Monthly Trivia Archives: November 2010

Week of November 28 – Odd Facts!

Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.

Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies’ room during a dance.

An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

Week of November 14 – Events from 100 years ago: November 1910

Indiana University held its first Homecoming game. Credit for inventing the idea of an alumni “homecoming” has also been claimed for earlier games by Baylor University and University of Illinois.  (11/5/1910)

The first commercial airplane flight in history was carried out by Wright Company pilot Philip Parmalee who transported two bolts of silk (worth $1,000) from Dayton, Ohio to Columbus for delivery to the Morehouse-Martens Department Store in Columbus. (11/7/1910)

In what was described as “the first conviction on finger print evidence In the history of this country”, a jury in Chicago found Thomas Jennings guilty of the murder of Clarence A. Hiller. (11/10/1910)

The governments of the United States, Germany, Russia, Sweden and Norway gave diplomatic recognition to the newly created Republic of Portugal which had overthrown the Kingdom of Portugal one month earlier.  (11/11/1910)

President Taft, in Panama City for an inspection of the building of the canal, reassured Panamanians that the U.S. had no intention of annexing the Republic of Panama.  “We have guaranteed your integrity as a republic, and for us to annex territory would be to violate that guarantee, and nothing would justify it in our part”, said Taft, adding “so long as Panama performed her part under the treaty.” (11/16/1910)

Week of November 7 – Daylight Saving Time

It is Daylight Saving (singular) Time, NOT Daylight SavingS Time. We are saving daylight, so it is singular and not plural.

Daylight Saving Time is a change in the standard time of each time zone. Time zones were first used by the railroads in 1883 to standardize their schedules.

The American law by which we turn our clock forward in the spring and back in the fall is known as the Uniform Time Act of 1966. The law does not require that anyone observe Daylight Saving Time; all the law says is that if we are going to observe Daylight Saving Time, it must be done uniformly.

Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time is extended one month and begins for most of the United States at 2 a.m. on the Second Sunday in March and lasts until 2 a.m. on the First Sunday of November. The new start and stop dates were set in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Daylight Saving Time – for the U.S. and its territories – is NOT observed in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and by most of Arizona (with the exception of the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona).

Week of October 31 – Voter Trivia

The voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1971.

In the beginning of the United States, only white men owning property were allowed to vote.

The Presidential election of November 1920 was the first occasion on which women in ALL states were allowed to exercise their right to vote.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act guaranteed African Americans the right to vote at the time thousands were being disenfranchised across the country.

Technically, Native Americans received the right to vote in 1870 when the Fifteenth Amendment was passed, opening voting up to citizens regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” However, it wasn’t until 1924, with the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act-in which Congress granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States-that Native Americans began exercising their right to vote. Like African Americans, Native Americans became the brunt of unfair voting mechanisms, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. With the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, Native American voting rights were strengthened.