Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia

Allen Sherman had the #1 album in 1962 with My Son, the Folk Singer, a set of song parodies using well-known tunes with his own lyrics.

Allie Sherman (Allie for Alex; 1923-2015) was an NFL football Hall of Fame quarterback who played for the Philadelphia-Pittsburgh Steagles and the Philadelphia Eagles. The Steagles were the team created by the temporary merger of two teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles, during the 1943 season. The NFL’s official record book refers to the team as “Phil-Pitt Combine”, but the unofficial “Steagles”, despite never being registered by the NFL, has become the enduring moniker.

And thus ties 40715 with 40714.

William Tecumseh Sherman of Ohio, the U.S. Army major general during the Civil War whose capture of Atlanta in September 1864 is often credited with ensuring President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection and thus helping win the war, was called “Cump” by his friends.

The National Football League (NFL) Hall of Fame is located in Canton, Ohio and was opened in 1963. There are currently 318 members of the Hall, Canton was chosen as it was the location of the founding of the American Professional Football Association, which later became the NFL, in 1920 and had an NFL team in the early years (the Canton Bulldogs).

The college with the most alumni in the NFL Hall of Fame is Notre Dame, with 13 inductees. Southern California (USC) is next on the list with 12 inductees; Ohio State follows with 10. No other school has more than 8.

Carmen Twillie Ambar, inaugurated as president of Oberlin College earlier this month, is the second woman and the first person of color to lead the college, founded in 1833. Oberlin was the first American college to regularly admit female and black students.

Oberlin OH and its college are named after Jean-Frédéric Oberlin (1740–1826), an Alsatian minister and philanthropist. J. F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan, also bears his name.

Actress and singer Betty Aberlin is primarily known for appearing as “Lady Aberlin” for the entire 33-year run of the children’s television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Later in her career, Aberlin also made appearances in several Kevin Smith films, including Dogma and Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

“Dogma” is transliterated in the 17th century from Latin meaning “philosophical tenet”, which in turn was derived from the Greek dogma meaning literally “that which one thinks is true” and dokein “to seem good.”

George Carlin, raised Catholic but long an acerbic critic of the Roman Catholic Church, played a cardinal in the 1999 religious satire movie Dogma. The film was written and directed by Kevin Smith.

When George Carlin was 10 his idol was Danny Kaye.

Danny Kaye had a wide range of interests and talents. He was an avid cook (and had his own restaurant built at the rear of his home), was an aviation enthusiast and accomplished pilot, owned several radio stations, and was one of the original owners of the Seattle Mariners baseball team.

The Danny Kaye film Hans Christian Andersen is not a biography; instead the opening scene states “Once upon a time there lived in Denmark a great storyteller named Hans Christian Andersen. This is not the story of his life, but a fairy tale about the great spinner of fairy tales.”
It received 6 Oscar nominations including Best Music, Original Song (Frank Loesser for the song “Thumbelina”) and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Walter Scharf). It was also a nominee for 2 Golden Globe awards: Best Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical, and Best Actor - Comedy or Musical: Danny Kaye

In 1847, Hans Christian Andersen met Charles Dickens at a party hosted by the Countess of Blessington. 10 years later, Anderson visited his friend Dickens and his family at their home, stayed too long, and was asked to leave. This ended their friendship.

According to The Phrase Finder, the phrase ‘like the Dickens’ has nothing to do with Charles Dickens. ‘Dickens’ is probably a euphmenism for the word ‘devil’. Shakespeare used it in The Merry Wives of Windsor: ‘I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of.’

Dickens, Nebraska, about 175 miles west of Grand Island (which is on I-80) is named after Charles Dickens. Dickens NE had its start in the 1880s by the building of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad through that territory.

The Pioneer Zephyrwas a streamlined, diesel-powered passenger train which was built by the Budd Company, and operated by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, beginning in 1934.

The Zephyr was an articulated train – that is, the locomotive and cars were all interconnected, and custom-built to be run as a set. Its exterior was largely stainless steel, and its stylish design (and high-speed service) led to it being the first successful streamlined train design in the U.S.

“Zephyr”, in Greek mythology, is the God of the west wind, supposedly a gentle Spring breeze that inspires new growth.This function is referred to in the first lines of the Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes

In modern English,
When Zephyr also has with his sweet breath,
Filled again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and leaves

The 2001 film A Knight’s Tale borrows its title from the first story (“The Knight’s Tale”) in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. In A Knight’s Tale, Paul Bettany appears as a fictionalized version of Chaucer.

The knight’s tour problem is the mathematical problem of finding a knight’s tour – a sequence of moves of a knight on a chessboard such that the knight visits every square only once. Creating a program to find a knight’s tour is a common problem given to computer science students.

The earliest known reference to the knight’s tour problem dates back to the 9th century AD. Leonhard Euler (“oiler”) was one of the first mathematicians to investigate the knight’s tour.