While checking out an old thread, the topic came up of the old trivia question: which actors were killed by an Alien, Terminator, and Predator? Of course, the answer is Bill Paxton, but it seems many people still believe this includes Lance Henrickson.
So, I wanted to see what other famous trivia questions have controversial answers.
My contribution: Who holds the record for most home runs hit in a career? The correct answer: Sadaharu Oh, 868, from 1959 to 1980. Also given as an answer is sometimes Josh Gibson, but this cannot be verified.
Rules: These topics are absolutely and completely off limits:
In summary: the water swirls in the direction of the forces applied during washing or as the water was filled up.
Short excerpt:
Compared to the rotations that one usually sees (tires on a travelling automobile, a compact disc playing music, or a draining sink), the rotation of the Earth is very small: only one rotation per day. The water in a sink might make a rotation in a few seconds and so have a rotation rate ten thousand times higher than that of the Earth. It should not be surprising, therefore, to learn that the Coriolis force is orders of magnitude smaller than any of the forces involved in these everyday spinning things. The Coriolis force is so small, that it plays no role in determining the direction of rotation of a draining sink anymore than it does the direction of a spinning CD.
I wouldn’t call this controversial, however it is a trivia question usually given with an incorrect answer: What is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way?
Ripley may have pulled the plug on Bishop for the final time in Alien 3, but his permanently damaged state was because of an Alien, giving him the trifecta.
The answer was Carrie until 2010, which is when he revealed that The Long Walk was written first.
Because it is Washington. He was an American. I don’t think there’s any controversy on that. MvB was the first American president not born as a British subject, which is not the same thing.
Didn’t realize the revelation was so recent. Well I suppose this would be quite a controversial trivia question for people not in the know then, wouldn’t it?
I could quite easily argue this is wrong in a dozen ways. If you’re counting the NPB, why not count all pro leagues everywhere? Maybe someone hit a thousand homers in minor pro baseball. And why discount Oh’s 29 postseason home runs?
“Famously wrong trivia questions” to be good have to be unassailably easy to define. The “First American President” example is the worst example, but a classic one; it implied a definition of “American” nobody initially understands or would rationally agree with.
Who ran the first 4 minute mile? Roger Bannister in 1954, or a guy name James Parrot (IIRC) in 1770? Besides recognizing the 1770 event, it brings up the question of whether a 4.00 mile is needed to answer the question.
Were one to read the question that carefully, one would be obliged to point out that “America” is a band, and not a country, and thus had no President.
Thanks.
Now I’ll be humming “A Horse with No Name” all day…
America is a country. Just because it’s the short name for The United States of America doesn’t mean it’s not still a country. If you want to get that semantically anal, then Mexico isn’t a country either, since their full name in Spanish is essentially United States of Mexico. And don’t even start on the UK.
"Think of words ending in -gry. Angry and hungry are two of them. There are only three words in the English language. What is the third word? The word is … "
Because it’s a gotcha question. “The American President” refers to the office just as much as to the person. Therefore, “Who was the first American President” can only be answered with “George Washington.” Anyone who jumps to Van Buren either a) knows about the gotcha ahead of time or b) is operating under a different definition of “The American President” than everyone else.
You want a real controversial trivia question… why is this thread in The Game Room?
“America”, by a reasonable interpretation, can refer to the Americas in general, i.e. the western continents. Further, the word “president” was not coined specifically for the executive officer of the United States. “1st American President” could refer to, say, the first president of the Hudson’s Bay Company (or possibly another corporation or other organization with a president operating in the Americas prior to 1776).
So basically, it’s not a controversial question, but a bullshit one. If you want to play loose with the definition of “American”, why stop at the arbitrary point of “born a U.S. citizen”, and why assume that “president” is so exclusive?
Bryan-Seriously, how many people do you know (without an anti-American axe to grind) who refer to ANY other country as America? Also, President is most commonly used to refer to the POTUS (though I suppose a Oh-esque interpretation is conceivable, but most of those people are doing that to yank people’s chains)
On reflection, I’ve heard a version on etv’s question before, with the answer being Peyton Randolph or Samuel Huntington or John Hanson or someone else who was Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled, during the U.S. young experimental dabbling with the Articles of Confederation, the claimed critical element being the ratification of some specific tweak to the role in an effort to make the rather clumsy system functional.
I’d argue that this was just a period of transition and the United States as we know it only took recognizable form when the Constitution was put in effect on March 4th, 1789.