World Trivia Night is North America’s largest live trivia contest, held annually in Ottawa, Ontario since 1993. (In this sense, “live” means people answering the same questions, read live in the same forum, as opposed to radio contests.)
North America’s largest desert is the Great Basin Desert, covering 190,000 square miles. It is bordered by the Sierra Nevada Range on the west and the Rocky Mountains on the east, the Columbia Plateau to the north and the Mojave and Sonoran deserts to the south. The Great Basin Desert is a cold desert caused by the rain shadow effect of the Sierra Nevada to the west.
Most of Antarctica is classified as desert, due to the extremely low annual levels of precipitation.
One of the dryest places on earth are The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. These valleys have not seen rainfall in over two million years. With the exception of one valley, whose lakes are briefly filled with water by inland flowing rivers during the summer, the Dry Valleys contain no moisture (water, ice, or snow). The reasons why the Dry Valleys exist are the 200 mph Katabatic down winds which evaporate all moisture. The dry valleys are strange: except for a few steep rocks they are the only continental part of Antarctica devoid of ice.
Fort Jefferson on the island of Dry Tortugas 68 miles from Key West- one of the most remote National Parks- has a strong African-American history. Leased slaves were used to build the fort up until 1863; there’s a very interesting story about an unexpected escape attempt.
After the war several black soldiers were sent there for garrison duty and as guards for the Federal prisoners kept there. The most famous prisoner was Dr. Samuel Mudd, a vehement pro-Confederate who mentioned his hatred of the black guards many times in his letters to his family.
Fort Jefferson - a cool place to visit!
In-play:
Fort Jefferson is the largest masonry structure in the Western Hemisphere, and is composed of over 16 million bricks.
Fort Whoop-Up was a fort built by American whiskey traders in the Lethbridge area. The whiskey trade with First Nations contributed to the Cypress Hills Massacre, where 23 Nakota were killed by a group of American whiskey traders. The American presence in the West led to the decision by the Canadian government to organise the North-West Mounted Police and send them west. During the march west, the Mounties established Fort Walsh in the Cypress Hills, to prevent recurrences of the tension which had led to the Massacre.
(In Canadian western mythos, the First Nations are seen as the “good guys” and the Americans as the “bad guys”, unlike the US movie models. 
)
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, the site of the Charlottetown Conference in 1864, the first gathering of Canadian and Maritime statesmen to debate the proposed Maritime Union and the more persuasive British North American Union, now known as Canadian Confederation. From this, the city adopted as its motto “Cunabula Foederis” – “Birthplace of Confederation”.
The classic children’s novel Anne of Green Gables takes place on Prince Edward Island, but the main character was born in Nova Scotia.
Edward Albee has won two Tony awards for Best Play, nearly forty years apart. He received the award in 1963 for ***Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, ***and then again in 2002 for The Goat.
After completing the manuscript of her last (posthumously published) novel, Between the Acts, Woolf fell into a depression similar to that which she had earlier experienced. The onset of World War II, the destruction of her London home during the Blitz, and the cool reception given to her biography of her late friend Roger Fry all worsened her condition until she was unable to work. On 28 March 1941, Woolf put on her overcoat, filled its pockets with stones, and walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned herself. Woolf’s body was not found until 18 April 1941. Her husband buried her cremated remains under an elm in the garden of Monk’s House, their home in Rodmell, Sussex.
Third time’s a charm?
In play:
Nicole Kidman wore a prosthetic nose to play Virginia Woolf in the 2002 film The Hours. The nose got more attention from some critics than her performance, for which she nevertheless won an Oscar.
The Acts of the Apostles, commonly attributed to St. Luke, details the early history of the church after the Ascension.
The British victory in the Falklands War was made possible by its control of Ascension Island. The island’s air base, the RAF’s Wideawake Field (named for a loud species of sooty tern that inhabits the place) was critical for refueling bombers and transports.
U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig’s shuttle diplomacy between London and Buenos Aires failed to avert the Falklands War of 1982, in which Great Britain dealt Argentina a crushing defeat after Argentina invaded the British islands.
The US Airways Shuttle, connecting Boston’s Logan Airport, New York’s LaGuardia Airport, and Washington’s National Airport, was originally the Eastern Airlines Shuttle, then the Trump Shuttle, and will soon be renamed the American Airlines Shuttle. The competing Delta Shuttle, serving the same routes, was previously the Pan Am Shuttle.
So, it’s a shuttle shuffle, eh?
in play:
Logan’s Run was the inspiration for the song Sandman by America.
The television series Logan’s Run, starring Gregory Harrison as Logan 5 and Heather Menzies as Jessica 6, lasted just one season of 14 episodes, in 1977-78.
It was a joke; dying makes you a bad houseguest. Why have you taken up being a [del]dic[/del]jerk in this thread as a hobby? Did you refugee here?
In play:
Tobias Menzies played Brutus in HBO’s Rome and now plays Edmure Tully in HBO’s Game of Thrones.