Sunday 1 March 2015

Useless knowledge, or trivia for people who hate trivia

Not that I'm against knowing facts and names, but I hesitate to celebrate the idea too much. When a stray piece of information sticks with me, the better for us both, I suppose. Yet perhaps least celebrated abilities of the human mind is its capacity to sometimes forget. How else can one decide between what is important, and what is trivial.

Spurred on by a recent streak of attending trivia nights at the local pubs, here is a truly random sampling of human knowledge. Created through random wiki articles, it is a representation of what the English-speaking knows, unbiased in actual important (though clearly biased in article density per topic). Maybe not surprisingly a lot of tiny cities pop up in these searches. The only rule besides clicking "Random Article" was to phrase the questions based entirely on information gleaned from the wiki page. I don't expect anyone to know more than one of these. It'd be one more than me!


  1. What language is spoken in the in the provinces of Lamas in the Peruvian region of San Martin and in some villages on the river Huallaga in the region of Ucayali?
  2. In 2012, he became the leader of the oppositional Democratic Front formed by the Movement for Changes (PZP) and the New Serb Democracy (NOVA).
  3. Zeytinli is a village in which country?
  4. Name at least one player in the Eintracht Frankfurt football team, 2006–07 season
  5. Who was the Superior Court judge for the district of Trois-Rivières, Quebec from 1905-21?
  6. Agnam Lidoubé is a village in which country?
  7. This Californian terrace separates Humboldt Bay to the north from the Eel River to the south and is also home to the Wiyot tribe reservation.
  8. This historic property is located at 7 Albert Street in Worcester, Massachusetts.
  9. Cobwebs to Catch flies is a 1783 children's book by this author.
  10. The Keshavarz District is located in which country?
  11. Karel Píč and Josef Kořenský were born in this Czech city
  12. Who directed the 1985 Australian film Wrong World?
  13. What country does the city Qomrud reside?
  14. Born  1936, he is currently in the French Senate representing the department of Corse-du-Sud.
  15. Together with Wojciech Słomczyński, he developed a voting system for the Council of the European Union called the Jagiellonian Compromise.
  16. He authored the thesis titled "The development of U.S. protection of libraries and archives in Europe during World War II".
  17. This process is named for when a quark of one hadron and an antiquark of another hadron annihilate, creating a virtual photon or Z boson, which then decays into a pair of oppositely-charged leptons.
  18. Who won the 1st Czech Republic Hockey League championship game of the 2010-11 season?
  19. Hermann Göring was arrested by US troops in this village.
  20. This city was fourth runner-up in for the bid to host the 2012 Olympic summer games.