Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia

George Washington, as the first President, is the only one to appoint every single member of the U.S. Supreme Court, although FDR, who was elected four times, came close.

George Washington was one of the richest men in the new United States in terms of property (he owned more than 40,000 acres from Virginia to Ohio) but was so broke in terms of cash in 1789 he had to borrow money to get to his inauguration.

I think someone said that before.

Washington was inaugurated for the first time in New York City, on the balcony of Federal Hall, and for the second time in Philladelphia, in the U.S. Senate chamber.

Though most think of George Washington as a tobacco farmer- and he did grow it-his main cash crops and products for the last 30 years of his wife were actually wheat, hemp, timber, wool, and corn. The flour mills and wooleries at Mt. Vernon made him relatively debt free- something unheard of for tobacco planters- and gave him the liberty to manumit his slaves in his will.

Not GW again, guys. :frowning:

Paul Lynde, the acerbic comedian known for being at the center of the Hollywood Squares tic-tac-toe grid, was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

Stan Lynde wrote and illustrated the comic strip Rick O’Shay, one of the more highly regarded western strips.

Lynde McCormick, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, served in both World War 1 and World War 2, and eventually rose to the position of Supreme Allied Commander of the NATO fleet in the Atlantic Ocean.

Maureen McCormick played “Marica! Marcia! Marcia!” on the sitcom, The Brady Bunch.

The Brady Bill (properly, the Brady Handgun Violence Act) was not signed into law until 1993, although it’s named after James Brady, who was injured in John Hinkley’s 1981 attempt to assassinate Ronald Reagan.

The Act requires background checks in order to purchase a weapon.

New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady was not drafted until the sixth round in the 2000 NFL draft. That draft was not generally seen as a good one for quarterbacks, with only four (Chad Pennington, Giovanni Carmazzi, Chris Redman, and Tee Martin) going in the first five rounds.

Steve Martin worked at Disneyland in his youth, and recently earned a Grammy for his banjo playing. He cohosted the most recent Oscars ceremony with Alec Baldwin, who notoriously left a very mean-spirited voicemail message for his teenage daughter a few years ago.

*National Lampoon’s Vacation *was based on a short story by John Hughes about his family’s trip to Disneyland as a child. In the original story, when they arrive to find Disneyland closed, his father buys a rifle and a map of the stars’ homes in order to hunt down Walt Disney.

National Lampoon was a spin off of the Harvard Lampoon magazine. It was successful largely due to the popularity of parody and surreal writing at the time.

The National was a short-lived but much-loved sports tabloid that was published for 18 months in 1990-91. Frank Deford, perhaps best known nowadays for his sports commentaries on NPR, was editor in chief.

Frank DeFord wrote the football-themed novel Everybody’s All-American, which was later made into a movie starring Dennis Quaid and Jessica Lange. In the book, Gavin Grey played for the North Carolina Tar Heels. In the movie, he was an LSU Tiger.

The All America Football Conference was formed as a rival to the National Football League. The new league was ultimately unsuccessful. However, three teams – the Baltimore Colts, Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers – were taken into the NFL.

Of the four teams (Quebec Nordiques, Winnipeg Jets, Hartford Whalers and Edmonton Oilers) taken into the NHL from the WHA merger, only Edmonton still remains in it’s orginal home city. Quebec became the Colorado Avalanche; Winnipeg became the Phoenix Coyotes and Hartford became the Carolina Hurricanes.

There are several places in Quebec named Vaudreuil, after the last French governor of Canada (then “New France”) and an ancestor of mine.

One of the best-known recurring sketches on SCTV, Bob and Doug McKenzie’s “Great White North”, was created as a tongue-in-cheek “response” to the CBC’s request for two minutes of “identifiably Canadian content” per program.