{"id":13533,"date":"2012-09-21T18:28:28","date_gmt":"2012-09-22T01:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=13533"},"modified":"2012-12-02T22:00:26","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T06:00:26","slug":"the-history-of-trivia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2012\/09\/the-history-of-trivia\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of Trivia"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pf-content\"><div class=\"highlighter\"><a href='http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com' title='Interesting Facts'>Today I Found Out<\/a> has teamed up with <a title=\"Jeremiah Warren\" href=\"http:\/\/jeremiahwarren.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jeremiah Warren<\/a> to start showing his awesome &#8220;trivia&#8221; videos here, along with <span id=\"bonusfacts\">Bonus<\/span> Facts included after the video by me. I hope you enjoy his videos as much as I have.<\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/d2_8GO_wYT0?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"610\" height=\"343\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"bonusfacts\">Bonus<\/span> Trivia Facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Trivium&#8221; in Latin, the plural of which is &#8220;trivia&#8221;, literally means &#8220;triple way&#8221;: &#8220;tri-&#8221; (triple) and &#8220;via&#8221; (way).\u00a0 This word was used referring to areas where &#8220;three ways meet&#8221; (e.g. roads and rivers).<\/li>\n<li>This original Latin definition of &#8220;trivium&#8221; is probably how the educational usage of it mentioned in the above video first came about.\u00a0 During medieval times, a basic liberal arts education from a university consisted primarily of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, called a &#8220;trivium&#8221;.\u00a0 After the trivium was completed, students would then be commonly taught the quadrivium, consisting of geometry, astronomy, music, and arithmetic.<\/li>\n<li>Before creating Trivial Pursuit, Chris Haney was a photo editor at <em>The Gazette<\/em> in Montreal.\u00a0 The co-creator of Trivial Pursuit, Scott Abbott, worked for <em>The Canadian<\/em>, as a sports editor.<\/li>\n<li>Chris Haney and Scott Abbott supposedly came up with the idea for the game Trivial Pursuit after attempting to play Scrabble, but finding many of the pieces missing in their game set, so started trying to come up with ideas for a different game.\u00a0 This &#8220;origin&#8221; was contested in a 1994 lawsuit by David Wall from Nova Scotia.\u00a0 Wall claimed that he told Chris Haney of an idea he had for a trivia game back in 1979 when Haney picked Wall and a friend up when the latter two were hitchhiking. Wall claims Trivial Pursuit is almost exactly like the game he described to Haney.\u00a0 Haney, on the other hand, claims he&#8217;s never met Wall. Wall&#8217;s further &#8220;evidence&#8221; that he did in fact invent Trivial Pursuit was that he once possessed drawings of his proposed trivia board game, though he no longer had them at the time of his lawsuit.\u00a0 However, his mother testified under oath that she had seen the drawings before Trivial Pursuit came out&#8230;\u00a0 The case wasn&#8217;t ultimately decided until 2007 when the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, not surprisingly, ruled in Haney&#8217;s favor that he had not stolen the idea from Wall.<\/li>\n<li>Another lawsuit that plagued Trivial Pursuit, this time with much more credence behind it, was filed by Fred Worth in 1984.\u00a0 Worth is the author of various trivia books and claimed, legitimately, that around 1\/4 of the questions in the Trivial Pursuit game were copied from his works.\u00a0 He was able to back this claim up with the fact that he intentionally would put typographical errors in his work, as well as certain choice incorrect information, so that he could track if someone was directly copying his work; not unlike how map makers will intentionally put fictitious roads in their maps to track if people are copying them.\u00a0 Worth&#8217;s intentional errors appeared in Trivial Pursuit.\u00a0 However, his $300 million lawsuit was dismissed by several judges up the legal ladder, stating that trivia type facts cannot be protected by copyright.\u00a0 This case went all the way to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court chose not to review it and so Worth lost the lawsuit.<\/li>\n<li>Merv Griffin states that the idea for Jeopardy! came from his wife.\u00a0 In his own words: &#8220;My wife Julann just came up with the idea one day when we were in a plane bringing us back to New York from Duluth. I was mulling over game show ideas, when she noted that there had not been a successful &#8216;question and answer&#8217; game on the air since the quiz show scandals. Why not do a switch, and give the answers to the contestant and let them come up with the question? She fired a couple of answers to me: &#8216;5,280&#8217; \u2013 and the question of course was &#8216;How many feet in a mile?&#8217; Another was &#8217;79 Wistful Vista&#8217;; that was Fibber and Mollie McGee&#8217;s address. I loved the idea, went straight to NBC with the idea, and they bought it without even looking at a pilot show.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The original name for Jeopardy! was going to be &#8220;What&#8217;s the Question?&#8221;, but Griffin decided to change the name after a memo from one of the network executives stating that the show needed more &#8220;jeopardies&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Contestants on Jeopardy! are penalized if they ring in before the host finishes reading the answer.\u00a0 If they do, their buzzer stops working for 1\/4 of a second.\u00a0 This was to combat the fact that in the beginning contestants would often start ringing in right away after they&#8217;d finished reading the answer, even though the host would often still be reading.\u00a0 This was particularly problematic when it would take more than five seconds for the host to read the answer, thus the contestant would never get a chance to provide the question.<\/li>\n<li>Contestants who finish with $0 or less still get a prize after the show, currently set at $1,000.\u00a0 The second place contestant receives $2,000 and, of course, the winner gets to keep their total accumulated dollars on the day.\u00a0 This wasn&#8217;t always the way it was though.\u00a0 Up until 1984, all contestants got to keep their total amount they&#8217;d won on the day. This created a problem of contestants ceasing to ring in once they had reached the amount they wanted to win, or otherwise being more hesitant to ring in when they weren&#8217;t sure of their response, due to the potential loss of some of the money they&#8217;d accumulated that might occur for answering incorrectly.\u00a0 This was particularly problematic when it came to Final Jeopardy!\u00a0 By allowing only the top scorer to keep their money, this created much more competition and less hesitancy on the part of the players to try to give a correct response to an answer.<\/li>\n<li>A three way tie has happened just once in Jeopardy! history.\u00a0 This occurred in 2007 when Anders Martinson, Jamey Kirby, and returning champion Scott Weiss all finished the game at $16,000.\u00a0 Going into final Jeopardy!, they were at $13,400, $8,000, and $8,000.\u00a0 All three contestants were invited back for the following episode for a rematch.<\/li>\n<li>There was also once a $1 Jeopardy! winner in January of 1993 with all three contestants answering the Final Jeopardy! question incorrectly dropping their scores to $0, $0, and $1 respectively.<\/li>\n<li>During Ken Jennings record 74 run on Jeopardy!, he won a total of $2,520,700.\u00a0 His total Jeopardy! winnings overall came to $3,172,700 after subsequent $2000 runner up prize on the game that snapped his streak, a half a million dollar prize in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, and $300K prize for his participation in the IBM Challenge.\u00a0 However, Jennings is not the current Jeopardy! total winnings record holder, losing out to Brad Rutter in the Ultimate Tournament of Champions, which netted Rutter $2M, bumping his total Jeopardy earnings past Jennings.\u00a0 That being said, Jennings does currently hold the record for the most total money won as a contestant in game shows, with that total still rising as he occasionally makes more game show appearances.<\/li>\n<li>The answer that Jennings got wrong in Final Jeopardy! that resulted in him snapping his winning streak was &#8220;Most of this firm&#8217;s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.&#8221;\u00a0 Jennings&#8217; answer was &#8220;What is FedEx?&#8221;\u00a0 A fair response, but doesn&#8217;t fit with the &#8220;white-collar&#8221; part of the answer.\u00a0 The correct response was &#8220;H&amp;R Block&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>All total, Jennings 75 game appearance streak lasted a total of 182 calendar days and in the latter portion of it gave Jeopardy! a 22% boost in ratings.<\/li>\n<li>Alex Trebek&#8217;s first name is not Alex, but rather &#8220;George&#8221;.\u00a0 His middle name is Alexander.<\/li>\n<li>Out of college, Trebek originally was interested in a career in news, and first worked for CBC as a general newscaster, as well as briefly working as a sportscaster.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<span class=\"collapseomatic \" id=\"id69f011d7cd63c\"  tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Expand for References\"    >Expand for References<\/span><div id=\"target-id69f011d7cd63c\" class=\"collapseomatic_content \">\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Trivial Pursuit\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trivial_Pursuit\" target=\"_blank\">Trivial Pursuit<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trivia\" target=\"_blank\">Trivia<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jeopardy!\" target=\"_blank\">Jeopardy!<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Trivium_%28education%29\" target=\"_blank\">Trivium<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ken_Jennings\" target=\"_blank\">Ken Jennings<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alex_Trebek\" target=\"_blank\">Alex Trebek<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20080509015708\/http:\/\/www.jeopardy.com\/announcement_20070314_3wt.php\" target=\"_blank\">This is Jeopardy!<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com' title='Interesting Facts'>Today I Found Out<\/a> has teamed up with Jeremiah Warren to start showing his awesome &#8220;trivia&#8221; videos here, along with <span id=\"bonusfacts\">Bonus<\/span> Facts included after the video by me. I hope you enjoy his videos as much as I have. <span id=\"bonusfacts\">Bonus<\/span> Trivia Facts: &#8220;Trivium&#8221; in Latin, the plural of which is &#8220;trivia&#8221;, literally means &#8220;triple way&#8221;: &#8220;tri-&#8221; (triple) and &#8220;via&#8221; (way).\u00a0 [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2957,2781],"tags":[2959,756,2958],"class_list":["post-13533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-educational_videos","category-featured-facts","tag-jeopardy-facts","tag-trivia","tag-video-facts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13533"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13543,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13533\/revisions\/13543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}