SUNDAY TRIVIA

Did you know...

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.

Babe Ruth hit his first major-league home run on May 6, 1915. He was playing for the Boston Red Sox at the time. 'The Sultan of Swat' went on to smash 714 round-trippers before he retired, as a New York Yankee, in 1935.

Alexander the Great was an epileptic.

The band "Duran Duran" got their name from an astronaut in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie "Barbarella."

Weird" Al Yankovic received a Bachelor's degree in Architecture in 1981.  He also served as valedictorian of his high school at age 16.

The phrase "Often a bridesmaid but never a bride" actually comes from an advertisement for Listerine mouthwash.  The text was written by Milton Feasley and first appeared in 1925.  The advertisement was so successful that it ran for more than ten years.

The first professional football team to sport an insignia on their helmets was the Los Angeles Rams in 1950, who hand painted yellow horns on their blue leather helmets.

The most played song on American radio during the twentieth century was You've Lost That Loving Feeling which was written by Barry Mann, Phil Spector, and Cynthia Weil.  Although recorded by different artists, the song is the only one in history to be played over 8 million times on the radio. That amounts to about 45 years if the song was played back to back!  Three songs were played 7 million times: Never My Love, Yesterday, and Stand By Me (in that order).

The correct response to the Irish greeting, "Top of the morning to you," is "and the rest of the day to yourself."

Wild Bill Hickok was killed playing poker, holding two pairs - aces and eights, which has become known as 'Dead Man's Hand.'

There are 100 tiles in a 'Scrabble' crossword game.

Eggplant is a member of the thistle family.

Ginger has been clinically demonstrated to work twice as well as Dramamine for fighting motion sickness, with no side effects.

Morphine was given its name in 1803 by the discoverer, a 20 year old German pharmacist named Friedrich Saturner. He named it after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.

The first Soccer World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930 and attracted 13 competing countries.

Orchids have the smallest seeds. It takes more than 1.25 million seeds to weigh 1 gram.

Peanuts are beans.

In a typical season major league baseball will require 4,800 ash trees worth of Louisville sluggers.

The plant life in the oceans make up about 85 percent of all the greenery on the Earth.

The first cover of "Sports Illustrated," in 1954, showed National League umpire, Augie Donatelli, behind the plate with two major-league stars: catcher Wes Westrum, and batter Eddie Matthews.

Willow bark, which provides the salicylic acid from which aspirin was originally synthesized, has been used as a pain remedy ever since the Greeks discovered its therapeutic power nearly 2,500 years ago.

A perfect game in baseball is one in which the same player pitches the entire game without allowing any player of the opposing team to reach first base -- by any means.

The old adage of lightning never striking twice in the same place is totally false. Lightning is not limited to a one-bolt action. Many lightning flashes are of a multiple variety and may strike repeatedly in a few seconds. Up to 22 consecutive lightning strokes have been observed in a multiple flash.