# Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia **URL:** \ **Category:** Thread Games\ **Created:** [February 4, 2010, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657 "2010-02-04T08:12:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1619
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32367 "2016-10-23T03:53:46Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Fact check: The Bible was not Gutenberg’s first work. Preparation of the Bible probably began soon after 1450, and the first finished copies were available in 1454 or 1455. It is not known exactly how long the Bible took to print. The first precisely datable printing is the Gutenberg’s 31-line Indulgence which is known to already exist on 22 October 1454. – fro,m Wiki My cite: [Here are 10 Very Interesting Facts About the Catholic Church You Probably Didn't Know! - Living Faith - Home & Family - News - Catholic Online](http://www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=57689) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32368 "2016-10-23T03:53:53Z")
Italian is not one of the official languages of the United Nations, into which all of its meetings and publications are translated. They are: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32369 "2016-10-23T03:55:33Z")
The apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes to Bernadette Soubirous took place in a grotto that is visited by many Catholics to this day. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32370 "2016-10-23T04:07:31Z")
I was ninja’d. Playing off of EH’s post: The Arabic alphabet is always cursive. It contains 28 letters. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32371 "2016-10-23T04:21:37Z")
> [@Bullitt](#): > > I was ninja’d. Playing off of EH’s post: The Arabic alphabet is always cursive. It contains 28 letters. Arabic has no “p” sound in it, with the equivalents being represented by either a “b” or an “f”. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32372 "2016-10-23T05:36:26Z")
Among the Indo-European languages, one notable sound divergence between the Germanic languages and other languages is that while some languages (Latin, Greek, Sanskrit) kept the “p” sound at the beginning of certain words, in the Germanic languages the “p” sound gradually morphed into an “f” sound. The best example of this difference is the word for “father”. It is “pater” in Latin and Greek, “pitar” in Sanskrit. In the Germanic languages, the word for “father” begins with a “f” sound, as in “father” in English, and “far” in Norwegian and Swedish. In some cases it has morphed still further, towards “v”, as in German “vater” and Dutch “vader”. This sound change is summarised in Grimm’s law. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32373 "2016-10-23T07:51:06Z")
The original Hawaiian alphabet included seven diphthongs: AE, AI, AO, AU, EI, EU, and OU. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32374 "2016-10-23T11:53:27Z")
The **Seven** Sisters is a loose association of seven liberal arts colleges in the Northeastern United States that are historically women’s colleges. They are Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College. All were founded between 1837 and 1889. Four are in Massachusetts, two are in New York, and one is in Pennsylvania. Radcliffe (which merged with Harvard College) and Vassar (which is now coeducational) are no longer women’s-only colleges. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32375 "2016-10-23T12:53:46Z")
Chemist and educator Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke College (then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in 1837, nearly a century before women gained the right to vote. This was the first of the Seven Sisters schools. Emily Dickinson attended for a year in 1848, and the only documented photograph of her was taken at the school. [Synchronicity–I’m visiting Mt. Holyoke today. It’s a beautiful school] ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32376 "2016-10-23T12:58:39Z")
My daughter lived in Mary Lyon Hall at UMass Amherst, where the dorms are mostly named for distinguished Massachusetts educators. The chancellor when she graduated was Thomas Cole, a name shared by the Hudson River School painter who produced “View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm”, commonly known as “[The Oxbow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oxbow)”. That feature of the Connecticut River would not be recognizable to Cole today, btw. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32377 "2016-10-23T14:06:23Z")
> [@Bullitt](#): > > My cite: [Here are 10 Very Interesting Facts About the Catholic Church You Probably Didn't Know! - Living Faith - Home & Family - News - Catholic Online](http://www.catholic.org/news/hf/faith/story.php?id=57689) Gutenberg didn’t invent the printing press. He is credited with inventing movable type, but even that existed in China 400 years before Gutenberg. Fixed-type printing presses had been around for centuries. Gutenberg may have been the fist to use movable type for a phonetic alphabet. Do not depend on Catholic sites for unbiased history. In play: My daughter lived in Mary Lyon Hall at UMass Amherst, where the dorms are mostly named for distinguished Massachusetts educators. The chancellor when she graduated was Thomas Cole, a name shared by the Hudson River School painter who produced “View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm”, commonly known as “The Oxbow”. That feature of the Connecticut River would not be recognizable to Cole today, btw. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32378 "2016-10-23T14:12:31Z")
Gotcha. The Oxbow is an extension of the Connecticut River, located in Northampton MA. The northern end of the oxbow was cut off to build Interstate 91, which runs between the Oxbow and the Connecticut River. The Connecticut River is still accessible by a channel made under the Interstate 91 and U.S. Route 5 bridges. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32379 "2016-10-23T14:54:42Z")
Oxbow is a generic name for a geographical feature, which is a U-shaped lake where a river used to be, but the river changed course taking a short cut across the meander, leaving a landlocked lake. A number of oxbows along the Mississippi River have left places where state lines are now on the “wrong” side of the river, following the former path of the river through what is now an oxbow. In the American southwest, they are often called by their Spanish name, “resaca”. ---
**Author:** ![Bullitt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bullitt/32/5725_2.png) [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32380 "2016-10-23T15:02:28Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Oxbow is a generic name for a geographical feature, which is a U-shaped lake where a river used to be, but the river changed course taking a short cut across the meander, leaving a landlocked lake. A number of oxbows along the Mississippi River have left places where state lines are now on the “wrong” side of the river, following the former path of the river through what is now an oxbow. The Kentucky Bend is one such oxbow where the river still runs. The Kentucky Bend is an exclave of Fulton County KY encircled by the states of Tennessee and Missouri. It is a portion of a peninsula defined by an oxbow loop meander of the Mississippi River, and its inclusion in the state of Kentucky stems from uncertainties of the course of the Mississippi River when the boundary between Tennessee and Kentucky was established. To go from the Kentucky Bend to the rest of Kentucky, without crossing the Mississippi, you have to pass through Tennessee. ---
**Author:** ![ozziemaland](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f07891/32.png) [@ozziemaland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ozziemaland)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32381 "2016-10-23T15:59:55Z")
On March 27, 1814, General Andrew Jackson led troops consisting of 2,600 American soldiers, 500 Cherokee, and 100 Lower Creek allies (3,400 total) up a steep hill near Tehopeka, Alabama. Jackson then led an attack on about 1,000 warriors of the Red Stick branch of the Creek Nation, starting the Battle of Horseshoe **Bend**. The Creek warriors fought for more than five hours. At the end, roughly 800 Red Sticks were killed, while Jackson had fewer than 50 men killed (with another 154 wounded). Sam Houston, who later became the only Southern governor to oppose secession from the US, suffered a wound from an arrow that bothered him the rest of his life. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2016, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32382 "2016-10-23T18:59:02Z")
Aron Lee Ralston survived a canyoneering accident in southeastern Utah in 2003, during which he amputated his own right forearm with a dull pocketknife in order to extricate himself from a dislodged boulder, which had him trapped in Blue John Canyon (just off **Horseshoe** Canyon) for five days and seven hours. After he freed himself, he had to make his way through the remainder of the canyon, then rappel down a 65-foot sheer cliff face in order to reach safety. (I’ve been in that canyon, and had my own life-threatening crisis.) ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32383 "2016-10-24T00:06:09Z")
A small number of American place names are correctly spelled with a tilde above the N, including Cañon City, Colorado, La Cañada, California and Doña Ana County, New Mexico. All ae pronounced with Spanish phonetics, as /canyon city/, /lockin-yodda/ and /doan-yonna/. Computer keyboards in the USA are furnished with a key for the tilde, but it is absolutely useless, as there is no way to superimpose it over a N. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32384 "2016-10-24T00:10:24Z")
You ñeed a Mac. ¡Ño problemo! Canadian keyboards for PCs contain a toggle feature that makes it easy to toggle back and forth as needed between English and French, without using ASCII codes. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32385 "2016-10-24T01:40:16Z")
A toggle was originally a small piece of wood, plastic, metal, etc., that was pushed through a loop or hole to fasten one part of something to another part. It is more commonly used today as a computer term for a setting that can be switched between two different options by pressing a single key. ---
**Author:** ![ozziemaland](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f07891/32.png) [@ozziemaland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ozziemaland)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2016, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657/32386 "2016-10-24T02:00:42Z")
On March 16, 1984, William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists. The Lebanon hostage crisis was the systematic kidnapping in Lebanon of 96 foreign hostages of 21 national origins—mostly American and western European — between 1982 and 1992. At least eight hostages died in captivity; some were murdered, while others died from lack of adequate medical attention to illnesses. Former American hostage David Jacobsen revealed that Buckley died of a heart attack brought on by torture, probably on June 3, 1985. His remains were found in a **plastic** sack on the side of the road to the Beirut airport in 1991. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657.md?page=1618) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trivia-dominoes-play-off-the-last-bit-of-trivia/527657.md?page=1620)