For the company work team-building event, I need about 40 multiple-choice questions with bizarre or interesting true trivia. I’ve already made nearly half of them, but I’d appreciate any weird info Dopers can provide….. I know our collective minds contain lots of unusual stuff. Can be any topic!
For something like that, I like to search on Jeopardy Labs. Search for Weird Facts and you’ll get a long list of Jeopardy! style games.
I have no idea if this interests anyone else but me. I have no idea if the way I’ve formulated it is the way you want to ask questions for this event. It’s what I consider an interesting fact that I have mentioned to people lately.
Question: Which well-known actress, who we don’t think of as being American, said on a recent talk show that her earliest memory from childhood happened when she tasted snow on the ground in Washington, D.C. when she was two years old?
Answer: Nicole Kidman. Her Australian parents moved before her birth to Honolulu so her father could do his Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii. Just after her birth, they then moved to Washington so her father could do a post-doctoral fellowship. She spent nearly all of the first three years of her life in Washington before her parents returned to Australia.
Interesting. But my actor/actress knowledge was so limited that I didn’t know Kidman was anything but American. I’m going to guess that many of my coworkers might assume too she was always American, or was/is one.
I know y’all hate it but this is a great question for AI. I asked mine and here is its answer, with links. I am sure we could ask if for things like historical facts or entertainment or something if you wanted to mix things up.
Here’s a link to what it generated since it would be awfully long for here (and might be wrong). It’d be wise to verify any questions/answers here you might want to use (it provided sources…still check):
FWIW: It tells me, “Note: All facts have been verified through current web sources (2024-2025) from reputable publications. Wikipedia was not used as a source.”
ETA: I did not check all the links but one was broken so definitely check any you may want to use.
It’s a surprising bit of trivia. You could phrase it like this:
Born in Honolulu six years after Barack Obama, this actress now has an estimated net worth of $250 million:
A)Salma Hayek
B)Nicole Kidman
C)Halle Berry
D)Winona Ryder
Q: FCC Chairman Newton Minow famously called television “a vast wasteland” in 1961. What TV show included a mocking reference to him.
A: The wrecked boat in Gilligan’s Island was named after him (with a slight change in spelling).
Sorry. Just noticed it’s multiple choice.
A: Father Knows Best
B: Leave it to Beaver
C: The Twilight Zone
D: Gilligan’s Island
There’s a thread in FQ about trivia questions that surpringly have two answers. You might look through that one.
Give us some examples of questions that you will be using for this trivia game, since it appears we don’t know how difficult your questions will be.
Two examples I’ve put in my quiz (these have a 20-second or 30-second timer):
*Where is the 10th-largest pyramid in the world?*
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Khartoum, Sudan
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Amhara, Ethiopia
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Temuco, Chile
4) Memphis, Tennessee
and also
What was the only civilian air flight permitted on 9/11 after planes were grounded?
1) An organ donor flight ferrying a heart from Nashville to Houston
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An air ambulance carrying a Louisiana snakebite victim
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A scientific aircraft monitoring a hurricane near Florida
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A pharmaceutical jet carrying anesthesia drugs to a Seattle hospital for a surgical operation
According to this webpage, the pyramid in Memphis is the sixth tallest in the world:
What is your evidence that the only flight was the one from Nashville to Houston? I’ve found a website claiming that the only flight was one from San Diego to Miami carrying snakebite antivenom. I would recommend that you make very sure that you’ve got an absolutely certain answer for this question and any others you do. I would be surprised if it’s true that most people think that Nicole Kidman is American. Do you mean to tell me that every time the video she does before all movies at AMC movie theaters start where she walks through the rain to a AMC movie theater, most people say to themselves, “Why is she talking in that weird accent, since she’s American?”?
Who was the youngest president at his inauguration? Most people will think Kennedy, who was the youngest elected. T. Roosevelt was the youngest at his first inauguration due to assassination of McKinley. I guess just add any other two names for choices after JFK and TR.
According to this article, “That was the only flight allowed in the air that day outside of any military patrol.”
But apparently it was a liver, not a heart.
The antivenom flight was on Sept-12, not Sept-11.
What it says in that article is that it’s unlikely that any civilian flight wasn’t grounded on September 11, 20001. Again, you need to do further research on this question. I’m not sure that it’s possible to say exactly what the first non-grounded flight was after the terrorist attacks. I suggest that you don’t use questions where the Internet isn’t full of contradictory claims.
Which of the following birds cannot walk backwards?
Goose
Emu
Ostrich
Chicken
I meant to say, ”I suggest that you don’t use questions where the Internet is full of contradictory claims.”
Who scored the winning run against a pitcher throwing a nine-inning complete-game no-hitter?
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Ty Cobb
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Pete Rose
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Willie Mays
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Barry Bonds
Who was the only person to receive an Academy Award nomination in an acting category for their work in a Star Wars film?
Harrison Ford
Ewan McGregor
Alec Guinness
Carrie Fisher