jim Hanks
D) Billy Crystal
C) Jim Hanks
Fun fact: Jim is Tom’s younger brother, and his voice sounds so much like Tom’s that he’s been Woody’s stand-in voice for years in games, talking toys, and theme park attractions. Colin Hanks is the trick: he’s Tom’s son, not his brother.
Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador holds which world record?
A) The highest mountain in the Americas
B) The tallest active volcano
C) The point on Earth’s surface farthest from the planet’s center
D) The most climbed peak in South America
C) The point on Earth’s surface farthest from the planet’s center
Fun fact: Earth bulges at the equator, and Chimborazo sits almost on it. That puts its summit about 2 km (more than 6,500 feet) farther from Earth’s center than the top of Mount Everest, even though Everest is much higher above sea level.
Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia.
True
Fun fact: Settlers brought camels to Australia in the 1800s to haul supplies across the outback, and once trucks and trains took over, many were set loose. Australia now has one of the largest herds of wild camels in the world, and it ships live camels to Saudi Arabia, mostly for meat.
The Apollo 11 astronaut who orbited the Moon and the Irish revolutionary leader killed in an ambush in 1922
A) Michael Collins
B) Michael Davitt
C) Michael Brennan
D) Michael Carroll
A) Michael Collins
Fun fact: The astronaut stayed in orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon. Each time he passed behind it, he lost all radio contact with Earth, and the press called him “the loneliest man in history.” The Irish Michael Collins was killed in County Cork during the Irish Civil War.
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
A) Isaac Newton
B) Galileo Galilei
C) Albert Einstein
D) Johannes Kepler
A) Isaac Newton
Fun fact: Newton wrote it in a 1675 letter to his rival Robert Hooke. Some historians think it was a sly dig at Hooke, who was short. The idea itself is much older and goes back to the 12th-century scholar Bernard of Chartres.
In That Thing You Do! (1996), which Hanks wrote and directed, what was the band’s original name before they changed it?
A) The Wonders
B) The Heartbeats
C) The Oneders
D) The Playtones
C) The Oneders
Fun fact: People kept pronouncing the name “Oh-NEE-ders,” so the band changed it to The Wonders. The title song was written by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Playtone is a trick too: it’s the record label in the movie, and Hanks later named his real production company after it.
Which sea has no coastline at all?
A) Sargasso Sea
B) Caspian Sea
C) Sea of Azov
D) Dead Sea
A) Sargasso Sea
Fun fact: The Sargasso Sea sits in the middle of the North Atlantic, and its edges are set by ocean currents, not land. It’s named after the floating sargassum seaweed that covers it. Eels from rivers in both Europe and North America swim thousands of miles to lay their eggs there.
Glass is actually a very slow-moving liquid, which is why old church windows are thicker at the bottom.
False
Fun fact: Glass is a solid. Old windowpanes were uneven because of how glass was made back then, and installers often put the thicker edge at the bottom for stability, though some were put in thick side up. Scientists have calculated that cathedral glass at room temperature would take far longer than the age of the universe to sag noticeably.