Today I thought it might be fun to share some facts that I’ve recently found on Trivia Genius. This is a website that I can sometimes get lost in – down that proverbial rabbit hole – if I don’t make myself stop. My game plan, play until I don’t get the right answer. Sometimes I can go through fifteen or twenty questions before the old buzzer rings. In the meantime, I learn stuff that may never come up in conversation at a social gathering.
For instance, this recent question. Who was the nation’s first billionaire. The suggested answers are, George Washington, Bill Gates, Andrew Carnegie, or John D. Rockefeller. Do you know?
Here’s an interesting quote from the Trivia Genius story about the billionaires. “The concept of a “billionaire” is a pretty staggering thing. A billion is a thousand millions, so the difference between a “millionaire” and a “billionaire” is huge. If you’re worth a million bucks, you’re closer to being broke than you are to being a billionaire — about a thousand times closer, as a matter of fact!”
And here I thought I’d be happy to be a millionaire. 🙂
Tomorrow, I’ll leave a comment telling you my answer and whether it was correct.
Another recent post over at Trivia Genius was all about The Great American Novel, asking the question What is a Great American Novel, Anyway. Rather than being a question for the reader to guess at an answer, it’s just a post about what people, mainly scholars, have thought and written about the idea of a Great American Novel, some believing that it has yet to be written. According to the post at Trivia Genius, “Some commentators believe the GAN is either unattainable or still hasn’t been written. They think of it as a kind of literary white whale, which is fitting, given that Moby-Dick is perhaps the most agreed-upon GAN in existence.”
Since I’m a writer, I was particularly interested in that post, but I know many of you who come here are avid readers, so I thought you’d enjoy the article. It’s a fun read with lots of facts I wasn’t aware of.
Trivia Genius also offers a history quiz, and all the beer drinkers might like to know the answer to Which Founding Father Inspired a Famous Beer Brand?” When you see the suggestions, even a person who prefers scotch would know the answer to that one.
This will be short and sweet today. Unfortunately, that nasty trigeminal neuralgia still plagues me and looking at the computer screen for any length of time seems to make the nerves in and around my eye very angry. Angry nerves are no fun.
Before I go, I’ll share a couple of jokes from The Laugh Factory.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine, they laid down for the night, and went to sleep. Some hours later, Holmes awoke and nudged his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”
Watson replied, “I see millions and millions of stars.”
“What does that tell you?”
Watson pondered for a minute. “Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies, and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What does it tell you?”
Holmes was silent for a minute, then spoke. “It tells me that someone has stolen our tent.”
I surf the web a lot, and I guess I was using too much bandwidth, because the other day I got an automated phone call from my service provider. It was The Rolling Stones singing, “Hey, you. Get off of my cloud!”
Q: How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two: one to change it and another one to change it back again.
Okay. That’s all from me for today. Have a great rest of the week.
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