Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia

Gary Larson was born in 1950 in Tacoma WA and tried cartooning at the age of 26. Drawing admittedly on his family’s “morbid sense of humor”, he drew six cartoons and submitted them to the Seattle-based Pacific Search (later the Pacific Northwest Magazine). To supplement his fledgling income, Larson worked for the Humane Society as a cruelty investigator.

But while on vacation in San Francisco, Larson pitched his work to the San Francisco Chronicle and, to his surprise, the Chronicle bought the strip and promoted it for syndication, renaming from Nature’s Way to The Far Side. Its first appearance in the Chronicle was on January 1, 1980.

France Nuyen made her film debut in 1958 as Liat in South Pacific. A victim of abuse as a child, she earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology in 1986 and began a second career as a counselor for abused women and children, and women in prison.

Nearly 20% of the territory of France lies outside Europe. Overseas France includes island territories in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, French Guiana on the South American continent, and several periantarctic islands as well as a claim in Antarctica. Overseas France covers a land area of 46,099 sq mi that accounts for 18% of the French Republic’s land territory.

The longest running West End musical in history is Les Misérables, and the longest running Broadway musical in history is The Phantom of the Opera. Both of these productions are based on books by Frenchmen, and both were produced by Cameron Macintosh.

Medieval London comprised two adjacent cities: the City of London to the east, and the City of Westminster to the west. Over time they came to form the center of modern London, although each kept its own separate legal identity and character. The City of London became a center for the banking, financial, legal and professional sectors, while Westminster became associated with the leisure, shopping, commerce, and entertainment sectors, the government, and home to universities and embassies. The modern West End is closely associated with this area of central London.

Westminster, California is unofficially known as the “capital” of overseas Vietnamese with 36,058 Vietnamese Americans and at 40.2% (as of 2010), the highest municipal prevalence of Vietnamese Americans. Many Vietnamese refugees immigrated there in the 1980s and settled largely in the area now officially named Little Saigon.

A substantial number of nail technicians in the US are Vietnamese-American women, largely due to the efforts of actress Tippi Hedren to find employment for war refugees.

That is a great article and story. Thank you, Elvis, for sharing. Reminds me of when my family first moved to the US (from the Philippines, I was a young lad), we would always send gifts and supplies home there to family. In “Balikbayan boxes”. I get my monthly haircut at such a place.
In play: The city of Weimar CA was formed from Vietnamese refugees that immigrated to the United States in 1975 and stayed in a resettlement center.

Weimar Hope Village has a Facebook page: Weimar Hope Village

I believe this is the place, approx 45 miles NE of Sacramento (gMap: Google Maps).

The ‘Weimar Republic’ is a historical designation for the German state during the years 1919 to 1933. The name derives from the city of Weimar, where its constitutional assembly first took place. The constitution was adopted on August 11, 1919. During its existence, the Republic faced numerous problems, including rampant inflation, paramilitaries from both the left and right, and political extremism. There were 15 chancellors of the Weimar Republic; the first was Philipp Scheidemann, and the last, appointed in 1933 by President Paul von Hindenburg, was a guy named Adolf Hitler.

The United States is a federal republic of 50 states, a federal district, five territories and several uninhabited island possessions. The five territories are permanently inhabited and are classified as unincorporated territories: American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. The US Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917.

Mariana of Austria, wife of King Philip IV of Spain, was the subject of several technically brilliant portraits by Diego Velasquez; however, in spite of her elaborate dresses, coiffures and jewelry, she looks plain and unhappy. She appears in the background of one of his masterpieces, Las Meninas, one of the most widely analyzed works in Western painting.

The historical records for the village of Fucking, Austria show that in the 11th century, its ruler was Adalpertus de Fucingin. The spelling of the name has evolved over the years; it is first recorded in historical sources with the spelling as Vucchingen in 1070, Fukching in 1303, Fugkhing in 1532, and in the modern spelling Fucking in the 18th century.

Fucking rhymes with looking.

In 1532, the Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent, who had failed to capture Vienna, Austria in 1529, again attempted to take the city, but were delayed at the Siege of Güns by a force of 800 Croatian soldiers, who held up Suleiman’s 120,000-man army long enough for the campaign to be too late in the season to reach Vienna before winter and allowed reinforcements to arrive in Vienna.

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The B-side of Neil Diamond’s single Soolaimón, which rhymes with Suleiman, is And the Grass Won’t Pay No Mind. The title of Soolaimón is meant to be a variation of the word ‘Salamah’, meaning ‘Hello’ and ‘Welcome’ as well as ‘Good-bye’ and peace be with you’, in many languages."

A “grass” is a British slang term for an informer. The origins of the term are not clear. It appears to date back to the 1930s.

In 1936 Florence Owens Thompson was 32 years old and homeless and destitute in Nipomo, California when 41-year old photographer Dorothea Lange snapped her picture. The photo, titled Migrant Mother, became an iconic image of the 1930s — image, Florence Owens Thompson - Wikipedia.

The photograph’s fame caused distress for Thompson and her children and raised ethical concerns about turning individuals into symbols. According to Thompson, Lange promised the photos would never be published, but Lange sent them to the *San Francisco News *as well as to the Resettlement Administration in Washington, D.C. The News ran the pictures almost immediately and reported that 2,500 to 3,500 migrant workers were starving in Nipomo.

Thompson’s identity was not known for over 40 years after the photos were taken. In 1978, acting on a tip, Modesto Bee reporter Emmett Corrigan located Thompson at her mobile home and recognized her from the 40-year-old photograph.

Thompson wrote a letter that was published in The Modesto Bee and the Associated Press distributed a story headlined “Woman Fighting Mad Over Famous Depression Photo.” Florence was quoted as saying “I wish she [Lange] hadn’t taken my picture. I can’t get a penny out of it. She didn’t ask my name. She said she wouldn’t sell the pictures. She said she’d send me a copy. She never did.”

Lange was funded by the federal government when she took the picture, so the image was in the public domain and Lange never directly received any royalties. However, the picture did help make Lange a celebrity.

Thompson passed away in 1983 at the age of 80 in Scotts Valley, California. She is buried in Hughson, California, some 100 miles east of San Francisco (gMap Google Maps).

Lange passed away in 1965 at the age of 70 in San Francisco, California. She was cremated, and her ashes were scattered.

Jack Lang, despite his anglo sounding name, was French. A long-standing Socialist politician, in his later years he has shifted rightwards, including working closely with President Sarkozy on certain issues. His vote on a package of constitutional amendments was vital to its passing, just one vote over the required threshold. He was the only Socislist to do so, leading to his ostracism within the party.

The 23 US constitutional amendments are (summaries):

  1. freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly
  2. RKBA, the right to keep and bear arms
  3. quartering of soldiers
  4. unreasonable searches and seizures
  5. the right to due process
  6. fair and speedy trial
  7. trial by jury
  8. excessive fines; cruel and unusual punishment
  9. unenumerated rights
  10. federalism; states’ rights
  11. states’ sovereign immunity
  12. presidential election procedures
  13. abolition of slavery
  14. citizenship; equal protection
  15. right to vote
  16. income tax
  17. direct election of United States Senators by popular vote
  18. alcohol prohibition
  19. women’s suffrage
  20. terms dates for Pres, VP, Senators
  21. repeal 18th
  22. Presidential terms
  23. District of Columbia electors

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The first jurisdictions and countries to grant women the right to vote were the Isle of Man, which in 1881 gave women who owned property the right to vote. This was 39 years before the US 19th Amendment.

In 1893, the British colony of New Zealand granted women the right to vote. The colony of South Australia did the same in 1895 and women were able to vote in the next election, held in 1896. South Australia also permitted women to stand for election alongside men. The first European countries to introduce women’s suffrage were the Grand Duchy of Finland, then part of the Russian Empire, which elected the world’s first women Members of Parliament in the 1907 parliamentary elections. Norway followed, granting full women’s suffrage in 1913.