Trivia Dominoes: Play Off the Last Bit of Trivia

George Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army before the Continental Congress in Annapolis, Md. in late December 1783, and rode quickly to arrive at Mount Vernon by Christmas.

According to Google Maps, the road distance from Annapolis, MD is:

— 49 miles to Mt. Vernon, VA
— 233 miles to Mt. Vernon, NY
— 421 miles to Mt. Vernon, OH
— 767 miles to Mt. Vernon, IL
— 812 miles to Mt. Vernon, IL
— 1,266 miles to Mt. Vernon, TX
— 2,621 miles to Mt. Vernon, CA, and
— 2,840 miles to Mt. Vernon, WA.

Vernon, CA is a primarily industrial city just south of downtown Los Angeles. With a population of 112, it is the least populated city in the state of California.

Vernon Dent was an actor best known (with Bud Jamison) for being the foil for the Three Stooges. One or the other appeared in nearly all of the shorts the Stooges made.

George Washington’s beloved half-brother Lawrence named his country estate Mount Vernon in honor of Royal Navy Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, under whom he served in the Caribbean.

The USS George Washington (CVN-73) is a United States Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. She is the sixth carrier in the Nimitz class and the fourth US Navy ship named after George Washington. She was built by Newport News Shipbuilding and was commissioned on 4 July 1992.

The town of George, Washington, in Grant County, has a population of 501 as of 2010.

The city of George, Washington, in Grant County, is known for being near the Gorge Ampitheater.

This ampitheater is sometimes called “The Gorge at George”. The Gorge Amphitheater is the host of the annual Sasquatch! Music Festival.

The Governor and Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson’s Bay received a grant from King Charles II of all land in the drainage area of Hudson’s Bay. Known as Rupert’s Land, named after the King’s cousin, Rupert of the Rhine, it was one of the single largest land grants in history, by one estimate being over a million square miles.

Prince Rupert of the Rhine was the son of Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of King James I of England. He was the nephew of Charles I and the cousin of Charles II. His sister Sophia, Electress of Hanover, was the mother of George I. His titles included Count Palatine, Duke of Bavaria, Duke of Cumberland and Duke of Holderness. Upon the overthrow of Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth, he was banned from England, and went to France where he served Louis XIV.

Italian actress Sophia Loren was about 10 years old during WWII. Once, during a bombing air raid in her town, a bomb exploded nearby and she was struck by some shrapnel and wounded in the chin.

In the movie The Third Miracle (starring Ed Harris and Anne Heche) bombs are dropped on Bystrica, Slovakia during WWII but do not explode.

Banská Bystrica, Slovakia is located on the Hron River. During World War II, Banská Bystrica became the center of anti-Nazi opposition in Slovakia when the Slovak National Uprising, one of the largest anti-Nazi resistance events in Europe, was launched from the city on 29 Aug 1944. The insurgents were defeated on 27 Oct, however, and Banská Bystrica was briefly occupied by the German forces before it was liberated by Soviet and Romanian troops on 26 Mar 1945.

Soviet troops systematically raped large numbers of German women during their conquest of Nazi Germany in 1944-45, and thereafter, a massive war crime that was not publicly acknowledged by East Germany’s pro-Soviet regime for decades.

In the 1930s, German engineer Ferdinand Porsche invented the limited slip differential.
In 1932, Ferdinand Porsche designed a Grand Prix racing car for the Auto Union company. The high power of the design caused one of the rear wheels to experience excessive wheel spin at any speed up to 100 mph (160 km/h). In 1935, Porsche commissioned the engineering firm ZF to design a limited-slip differential that would perform better. The ZF “sliding pins and cams” became available, and one example was the Type B-70 for early VWs.

The main advantage of a limited-slip differential is demonstrated by considering the case of a standard (or “open”) differential in off-roading or snow situations where one wheel begins to slip or lose contact with the ground. In such a case with a standard differential, the slipping or non-contacting wheel will receive the majority of the power, while the contacting wheel will remain stationary with the ground. The torque transmitted will be equal at both wheels, and therefore, will not exceed the threshold of torque needed to move the wheel with traction. In this situation, a limited-slip differential prevents excessive power from being allocated to one wheel, and thereby keeping both wheels in powered rotation.

Differential calculus as we know it today is credited to Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, independently but simultaneously, although its origins can be traced to India and the work of Aryabhata and Bhaskara II, and to Persia and Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī. Newton and Leibniz both had the insight now called the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (that differentiation and integration are inverse operations), though. Each man’s notation is in common use today - Newton’s dots over variables to indicate time derivatives, and Leibniz’ more-general d/dx.

Isaac Newton is not known to have had any siginificant romantic relationships throughout his life, and is thought by some biographers to have probably died a virgin.

Sir Isaac Newton was the first Englishman to be knighted for purely academic achievements.

Johannes Brahms’ “Academic Festival Overture”, a gesture of thanks to the University of Breslau for awarding him an honorary doctorate, combined the tunes of several popular student drinking songs, including “Fuchslied” (Was kommt dort von der Höh), “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus”, and “Gaudeamus igitur”.

Breslaw’s city name was first recorded as “Wrotizlava” in the chronicle of German chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg, which mentions it as a seat of a newly installed bishopric in the context of the Congress of Gniezno. The city is traditionally believed to be named after Wrocisław or Vratislav, often believed to be Duke Vratislaus I of Bohemia. It is also possible that the city was named after the tribal duke of the Silesians or after an early ruler of the city called Vratislav.