Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Legal Sea Foods is an American restaurant chain of upscale casual-dining seafood restaurants operating in seven Eastern states and Washington, D.C., though most are in the Greater Boston area. The company was founded by George Berkowitz who opened the Legal Cash Market grocery store in 1950 in Cambridge, Mass. and he opened the first restaurant next door to the market in 1968. The original restaurant is featured in several of the Spenser books by Robert Parker.

[Bullitt]

Restaurateur Joyce Chen, Chef Julia Child, and Car Talk’s Click and Clack, Ray and Tom Magliozzi all hail from Cambridge MA.

[Northern_Piper]

When the '45 broke out, Oxford University was suspect of jacobitism, while Cambridge was well known as a strong-hold of whiggism. King George II dispatched troops to Oxford, and made a generous donation of books to Cambridge, resulting in this little verse, said to be from an Oxonian, making the best of it:

Our gracious monarch view’d, with equal eye,
The wants of either university.
Troops he to Oxford sent, well knowing why,
That learned body wanted loyalty;
But books to Cambridge sent, as well discerning,
That that right loyal body wanted learning.

It resulted in a rejoinder from Cambridge:

Our king to Oxford sent a troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force.
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument.

[Bullitt]

A Tory (or the Tories) was a Loyalist during the American Revolutionary War and had closer ties to the American Federalist party. Tories favored a strong monarchy. A Whig opposed having a strong presidency and led to the formation of the United States Whig Party, and fought for American Independence. Presidents William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, John Tyler and Millard Fillmore were Whigs. Fillmore was the last President from the Whig party. Abraham Lincoln was a Whig before becoming a Republican.

[The_Stainless_Steel_Rat]

Lost in Space was an American science fiction television series, following the adventures of a family of pioneering space colonists whose ship goes off course. Though the original television series concept centered on the Robinson family, many later story lines focused primarily on Dr. Zachary Smith, played by Jonathan Harris. Originally written as an utterly evil but careless saboteur, Smith gradually becomes the troublesome, self-centered, incompetent foil who provides the comic relief for the show and causes most of the episodic conflict and misadventures.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

British actor Gary Oldman played Dr. Smith in the widely-panned 1998 big-screen remake of Lost in Space. Also appearing in the film was Matt LeBlanc; Oldman had a cameo on LeBlanc’s hit TV series Friends.

[Sampiro]

Gary Oldman portrayed Lee Harvey Oswald in the movie JFK. Other actors to portray Oswald have included Neil Patrick Harris portrayed him in the Broadway premiere of the musical Assassins, and Australian actor Daniel Webber in the current Hulu series 11.22.63.

[Bullitt]

In the US Marine Corps, Lee Harvey Oswald was court-martialed after accidentally shooting himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 handgun, then court-martialed again for fighting with a Sergeant who he thought was responsible for his punishment in the shooting matter. He was demoted from Private First Class to Private and briefly imprisoned in the brig. He was later punished for a third incident: while on night-time sentry duty in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

Lee Harvey Oswald was also played (and very well) by actor Jeremy Strong in the 2013 movie Parkland, about the aftermath of President Kennedy’s assassination.

[Bullitt]

Project Apollo was the third of NASA’s three phases of manned space flight for landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. John F. Kennedy often gets credit for Project Apollo (1969-1972), as well as for Projects Gemini (1962-1966) and Mercury (1958-1963), however these programs were conceived under and funded by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

[Annie-Xmas]

In a series of Calvin & Hobbes comic strips that ran in January & February 1988, Susie Derkins is paired with Calvin to give an oral report on the planet Mercury. Calvin’s contribution in its entirety:Thank you, thank you! Hey, what a crowd! You look great this morning … really, I mean that! Go on, give yourselves a hand! You know, a funny thing happened on the way to the library yesterday .The planet Mercury was named after a roman god with winged feet. Mercury was the god of flow ers and bouquets, which is why today he is a registered trademark of FTD florists. Why they named a planet after this guy. I can’t imagine. … um back to you, Susie.

[The_Stainless_Steel_Rat]

Mercury is a chemical element with symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is commonly known as quicksilver. Mercury occurs in deposits throughout the world mostly as cinnabar. Mercury is the only metallic element that is liquid at standard conditions for temperature and pressure.

[Annie-Xmas]

Quicksilver is a historical novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2003, and winner of the 2004 Arthur C. Clarke Award… It is the first volume of The Baroque Cycle, Stephenson’s late Baroque historical fiction series, and was succeeded by The Confusion and The System of the World, both published in 2004.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

@Bullitt

Project Apollo was the third of NASA’s three phases of manned space flight for landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. John F. Kennedy often gets credit for Project Apollo (1969-1972), as well as for Projects Gemini (1962-1966) and Mercury (1958-1963), however these programs were conceived under and funded by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Not so:

Project Gemini - Wikipedia (conceived and funded under JFK)
Apollo program - Wikipedia (conceived in the very last days of Ike’s administration, but funded and moved dramatically forward under JFK’s)

In play:

Philip Stephenson was a Confederate artilleryman who fought at the Battle of New Hope Church in late May 1864, among others. He wrote a lengthy memoir of his wartime service which is an important historical resource. He became a preacher after the war.

[Bullitt]

The M7 howitzer mounted on the Sherman tank chassis was the best piece of self propelled artillery that the Western Allies had. Its nickname was the Priest because of the pulpit-shaped .50cal machinegun mount.

[The_Stainless_Steel_Rat]

General William T. Sherman held principal military responsibility for Kentucky in mid-1861. Kentucky, a border state in which Confederate troops held Columbus and Bowling Green and were present near the Cumberland Gap, was a critical area and Sherman suffered what would be called today a nervous breakdown and was relieved of command in November 1861. The Cincinnati Commercial newspaper described him as insane.

Unfortunately for the Confederacy, he got better.

[Bullitt]

@Bullitt

Project Apollo was the third of NASA’s three phases of manned space flight for landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth. John F. Kennedy often gets credit for Project Apollo (1969-1972), as well as for Projects Gemini (1962-1966) and Mercury (1958-1963), however these programs were conceived under and funded by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Okay, Apollo was conceived and funded under Eisenhower, but Gemini was under Kennedy. Because Gemini was before Apollo, I thought it, too, had to be initially conceived and funded by Eisenhower. But Gemini was the crucial bridge between Mercury and Apollo that allowed us to land on the moon, and it was conceived of and funded under Kennedy.

On October 21, 1959, Eisenhower approved the transfer of the Army’s remaining space-related activities to NASA. On July 1, 1960, the Redstone Arsenal became NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, with von Braun as its first director. Development of the Saturn rocket family, which when mature, would finally give the US parity with the Soviets in terms of lifting capability, was thus transferred to NASA.

And (emphsis mine):

Charged with landing an astronaut on the moon, Project Apollo was announced July 29, 1960. The proposal departed from NASA’s original 10-year plan, which had been presented to Congress in February 1960 and called for circumlunar flight, not a lunar landing, Logsdon said.

See more at: NASA's Legacy: The Quest for the Moon | Space
And (emphasis again mine):

Firm evidence for Kennedy’s essential unwillingness to commit to an aggressive space program came in March 1961 when the NASA Administrator, James E. Webb, submitted a request that greatly expanded his agency’s fiscal year 1962 budget so as to permit a Moon landing before the end of the decade. While the Apollo lunar landing program had existed as a longterm goal of NASA during the Eisenhower administration, Webb proposed greatly expanding and accelerating it. Kennedy’s budget director, David E. Bell, objected to this large increase and debated Webb on the merits of an accelerated lunar landing program. In the end the president was unwilling to obligate the nation to a much bigger and more costly space program. Instead, in good political fashion, he approved a modest increase in the NASA budget to allow for development of the big launch vehicles that would eventually be required to support a Moon landing.10

Of course, when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were in office, they added funding to Project Apollo.

In play, still:

@Bullitt

The M7 howitzer mounted on the Sherman tank chassis was the best piece of self propelled artillery that the Western Allies had. Its nickname was the Priest because of the pulpit-shaped .50cal machinegun mount.

[Bullitt]

Ninja’d. This is in play:

@The_Stainless_Steel_Rat

General William T. Sherman held principal military responsibility for Kentucky in mid-1861. Kentucky, a border state in which Confederate troops held Columbus and Bowling Green and were present near the Cumberland Gap, was a critical area and Sherman suffered what would be called today a nervous breakdown and was relieved of command in November 1861. The Cincinnati Commercial newspaper described him as insane.

Unfortunately for the Confederacy, he got better.

[Bullitt]

A bowling green is a lawn used for playing the game of bowls. The world’s oldest surviving bowling green is the Southampton Old Bowling Green, which was first used in 1299.

[Northern_Piper]

The Koe rink from Alberta just defeated the Gushue rink from Newfoundland and Labrador in the 87th Brier game, the Canadian men’s curling championship.

With the score at 7-5 in the 9th end, Koe just did a run-back take-out and stuck for two in the final game of the Brier. With the score now at 9-5, Gushue (an Olympic gold medalist) and his team conceded.

Koe and Co. will represent Canada at the Men’s World Championship next month.